As a hardcore Looney Tunes fan, it’s heartbreaking to see how low the character gallery sank in the latter years. With the aging and inevitable death of Mel Blanc, the Looney Tunes basically tread water for years. With this movie, the Looney Tunes gang shares a marquee with a group of goofy monsters that get in all sorts of mishaps and adventures. What ensues is a dull, grating (the Looney Tunes don’t need no stinkin’ laugh track), and absolutely bizarre outing for the gang from Termite Terrace.
Daffy Duck is now a Hollywood producer making a movie based on King Arthur, starring as himself, which he hopes will grant him major awards. However, a ghost known as “The Phantom of the Flickers” steals the movie and plans to destroy every frame of film Daffy made, so it’s up to his biggest fan Frankie and the other Groovie Ghoulies to save the day. The Goolies cross paths with most of the Looney Tunes gang in hopes of finding the villain and helping Daffy finish his big film.
“Daffy Duck & Porky Pig Meet The Groovie Goolies” is an awful movie, easily worse than the Looney Tunes movies that act as glorified clip shows. At least in those films we get a taste of the original characters. With Filmation primarily doing the hard work, the Looney Tunes look awful, and they lack much of the charm and magic that once fueled their series. To make things worse, the Groovie Goolies are a boring group of characters, all of whom act like pretty much every satire of the Universal Monsters that we saw during that period. Filmation’s animation and low budget is apparent and hurts what is a movie that is sorely lacking in an interesting narrative, jokes that land, and the glue that holds it all together: Bugs Bunny.
Thanks to the studio closing around this period, Bugs and many other characters from the Loony Tunes stable never make an appearance in the movie, which becomes distracting. Piling in to the embarrassing elements, the editors speed Mel Blanc’s voice up to the point where Daffy and Tweety sound like coked up chipmunks, and Porky sounds like an old man. Much of what happens with both groups of characters barely adds up to a full feature and it shows with weak plot devices, and absolutely bizarre shift in to live action that involves the Goolies chasing down the Phantom. All hardcore fans should avoid this unless morbid curiosity demands it. It’s the Looney Tunes at their absolute worst.