Coyote vs. Acme

The buried, recovered and released Warner Bros film Coyote vs. Acme is good. The only questions that remain are: How good is it really? And how did this happen, that a movie studio turned out a good movie in 2022! (There's not really a question of how they managed to botch the release and delay it four years. We expect as much.) I can't answer the latter question.

The first question—how good is it really?—is the more interesting one anyway.

The plot is simple: Kevin Avery (Will Forte) is a bargain basement lawyer who represents cartoons who suffer at the hands of the evil Acme corporations sub-standard products. Repeated rocket-skates failures for example work out to $150-$300 a pop. When Wile E. Coyote comes in as a "high volume user" with every product Acme has to offer having backfired on him, Kevin wants to brush him off with a $300 check he knows he can get.

But Wile E. doesn't call himself a super-genius for nothing, and with a little assist from Kevin's niece Paige (Lana Condor) he manages to exploit Avery's laziness and get his whole case in front of a judge (Luis Guzmán). Meanwhile, Acme (which is run by Foghorn Leghorn, I say, run by Foghorn Leghorn!) is involved in dark conspiracy that required them to drop their chief scientist, Dr. Peter Lorre (literally the actor in Looney Toons form, which all fans will recognize) into an Acme Instant Hole.

Their main lawyer Buddy Crane (John Cena) is also their heavy when it comes to operations, and anyone who crosses Acme ends up under an anvil. The jokes fly fast and furious, so they don't all have to land with both feet, and there's no awkward "pause for audience laughter"—and a whole bunch of them land. More if you're a fan of old-time Warner Bros cartoons—I can't imagine how many Easter eggs are in this thing, but some of my favorites:

• In the background a news story about a mouse in Guadalajara breaking the sound barrier.
• A predator-repellent spray which is tested on Pepe Le Pew
• The fact that the whole thing takes place in Albuquerque, where Bugs always got lost

I'm so steeped in this stuff (or was as a kid) that I objected to the local carrot festival. The festival was in the Coachella Valley. Bugs made the wrong turn at Albuquerque. (And ended up in a bullfighting ring that's a mashup of Spain and Mexico.)

So, that's the story, and the movie knows the absurdity of the whole premise because, as Foghorn points out at one point, we all think it's kind of funny when gadgets blow up in cartoon characters' faces. And it is! Wile E. exists to catch the Road Runner, and the movie handles this in a way that is both funny and dramatically satisfying.

Yeah, I'm not joking. Given that the whole raison d'être of the Coyote is to catch the Road Runner and fail, he can't meaningfully be the victim of Acme's shenanigans. This is a high-wire act on a par with classic Pixar concepts. ("If the toys are conscious and immortal, what does this mean about how they're treated?") But they pull it off. The movie manages to make the Coyote sympathetic and identifiable without changing his basic character.

Among the choices made that raise the quality:

• The Coyote is silent. Wile E. spoke in his encounters with Bugs Bunny over five cartoons, but not adding his wonderfully supercilious voice makes him more sympathetic and allows for good jokes involving signs
• The human actors play it straight. While not as dour as Bob Hoskins, there's no winking at the camera
• The animated characters are in on the joke—I think Bugs may literally wink at the camera at one point
• The essential nature of the design is retained, emphasizing Chuck Jones' style, which is excellent for the comedy/pathos blend needed
• The cartoons are not really made 3D. The Boy and I disagreed somewhat on this, with him preferring the more shadowy/massy style in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I don't think that would've worked well here
• This movie is earnest but never real

The last point is critical. Everybody is playing their hearts out, but we never get into any horror shows like Judge Doom's "dip" murdering a cute little shoe cartoon.

And this brings us to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I've run hot-and-cold on the movie over the years, but it is undeniably a masterpiece of technology and film making. (I'm not sure I've ever crystallized my objections to it, honestly. I'm pretty confident it's superior to the book.) Nearly forty years later, the blend of animation and reality is still the gold standard.

To paraphrase The Boy: It turns out when you're the most talented guys in the industry and you have unlimited funds to use the greatest and most skilled guys from a pool of the most highly skilled guys in history, you can make a darn good movie.

I wouldn't say I like this movie better, but there are aspects of it I absolutely do. In particular, you could take kids to see it. Besides not having any real horror—though there is a pretty scary scene when Wile E. paints a tunnel on a wall—there are no sexual overtones either.  There isn't any real seediness, beyond the whole "giving up on your dreams" thing, where Will Forte's firm is like something out of a FedEx commercial from the '80s.

As for "giving up on your dreams," this film has a message which is: Never give up on your dreams, no matter how stupid, futile or possibly evil they might be. The trying is the point.

Its own satirical self-reference makes this work remarkably well.

Dave Green (director) doesn't have the greatest track record as far as movie ratings go. His big previous works were the nearly successful 2016 Ninja Turtles movie and the modest hit (but poorly reviewed) Earth to Echo. But he stuck to Chuck Jones' rules for the Coyote here, and nailed a near-impossible tone. Hopefully this bodes well for future films.

Samy Burch is credited with the screenplay, which she worked on with more seasoned writers (James Gunn and Jeremy Slater)—seasoned but also more checkered, as it were. I'll be interested to see what's next for her.

The acting is spot on. Cena is menacing, Forte is pathetic, Condor is spunky. 

I'm walking away from this marveling that it works, and happy it does so.

There is one non-Looney Toons character in the film. (I'm such a nerd I found this character's presence somewhat jarring.) But it was inserted as a tribute to Tex Avery (which I think is nice), and also because Warner Bros acquired this rival company's animation library a few years back. And it's for a good gag.