Cinema review roundup: Looney Tunes The Day the Earth Blew Up and A Working Man

95 years after their debut, the Looney Tunes finally have their first fully animated feature film, The Day the Earth Blew Up - a fact that’s almost unbelievable.

Spanning generations, the beloved Warner Bros. characters have graced the small screen and starred in live-action hybrid films like Space Jam and Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Now, Daffy Duck and P-p-p-orky Pig take centre stage in their own fully animated feature film, The Day the Earth Blew Up - a loving homage to the sci-fi B-movies of the 1950s.

Originally conceived as a spin-off from Looney Tunes Cartoons (2020–24), series creator Peter Browngardt seized the opportunity to go big when the studio asked what ideas he had up his sleeve. 

Bringing along his cast of voice actors, notably Eric Bauza, he crafted a hysterical yet surprisingly heartfelt adventure - one that throws back to the golden age of classic cartoons while introducing younger audiences to a bygone era of cinema.

The story follows Daffy and Porky, beginning with a flashback to their youth, when the farmer who raised them passes away and leaves them his farmhouse. Cut to several years later, and their home has fallen into disrepair. Desperate for work, the bumbling duo take jobs at a local chewing gum factory, only to uncover an alien plot to contaminate the product as part of a scheme for world domination. 

What follows is a riotous adventure packed with nods to classic creature features like The Blob and The Stuff, as Daffy and Porky embark on a hilariously absurd mission to thwart the extraterrestrial menace and save humanity from being turned into mindless zombies.

The Day the Earth Blew Up is as delightfully zany as a Looney Tunes movie should be, delivering plenty of laughs for longtime fans and newcomers alike. The animation - predominantly hand-drawn with dazzling digital effects - is visually stunning, while the orchestral score adds to the film’s grand, cinematic feel.

As Looney Tunes nears its 100th anniversary, it’s reassuring to see these timeless characters thriving on the big screen in a way that they always deserved. A perfect family film, The Day the Earth Blew Up is sure to entertain audiences of all ages.

Jason Statham dons a hard hat and belts a lot of bad guys in A Working Man, the latest bone-cruncher from The Beekeeper director David Ayer.

In many ways, A Working Man serves as a companion piece to The Beekeeper, with Statham and Ayer once again teaming up to tell the story of a seemingly ordinary bloke with “special skills.” It also shares DNA with Homefront (2013), as Statham and Sylvester Stallone reunite for another similarly themed action thriller.

Yes, that Sylvester Stallone - aka Rambo and Rocky - wrote this latest action flick, adapting it from the first of 13 books about Levon Cade, a character created by prolific comic book writer Chuck Dixon.

Statham’s Cade is a no-nonsense construction site manager working for a family business. He’s a widower with limited custody of his daughter, who lives with her vexatious grandfather. But when the boss’s daughter is abducted and forced into human trafficking, Cade reverts to his old special forces ways, cracking skulls to get her back from the Russian criminals responsible.

There’s little need to elaborate on the plot - because, frankly, it’s as generic and familiar as they come. And that’s exactly why it works.

A Working Man is fun in the way a hot dog is delicious: we know it’s bad for us, but we don’t care. We consume it anyway because we love this stuff. That’s why audiences keep coming back for movies like John Wick, The Bricklayer, and The Mechanic. The formula is tried and true.

Statham delivers his trademark English grit, much as he does in every role. He’s joined by David Harbour as a blinded former serviceman with expertise and resources, Michael Peña as the girl’s father, Jason Flemyng as a Russian trafficker, and Arianna Rivas as the kidnapped girl.

Visually, the film leans into hyper-stylisation, complemented by an exaggerated score that gives it a near-comic book aesthetic - just take note of the oversized moon dominating the second half, straight out of a classic B-movie. 

With Ayer’s well-honed action chops (Fury, Suicide Squad, The Tax Collector, Sabotage), A Working Man delivers a bang-for-buck viewing experience that shouldn’t disappoint die-hard fans of the genre.