Review – Coyote vs. ACME

Last year when I reviewed The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, I noted that it was hard to review a film like this without bias, as any review would be “colored by the fact that the brand has been chewed up and spit out by the current Warner Bros. regime, infamous for canceling films like Batgirl, Scoob 2, and Coyote vs. ACME as tax write-offs.” Amazingly, Coyote vs. ACME is now in theaters! After a long three year wait, the film has been released and even grossed a surprising $15.4 million domestic on a $70 million budget, and is outgrossing the newest Ridley Scott movie. Whatever I can say about it, this is enough of a miracle to celebrate!

Content Guide

Violence/Scary Images: PG cartoon violence, involving explosions, injuries, and peril that might be frightening in a more human context.
Language/Crude Humor: Some language including d***, h***, and a sign that implicitly says “oh s***”.
Drug/Alcohol References: Limited to none.
Sexual Content: Limited to none.
Spiritual Content: Limited to none.
Other Negative Content: Limited to none.
Positive Content: Themes of pursuing truth, embracing friendship, and fighting for those who are vulnerable.

Review

I think it is fair to say that cinema hasn’t been kind to the Looney Tunes. Despite starting out as theatrical shorts, they’ve really struggled to find a modern niche in theaters or on television. Nostalgia aside, Space Jam is the only really profitable venture the franchise has accomplished in this realm and it was mostly a farce. I have no nostalgia for it and other people are already quick to defend it, so I will leave them to do so. Unfortunately, this is just one aspect of the immiseration of the Looney Tunes franchise across the past few decades. Shy of the beloved Tiny Tunes Adventures, the franchise has mostly languished with terrible adaptations like Baby Looney Tunes and Loonatics Unleashed (Patrick H. Willems has a wonderful video essay on the subject I recommend).

In short, it a franchise nobody feels inspired enough to do anything with. Space Jam: A New Legacy is mostly depressing at this point, Back in Action also mostly failed, and the most famous stories to come out of the franchise have been Warner Brothers’ attempts to use completed recent franchise entries as tax write-offs. They have no confidence in the property as anything but a logline on their taxes. The backlash to said efforts has twice resulted in enough negative press to cause Warner Brothers backing off their said decisions. Last year, Ketchup Entertainment distributed the lovely The Day The Earth Blew Up to theaters, which I quite enjoyed. And now, the long awaited Coyote vs. ACME is finally receiving glowing reviews after hitting theaters!

Based on a famous New Yorker article and adapted under the supervision of James Gunn (he’s listed as a story writer and producer), the film is set in a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-inspired world where humans and cartoons live in proximity in relative peace. The story starts as most classic Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner sketches do—blowing up in the former’s face. As we meet the Coyote, he’s once again failed in this eternal battle to conquer the Roadrunner. But when he sees a commercial for a law service that handles small claims for failed ACME products, he sees an opportunity to get back at the company that has injured him hundreds of times with their absurd products. Suddenly, a small New Mexico injury lawyer finds himself in court against the largest corporation in the world and facing the challenge of proving his insane client is the victim of their products.

While Warner Brothers has repeatedly tried to make this alchemy of mid-budget adaptations of classic children’s cartoons work (most recently with a bad Tom and Jerry movie during COVID), Coyote vs. ACME proves surprisingly resilient. Much like its protagonist, it can take a lot of flack. While the quality of the 3D animation isn’t entirely consistent (some characters are more cleanly animated than others), the movie uses its modest cast and budget efficiently to tell a modest story that works.

Much like most movies in this blended animation-live action genre, the core ends up being its human side characters facilitating the nominal movie drama. The Coyote can’t talk. The movie puts a lampshade on this a few times with jokes, but has to introduce stock characters to give the movie some semblance of structure. It’s middling as far as these stories go, albeit all of them are clearly committed to the roles and playing up the story.

Thankfully, the movie has two things working in its favor—its humor and its creativity. The film is relentless in the pace of its zany jokes and creative physical gags, constantly using the cartoonish nature of the characters as excuses for something fun to happen. Things blow up constantly. Characters are constantly conceiving of bizarre contraptions. There’s real impact and energy to everything and the seamless interactions between the actors and animation is impressive.

It also helps that most of the classic Looney Tunes characters show up in peak form. To borrow a phrase from Willems, it’s a fools errand to try and stretch a short comedy sketch of Sisyphean absurdity into a feature length film. Thankfully, the cartoons don’t outstay their welcome. A few of them have to be warped into more serious characters for the sake of the plot, but Bugs, Daffy, Porky, and the gang mostly get used appropriately. It avoids the pitfalls of overly domesticating these characters, even as it tries to stretch and unpack them in the context of a film. Wile E. even gets a nominal character deconstruction that slightly unpacks his motivations and archetype, turning into a bizarre morality tale for the human characters about never giving up in the face of impossible odds.

As with last year’s film, I cannot help but admit to being biased in its favor. Even if I had severe reservations about the movie, it would be hard to air them because this should feel like a celebratory moment. This is the big corporation losing a battle. And yet, I saw it in a tiny back-room theater of an AMC. Clearly, nobody is expecting this to do well at the box office. All I can say to that is my theater ate up Coyote vs. ACME. The folks around me were cackling the entire runtime. I hope it earns enough to prove Warner Bros. wrong, even if strong word of mouth is the only thing that can save it.