Tiny Toons Looniversity premieres September 8 on Max and September 9 on Cartoon Network.
When Tiny Toon Adventures debuted in 1990, its chief inspiration – the classic Looney Tunes shorts of the ’40s and ’50s – still occupied a prominent place in the media landscape. Repackaged compilations aired daily on Nickelodeon and TNT and weekly on ABC Saturday mornings. The characters were part of a landmark agreement with longtime studio rival Disney that set up Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig’s spotlight moments in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Plush toys adorned retail shelves (including those of the soon-to-open Warner Bros. Studio Store). A similar deluge followed the debut of Tiny Toons, a smash hit that turned out to be a surprisingly ambitious undertaking. The show was not simply Baby Looney Tunes, but a reimagining of those now-archetypes, appearing alongside the original characters, who had small roles as teachers instructing the new characters. The latter included Babs and Buster Bunny (both modeled on Bugs), Plucky Duck (a JV Daffy), and Hamton J. Pig (Porky 2.0), among many others.
The new series Tiny Toons Looniversity is, in some ways, just another reboot. While the Looney Tunes characters themselves are less culturally ubiquitous today (to the point of 200-plus new shorts debuting on HBO Max to critical acclaim but relatively little hype and a Space Jam sequel doing a fast fade at the box office), the influence of the Tiny Toons style – merch-ready cuteness, traditional cartoon slapstick, intense self-referentiality – is everywhere. In a world where a show like Teen Titans Go has been mixing ever-wilder comic violence and endless in-jokes for years, Tiny Toons Looniversity can feel less like higher education than a basic cartooning course.
The reboot’s details are half logical, half inexplicable. The characters look mostly the same (and sound similar, though many of the voice actors have been swapped out), but are now explicitly attending college, rather than a nebulous approximation of middle school – which makes their diminutive stature compared to the older characters a bit odd. (Why are the “tiny” counterparts made almost the toon equivalent of twentysomethings?) Buster (Eric Bauza) and Babs (Ashleigh Crystal Hairston) are now twin siblings, rather than shippable besties, which frees the characters from romance plots only to further entwine them with a shared familial history. The four episodes provided for review all feature a sitcom-style arrangement of connected plots and subplots, rather than the multiple, Looney Tunes-style segments that made up a typical episode of the previous series. Also, Hamton has a Southern drawl now.
Some of the character tweaks are more effective than others. Sweetie Bird (Tessa Netting), a Tweety variation in the original series, now has a more distinctly anarchic personality and a prominent role in the core group that, as before, includes Babs, Buster, Plucky (David Errigo Jr.), and Hamton (also Errigo). Formerly cocky Buster, meanwhile, has been reconfigured as more insecure and emotionally needy; multiple episodes see him turning despondent at the potential loss of a close friend: first sister Babs when they’re assigned to separate dorms, then roommate Hampton, who considers leaving Acme Looniversity for med school. It’s a repetitive move that lacks much room for comic development. But if some of the cosmetic and personality changes will inspire nitpicks from hardcore fans, there are also deep-cut Warner Bros. animation references that will delight them. One episode riffs on the obscure, little-loved character Cool Cat – created by a former Hanna-Barbera staffer in the late-’60s dog days of the Looney Tunes theatrical shorts – while also reintroducing Space Jam’s Lola Bunny. They’re brought together for an impressively manic plot about Acme Looniversity trying to maintain its lofty college ranking.
That story could stand in for Tiny Toons itself attempting to reclaim its former status as one of the cleverest and best-animated kid-friendly cartoons on TV – a magic that may be difficult to recapture. The older episodes were farmed out to a number of different animation studios, which inadvertently created an effect similar to old Looney Tunes, when characters were drawn in slightly different style depending on the filmmaking team. Looniversity is far more consistent – and, at times, a little thin-looking, like the difference between classic-era Simpsons episodes and the uncanny polish of its digitally animated modern installments. Still, the fundamentals of physical elasticity, zippy pacing, and quick-hit sight gags are all strong, bringing together Looney Tunes classicism and some 2010s-era animation standbys, like grotesquely exaggerated sad-eyes.
But even more than in the earlier incarnation, the series also seems hellbent on calling attention to these cartoon mechanics. Characters don’t just do wild eye-bugging takes or engage in explosive slapstick; they talk about them as “gags” they’ve been working on to benefit their education. Sometimes this is clever, as in an episode where the Tiny Toons are afflicted with an inability to bounce back after their various exaggerated injuries, leaving them variously squashed, mangled, or burnt to a crisp without the classic next-scene reset. Elsewhere, the meta-jokes about cartoon physics can turn into a wearying mythology. As in the Space Jam sequel, the word “Looney” is so overused that it begins to sound like a branded hashtag. Looniversity is a worthy-enough successor to the original series, but by expending so much energy on rebooting itself, the show inches a little further away from those old Looney Tunes ideals, toward another 13-episode batch of nostalgia bait.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/tiny-toons-looniversity-review