So I watched 'Coyote vs. Acme' and...

Wile E. Coyote and Will Forte team up in Coyote vs. Acme.

A long road to the big screen.

It's not often I review recent movies on this blog. Then again, it's rare that I actually watch any film made in this century. Or this millennium, come to think of it. It's not that I'm against current movies; I just have so much old stuff to review that I don't get around to the new stuff that much.

I made an exception for Dave Green's Coyote vs. Acme (2026), the long-delayed feature film that Warner Bros. shelved for tax purposes several years ago, now finally released through the intercession of a company called Ketchup Entertainment. If you're reading this blog, you probably don't need me to explain what this movie is. You already know the characters and the basic plot. Like me, you grew up with Looney Tunes and its cadre of wacky animated characters: Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. You're probably also familiar with the fictional Acme Corporation and its wide variety of faulty products.

So what did I think of Coyote vs. Acme? Short answer: I liked it. It's inventive, amusing, and well-made, and an elaborate tribute to the cartoons I loved in my youth. I recommend it unreservedly to Looney Tunes fanatics, especially those who also happen to be fans of actor and comedian Will Forte. In the past, Will has demonstrated his range on such shows as Saturday Night Live, The Great North, and The Last Man on Earth, plus such feature films as MacGruber (2010) and Nebraska (2014). If you've witnessed Mr. Forte at work, you likely do not need to be sold on his talents.

Do I have anything of particular value to say about Coyote vs. Acme? Any special insight to bring to this material? Well...

I suppose what surprised me the most is that Coyote vs. Acme takes its namesake court case as seriously as it does. This is nearly as much a legal movie as it is a Looney Tunes movie. I'm sure, in the coming weeks and months, actual lawyers will be weighing in with their opinions of the plot. As you've seen in the trailers and commercials, the always-frustrated Wile E. Coyote (who is voiceless and communicates largely through handheld signs) has had it with the poor quality of Acme's dangerous merchandise and decides to sue the seemingly omnipotent, omnipresent corporate behemoth. I should probably explain that this movie combines animation and live action footage and depicts a universe where humans and cartoons live side-by-side, a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988).

The villains: Cena and Leghorn.

After seeing a dubious, low-budget TV commercial, Wile chooses as his legal representative one Kevin Avery (Forte), a down-on-his-luck lawyer who specializes in settling out of court for small amounts. With no trial experience, Kevin is totally unprepared to take on Acme's smug super-lawyer, the bolo-tie-wearing Buddy Crane (John Cena). It seems Kevin and Buddy have a lopsided rivalry that goes back to their law school days. While Buddy soared to the top of his profession, Kevin became the kind of bottom-drawer legal hack who advertises on billboards by the highway.

By now, you probably see where this is going. At first, Kevin feels unequipped to challenge Acme and frequently threatens to give up, but he's encouraged to go on by his plucky, industrious intern Paige (Lana Condor). Throughout the movie, she serves as the Penny to his Inspector Gadget. They gather evidence and interview witnesses (including such Looney Tunes stars as Daffy Duck and Granny), eventually discovering a vast conspiracy. But those rotten bad guys at Acme keep trying dirty tricks to throw them off the trail and scare them away from the case. Along the way, Kevin and Wile develop a begrudging, unlikely friendship. Naturally, they have a falling out roughly two-thirds of the way through the story, but they patch things up just in time for the big, heartwarming finale. As you knew they would.

The movie truly commits to the gimmick of Wile E. Coyote being mute. Numerous jokes and even some emotional beats are conveyed by those signs of his. I understand why the movie chose this path, but I would have opted to have the character speak. As we know from several Looney Tunes shorts, Wile is fully capable of speech and, in fact, is an eloquent and sophisticated gentleman, a clear predecessor to Sideshow Bob (Kelsey Grammer) of The Simpsons. I suggest that having Wile speak in this movie would have allowed us to get to know the character better and make him more sympathetic. Sacrificing some of the sign jokes would not have been a great comedic loss.

Other random observations:

• At first, I wondered why the film made a point of establishing that Paige was Kevin's niece, since this added nothing of great interest to the story. But now, I realize it's so that there wouldn't be even a hint of a romantic relationship between them. This script already had enough on its plate without having to deal with an office romance. Well played, movie.

• Comedically, this film has one main idea that it returns to again and again: what if we took the absurd catastrophes of the Looney Tunes cartoons and treated them with some degree of straight-faced seriousness, as if they had real-world consequences—physical, emotional, psychological, and legal? Writer Ian Frazier turned this idea into a New Yorker piece back in 1990. This premise can certainly sustain a single magazine article, but can it sustain an entire movie? That's up to the individual viewer to decide.

• While Bugs and Daffy (both voiced by Eric Bauza) are reduced to splashy cameos, the film gives a central role to Foghorn Leghorn (also Bauza), who is now the brash, back-slapping owner of the entire Acme corporation, the capo di tutti capi. (How did this never come up in his previous screen appearances, which were mostly set in a barnyard?) While I loved getting this much Foghorn in a movie, I wasn't entirely comfortable with him being a heartless, scheming villain who sells out his own cartoon kind.

• Similarly, while I was glad to see that Peter Lorre (Bauza again) was a major part of this story, I had trouble buying him as a hero. Characters based on Lorre were often seen in the original Looney Tunes, but they were portrayed as sinister creeps and weirdos. A prime example is Birth of a Notion (1947), where a Lorre-esque mad scientist (voiced by Stan Freberg) tries to extract Daffy Duck's wishbone for one of his wicked experiments. And now, in Coyote vs. Acme, Lorre is not only one of the good guys but actually married to Granny (Candy Milo)?! Not in this lifetime.

• Among the human performers, the unsung hero is character actor P.J. Byrne, who plays John Cena's eager-to-please sidekick. He's subtly giving one of the funniest performances in the entire movie and deserves praise. And it's always a treat to see deadpan comedian Martha Kelly (whom I know mostly from Baskets and The Great North) in any movie or TV show. Martha can really only hit one note as an actress, but damn can she hit it!

Okay, it's time to draw some conclusions and bring this thing to a halt. Let's do a little math. The average runtime of a classic Looney Tunes cartoon is seven minutes. The official runtime of Coyote vs. Acme is one hour and 41 minutes. It is simply not possible to sustain the manic energy level of a short cartoon over the course of an entire feature-length film. Hence the film's many serious scenes. 

But just how seriously are we supposed to take all this stuff? Do the filmmakers really want us to care about Wile E. Coyote? More importantly, can the Looney Tunes characters actually tell an emotionally-affecting story? I'm not so sure. For some reason, I'm willing to let the Muppets get emotional and heartwarming, but I balk (somewhat) at letting Bugs and his pals do the same. Not sure why. Maybe the fault is with me.