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Author Topic: Looney Tunes Turnout - WTF Martin Brooks Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 900 From: Forest Hills, NY, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 11-15-2003 11:56 PM                        Actually, I'm surprised it's not doing well. I would have thought that the parents who grew up with these characters would have taken their kids to see it, as an excuse for themselves to see it. And I also thought it would do well because the weather has turned colder. The day I was forced to see Brother Bear (for reasons I can't get into here), the theater was filled, in spite of the fact that it was an incredibly beautiful day outside. The Village Voice, of all papers, actually gave this film a pretty good review. The NY Times gave it a mixed, but not bad review. But I guess people do think that taking two kids to the movies is going to cost them at least $35 with snacks and they might as well wait for the video. But the industry really doesn't care anymore -- the theatrical run is just marketing for the video these days.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 11-16-2003 12:52 AM                        quote: I would have thought that the parents who grew up with these characters would have taken their kids to see it, as an excuse for themselves to see it Normally, I'd agree with you, Martin. However, in this case, I don't think the storyline justifies resurrecting the Looney Tunes characters... it's just too weak. Nobody ever considered Tweety or Granny as insidious bad-guys... nor was the Acme Company ever the root of an evil plot... at least, not that I recall. Steve Martin as the president of Acme? Puhleeeeze!... and his over-the-top arm-waving schtick was... to me... nothing more than an embarassing reminder of his Sgt. Bilko routine... tolerable in that movie, but way, way over the top in this one.... maybe if they had shortened his lines... a lot... well, nah. I didn't enjoy the film, and I wouldn't take my kids to it... especially if I had to buy tickets. I never really noticed the difference in the characters' voices. Mel's dead, and I didn't go into it demanding that whoever replaced him was an effective clone. What I did notice was the short, seemingly inexplicable short cameos by various 'tunes. What, for example, did Sylvester bring to the table? As far as I could figure, they could have left him out completely, and nobody would have noticed. But... because they stuck him in there, the least they could have done was give him a realistic purpose... and I don't recall noticing one. I was always a huge fan of the 'Tunes. I thought it was sad to see how much they had to sanitize the characters over the years to make them "PC" (there was some pretty raw stuff in their history). For me, this just took it too far and didn't do enough to portray a good reason to dredge them up.... probably the way I'll feel about myself in 20 years or so. I personally wasn't surprised to see the film tank. It's one of the few times I actually said anything negative about a film... since I'm more often wrong about that kind of thing! (edit) This week's Entertainment Weekly (the one with Britney Babe on the cover) has a review of the show... pretty much along the lines of what we've noticed already. [ 11-16-2003, 04:23 PM: Message edited by: Jack Ondracek ]  |  IP: Logged Dennis Atkinson Expert Film Handler Posts: 129 From: Birch Run Michigan Registered: Feb 2000 posted 11-16-2003 01:50 PM                        I saw this turkey yesterday at a 3:15 show with 13 people total. Had some good spoofing going on but other than that Could be cut down to an hour. Dennis  |  IP: Logged Brent Mahaney Film Handler Posts: 43 From: Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA Registered: Dec 2001 posted 11-16-2003 05:54 PM                    I thought it was strange timing for the release of this movie. It's right on the heels of Brother Bear and one week before Cat In The Hat (which is going to be huge). Just my opinion, but I think it would have done a little better earlier in the year. Everybody has their sights set on Cat...  |  IP: Logged Aldo Baez Master Film Handler Posts: 266 From: USA Registered: Mar 2001 posted 11-17-2003 12:01 AM                    We didn't get this one. It was surprising for me because this is the first time I can recall us not getting a major studio release kids type of movie. Good call by our booker I suppose.  |  IP: Logged Chris Hipp Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1462 From: Mesquite, Tx (east of Dallas) Registered: Jul 2003 posted 11-17-2003 01:08 AM                     I bet they would have been better off just re-releasing the old animated movies. The one with "kill the rabbit" and that other Daffy one I cant remember the name, something like fantastic island ?  |  IP: Logged Martin Brooks Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 900 From: Forest Hills, NY, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 11-17-2003 05:41 PM                        Here's the Village Voice review by Ben Kenigsberg: In the classic Looney episode "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century," Daffy Duck journeys to "Planet X"; in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, he meets Edgar Ulmer's Man From Planet X. The homage is oblique to the point of being deranged. It's the kind of reference that could spring only from the mind of Joe Dante, whose artfully eerie commercial films always offer reams of peripheral dividends for cinephiles. (Roger Corman, Robby the Robot, and Kevin McCarthy—pod in tow—all make cameos.) The director, sunnier than usual here, has never made a secret of his love for Warner's famous 'toons (Chuck Jones appeared in Gremlins and Innerspace, animated the bookends of Gremlins 2, and had a high school named after him in Explorers). In LT: BIA, Dante's masterstroke is to make the movie as visually and narratively unhinged as its source material. The heady non sequiturs—like Elmer Fudd surfacing for an impromptu chase though paintings by Seurat, Munch, and Dalí—are frequently hilarious. As in Dante's segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, the live-action world operates with cartoon logic—Brendan Fraser goes splat almost as often as Wile E. Coyote, and even tussles with his double, à la "Duck Amuck."  |  IP: Logged John Carpenter Film Handler Posts: 96 From: Fort Walton Beach, FL, USA Registered: Nov 2002 posted 11-17-2003 08:33 PM                     Well after all the weekend numbers are in I realized why I asked this question in the first place. My theatre consistently has higher per screen averages than the national average by at least 40%. Since I have been tracking it, we have never been below the national average - but this film we were 36% lower than the already low national average. I wonder what made it do so bad here?  |  IP: Logged Dave Macaulay Film God Posts: 2321 From: Toronto, Canada Registered: Apr 2001 posted 11-17-2003 10:01 PM                     quote: Fact is, today's kids aren't watching Looney Tunes. Mine certainly aren't. They're making a valliant effort to establish their own path, and to them, Granny and Tweety are as hip as Frank Sinatra. Personally, I think most of the animation they actually find an interest in on Saturdays seems too stupid for words... but maybe our parents thought the same about us... I doubt it... but maybe so. There was a lot of total crap on TV when I was a kid (Clutch Cargo, anyone?) and Looney Tunes was already "old", moving to TV release from the original theatrical venue. But... the theatrical stuff was funny then and it's funny now. I know kids who like the old LT stuff. They also like the animexploitation crap advertising this month's must-have toys. In 20 years they will probably still get a laff out of Bugs, but won't even remember CardCaptors. What most have no time for even now is the new soulless looney tunes crap with baby bugs and baby daffy doing nothing interesting.  |  IP: Logged Zach Zagar Film Handler Posts: 45 From: Jefferson City, MO Registered: Mar 2000 posted 11-18-2003 12:15 AM                        I got lucky on Saturday and Sunday with this one due to lucky show scheduling. For some reason Brother Bear just keeps going strong, would sell out, help out an Elf sell out, then spill over into Looney Toones. It worked out well enough I'm going to keep that strategy going into Cat in the Hat. Is it just me or is there an INSANE amount more of kid/family movies this year than in the past few years? Everyone must've really jumped on the lack of Potter this year.  |  IP: Logged Paul Konen Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 981 From: Frisco, TX. (North of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-18-2003 08:51 AM                     Rabbit Season  |  IP: Logged Thomas Procyk Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1842 From: Royal Palm Beach, FL, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 11-18-2003 09:03 AM                     Is there even a plot to this movie? It seems that all it's about is that there appear to be "Loony Tunes" of some sort, and they are springing "Back To Action" by attacking human cast members... WTF indeed... Brendan Frazier was on a couple of talk shows before it opened explaining how Loony Tunes was shown before the movies with newsreels and how they belonged back on the big screen, and that "This is no Space Jam!" --- Of course, because Space Jam made money! I knew something was up when the owner brought us all the Looney Tunes stuff from the first-run theater on opening weekend. At least we'll get the movie sooner! =TMP=  |  IP: Logged Mike Williams Master Film Handler Posts: 255 From: Knoxville, TN Registered: Feb 2002 posted 11-18-2003 09:05 AM                     I saw this movie with my 5 year old yesterday. She LOVED it! She likes the Daffy Duck show "Duck Dodgers" (pretty much all of the old Looney Tunes cartoons with Marvin the Martian and Daffy Duck) so I was pretty sure she would enjoy the movie. Personally, I did not find the movie that bad. From some of the earlier posts in this thread, I was expecting it to be horrible... but then I think I can be entertained by almost any movie as long as I have the right mindset walking into the theater. It was fun seeing all of the cameos in that movie.  |  IP: Logged Charles Everett Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1470 From: New Jersey Registered: May 2001 posted 11-18-2003 05:53 PM                     John and Brent, you're not alone. I noticed that quite a few multiplexes got burned by opening 2 prints of Looney Tunes. Now they may only have room to open 1 print of The Cat in the Hat. Reading Cinemas in Manville NJ is up s#!t creek: This coming week it has to hold 2 prints of Looney Tunes and 2 prints of The Matrix Revolutions. No Cat in the Hat, no Master and Commander, not even Love Actually. That's what being off service with Fox and Universal will do for you!  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 11-18-2003 07:48 PM                        They'll only need one print of Cat in the Hat. I'd like to know what favour the booker owed to book two prints of Looney Tunes and what they were smoking to book two prints of Revolutions.  |  IP: Logged

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