Good news: There’s a new Looney Tunes theatrical feature film, the Pete Browngardt-directed “The Day the Earth Blew Up – A Looney Tunes Movie,” and it’s terrific. 

“The Day the Earth Blew Up” is a story about alien invasion, mind control, and two young pigs in love — as well as the bond of brotherly friendship between a pig and a duck. There’s also a running obsession with chewing gum that parallels the endless fascination with chocolate in the Willie Wonka franchise. 

The potential difficulties facing contemporary aspiring Looney Tunesmiths are legion, starting with the fundamental dilemma: What can be done with the characters that’s new and yet faithful to 90 years of tradition, and how does one recapture the remarkable spirit of irreverent and anarchic amusement that the original creators — especially such directors as Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Frank Tashlin — achieved so organically?

The major concession to 21st century values here is that Mr. Browngardt and his team of writers — no less than 10 are credited, starting with Darrick Bachman and including the director himself — have made this a science fiction/fantasy/horror story, as if to imply that these are the only genres that fly with millennial audiences.  The heroes are Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, and you have to wonder why the creative team came up with a new villainous thing from another world when they already had Jones’s Marvin Martian. Perhaps that vintage alien, with his oversized sneakers and Roman legion helmet, didn’t seem threatening or sinister enough.  

One of the movie’s key strengths is its realization of these classic characters. All of Warner Bros.’s major animated stars were in a constant state of evolution over the decades, none more so than Daffy Duck. In the years following his debut in the 1937 “Porky’s Duck Hunt,” he was a figure of pure insanity, especially in Avery’s “Daffy Duck and Egghead” and Clampett’s “The Daffy Doc” (both 1938), endlessly hopping and hoo-hoo-ing all over the screen, his only purpose in life being to confound those who would either want to hunt him or try to impose some sort of standard rule of logic upon him.  

Conversely, in later appearances, like in Jones’s “Rabbit Seasoning” (1952) and “Show Biz Bugs” (1957), the little black duck is much more conniving and calculating than purely daffy, motivated by a combination of greed and ego. Yet, Messrs. Browngardt and Bachman have devised a new incarnation of Daffy that will likely please everybody

Porky Pig, too, is practically perfect — both characters, in the tradition of the legendary Mel Blanc, are voiced by Canadian actor Eric Bauza — somewhere between the bashful boy of the ’30s, as in Tashlin’s “Wholly Smoke” (1938) and what Jones described as the “fussy bachelor” of the post-war era, as in “Often an Orphan” (1949).  Porky further takes pride of place as the only Looney Tunes star with a genuine recurring love interest, Petunia Pig, here played by Candi Milo.

“The Day the Earth Blew Up” achieves an excellent balance of respect for tradition and innovation, a story that feels classic yet one to which contemporary audiences will hopefully relate. Diehard fans will delight in spotting Easter eggs — or, to quote the title of a classic 1947 short, “Easter Yeggs” — such as visual references to “Baby Bottleneck,” “The Great Piggy Bank Robbery,” and even Beans, a short-lived character who briefly co-starred with Porky around 1935. Then there’s the two heroes’ adoptive father, “Farmer Jim,” who seems like a cross between the dad in Jones’s 1940 “Tom Thumb in Trouble,” and the lead character in Max Fleischer’s “Gulliver’s Travels.” Further, there are musical nods to the compositions of Raymond Scott, whose memorable themes provide the perfect sonic accompaniment to the on-screen lunacy. 

“The Day the Earth Blew Up” does have its flaws, but there are compensating virtues — such as a cartoon within a cartoon titled “Raising the Roof Money” and an industrial fantasy sequence where Porky and Daffy are rendered in a kind of highly stylized art deco imagery. Along with Greg Ford and Terry Lennon’s “Night of the Living Duck” and “Blooper Bunny,” it’s just about the greatest vehicle for classic Looney Tunes stars in over 50 years.  Mr. Browngardt’s film will please anyone who loves classic Hollywood animation, or even just happens to like pigs and ducks.