It’s quite funny that Dave Green‘s sweet and smart — and previously embattled — “Coyote vs. Acme” is about a scrappy group of underdogs (and undercartoons) taking on deep-pocketed baddies who don’t care about actual quality so much as lots of money. Well, it’s funny when you remember said embattlement, as the live-action Looney Tunes movie was previously made by the Tunes’ forever home, Warner Bros., before being unceremoniously dumped for a tax write-off and eventually saved by Ketchup Entertainment, who are finally releasing it after this years-long mishegoss. It’s just funny! Ironic, really!
But, frankly, it’s also a bit sad, because the truth is: the film is good. Clever and snappy, fresh and silly, a winning combination of classic Looney Tunes gags and contemporary concerns (the press notes mention many influences including, no joke, “The Insider”). That Warner Bros. didn’t believe in this is downright depressing, and that it didn’t occur to the book-cooking brass that its very plotline would inevitably draw all kinds of awkward comparisons is even worse. Fortunately, Green’s film exists — and was not thrown into a little black hole by a bunch of accountants, never to be seen again — and can surely help cure any of the pain its backstory still inflicts on movie fans and Tunes geeks.
Based partially on a New Yorker article from 1990 (a satirical one, it’s important to note, mostly because I heard someone say something about the credit at the conclusion of my screening in just such a way that it made me think they believed it was, like, a legal longread?) and scripted by Samy Burch (with story-by credits to, and this is important to note, current WB muckety muck James Gunn and “Fantastic Four” writer Jeremy Slater), the film’s logline is right there in the title. Imagine if Wile E. Coyote, sick to death of never catching his precious Road Runner because the Acme products he used to capture the fleet-footed feathered fowl are so wildly unreliable, sued their maker. Genius.
The film opens in 1992, when Dr. Peter Lorre (a classic Looney Tunes character, iconically modeled off the actual Peter Lorre), here rendered a bit of a sweet soul, attempts some sort of jailbreak from the obviously evil Acme factory where he works. (Many of the human characters in the film are named after key Looney Tunes luminaries, just look at the law firm of Avery, Jones, and Maltese.) The good doctor’s escape doesn’t go so well, but it does release into the world a box of clues that, of course, will turn up much later.
Thirty years later, in fact! That’s when we catch up with Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, zipping their way around the American Southwest in a perpetual game of cat and mouse. Er, coyote and road runner. Coyote’s plans to capture and kill his bird nemesis have never worked out (the film occasionally adds in vintage Looney Tunes footage, always welcome), and it’s really wearing on him. He’s kind of, well, he’s kind of sad! And for a role that doesn’t speak (he communicates via sign and facial expression), that kind of pathos is hard won. A new plan takes shape: he’ll sue Acme.
Coyote is influenced by the siren song of veritable ambulance-chasing lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte, being characteristically very funny and exceedingly hangdog), who specializes in small claims against Acme. More like small potatoes. Kevin, who we later learn went to Harvard Law and is thus no slouch, has given up on really striving in his career. Trying and failing? Not for him! Not trying and thus not failing? Sounds good! As such, most of Kevin’s cases (which he picks up via bad commercials and worse billboards, “Better Call Saul” fans will surely love that the film is set in Albuquerque, apparently a haven for cheapo lawyers) are the kind he settles well before trial. Acme? They love to fork over peanuts for claims against their shoddy products.
But Wile E. Coyote doesn’t want peanuts.
His quest, which may have some ulterior motivations, sends Kevin, his niece Paige (Lana Condor), and the rest of the firm on a collision course with Big Acme, including its very big lead attorney, Buddy Crane (a committed John Cena). Along the way, Coyote, Kevin, and Paige follow a dizzying number of clues, the kind that inevitably add beloved icons like Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Elmer Fuud, Foghorn Leghorn, Sylvester the Cat, and more into the fray. Just guess who turns up at a local carrot festival.
The film’s mix of live-action and animated action is quite sophisticated — puppeteer Dave Barclay played Wile E. Coyote on set in specially made costumes that included interchangeable limbs and facial expressions, while the other ‘toons are a mix of 2D and 3D animation — and help sell a world in which humans and cartoons live alongside each other. (No, the rules of the world are not ever really explained, and perpetual reminders that cartoons can’t feel pain is undercut by the very real consequences their antics cause the human and ‘toon world.)
Seeing the Tunes out in the world is, however, a delight, one that doesn’t wear out its welcome (more, we demand). Little sight gags occur in the live-action world too, including costuming choices that see Cena’s character sporting giant bolo ties and P.J. Byrne’s sycophantic hanger-on wearing just slightly smaller versions, and it’s always fun to watch Kevin fall victim to Coyote’s many hare-brained schemes. The details of how this all melds might be fuzzy, but the final product is not.
The eventual bridging of Dr. Lorre’s fate and what Coyote and Kevin are fighting for does get a bit muddled, and the film’s final act falters in ways that only highlight how zippy (meep meep) its first hour is, but “Coyote vs. Acme” mostly works, and works well. It’s not just deserving of being not shelved for eye-rolling financial reasons, but seen and really appreciated. In the case of Hollywood’s wacky war on original ideas, we’re all lucky this one didn’t just accept “that’s all, folks!” as a fate, instead of taking it for the kind of challenge only the wiliest of characters could win.
Grade: B
Ketchup Entertainment will release “Coyote vs. Acme” in theaters on Friday, August 28.
