Coyote vs. Acme will be released in theaters on August 28.
Looney Tunes have been around since the ’30s. That’s almost 100 years, so it’s safe to say they’ve seen it all. That creators are still finding a way to make Bugs, Daffy and the rest continually fun and relevant is frankly pretty wild.
With Coyote vs. Acme, writer Samy Burch and director Dave Green have figured out a way to do it again. Tired of being exploded, bludgeoned and stranded in mid-air at high altitudes with nothing but the canyon floor distantly beneath him, Wile E. Coyote decides to sue Acme, the iconic company behind all the insane products he uses to not catch the Road Runner.
It’s a premise built on pain, suffering and pathological repetition that generations of humanity have found hilarious… myself included.
When he tracks down Will Forte’s Kevin Avery, a billboard-famous personal injury lawyer looking to do the bare minimum to get by in life relatively undetected,the movie turns into equal parts courtroom drama, corporate intrigue and dry absurdist comedy. It’s A Few Good Men by way of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and it works on just about every level.
Everything from the products themselves – from Acme brand canned lions to dehydrated boulders to the old reliable metal pellets mixed in with bird seed and a book titled How to Wait Around Dramatically, – to the characters named in honor of original Looney Tunes creatives Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese, the details in the film are on point. The film is a mix of classic Looney Tunes gags with a more modern comedic sensibility, and it proves not only that Looney Tunes have always had that going for them, but also the filmmakers behind Coyote vs. Acme understand this and can add to it.
But Coyote and Road Runner are a very short form tradition. Stacking a narrative on top of a popular but story-less property is a phenomenon that The LEGO Movie perfected and plenty of would-be franchises have tried to imitate in the years since. Pianos being dropped on heads is all well and good for a few minutes at a time, but the real challenge with making a feature-length version is figuring out what can be interesting for an hour and a half. The answer for Coyote vs. Acme isn’t just the legal backdrop; it’s the weird psychological motivation behind Wile E. Coyote’s decades-long determination to catch Road Runner.
The film treats Coyote with no small amount of sadness. There’s a genuine obsession to what the Tune is doing with his life in the desert. Living in a cave, surrounded by blueprints of all his failed plans, Wile E. Coyote is the Joker to Road Runner’s Batman. Or vice versa, depending on who you’re rooting for. Ultimately, however, this is Will Forte’s movie as well, and as a two-hander with an animated coyote, the pair of them form a legitimately engaging emotional core. They both grow and learn and all that junk, but before you start thinking that a Looney Tunes movie is taking itself too seriously, I can assure you it does not. In the balancing act of adding enough heart to hang a whole story from while not shoving something so gauche as a “theme” down our throats, Coyote vs. Acme nails it.
Yes, it’s a story about becoming the best version of yourself, about trying over and over again in the face of failure, pain and rejection because you know it’s the right thing to do. There’s a mystery to solve in a fight against a heartless corporation. But also Porky Pig is “here for the pyuh-p-pyuh-pyuh-p-pantsless modeling gig.”
The comedic timing at play is also excellent. The movie is not afraid of an awkward pause or rapid-fire sight gags. Every joke is treated with exactly what it needs. This is due in large part to the supporting cast. John Cena as Acme’s shameless in-house counsel Buddy Crane does exactly what he needs to. Ditto Lana Condor as Avery’s idealistic, recent law school grad. They’re both very good and carry their scenes with humor and weight as needed, but the funniest non-animated cast members have way fewer lines than either of them.
Luis Guzman as the trial judge who doesn’t want any silliness in his courtroom, Martha Kelly as an employee of Avery’s law firm who might not make it back from her mini-golf tournament this weekend, and P.J. Byrne as an Acme stooge and Cena sycophant all bring a ton to this movie in small doses. For me, those are the types of characters to keep an eye on. They’re the ones that speak to how effective a movie like this is. When there are entire moments built around the supporting cast members that survive the editing process, it means the filmmakers knew what they were doing during casting, production and post.
We also have to talk about the meta narrative at play with this movie. Coyote vs. Acme famously slipped the noose when Warner Bros. boss David Zaslav tried to kill the movie to take a tax break. Thanks to the cast and crew and, frankly, most of us shouting about how dumb and tragic that would be, WB rethought the decision and Ketchup Entertainment stepped in to release the movie.
The film wasn’t written about that in the first place, but it is hilariously appropriate that a Looney Tunes movie about corporate shenanigans would fall victim to corporate shenanigans itself. There were a few touches most likely added in the aftermath of the Warner Bros. near-miss, like the “Based on a True Story” title card at the beginning of the film, and the jokes about WB being a wholly owned subsidiary of the Acme Corporation.
It’s a testament to the filmmakers trying over and over again, in the face of failure and rejection and corporate overreach, like the film’s central characters. Coyote vs. Acme is ironically the perfect movie to have survived that ordeal. It’s so perfect, the cynical side of me wonders if WB didn’t stage the whole thing as a publicity stunt. Who knows? Either way, it’s a layer of intrigue to this movie that fell on their heads like an anvil from the sky and the film does not waste the opportunity.
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