No movie is released into a vacuum, and while the circumstances surrounding “Coyote vs. Acme” have nothing to do with its quality, I can’t think of a more satisfying in-your-face move than watching and laughing at Dave Green’s cartoon/live-action comedy in a theater.
Happily, that isn’t a chore, as the movie is funny and worth seeing — with the inclusion of some of the all-time Wile E. Coyote fails, it has to be. We’ll get to the dim-bulb behind-the-scenes drama in a minute. But first, a word about comedy.
I can’t prove this, but I’ve always thought that your sense of humor is formed when you’re little, and you spend the rest of your life laughing at things that remind you of that initial thrill.
Bugs Bunny and Road Runner shaped my sense of humor
For instance, I learned to read in part by studying
my grandmother’s Charles Addams cartoon compilations. (Addams was a New Yorker cartoonist whose creepy family inspired the “Addams Family” TV show and movies.) I’ve loved dark humor ever since.
The other big influence for me was the Looney Tunes gang, Bugs Bunny and his friends. I watched “The Bugs Bunny Show,” a collection of Warner Bros. cartoons, every Saturday morning for years. Millions of people my age did. I can still sing the theme song (“Overture, curtain, lights/This is it, the night of nights”), a source of mild annoyance to anyone around me when I decide to belt it out. And nothing makes me laugh like my favorite character of them all, Daffy Duck.
Honestly, not having a working familiarity with the Looney Tunes cartoons to me is the same pop-culture deficit as never having read “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or “The Great Gatsby.”
Why was 'Coyote vs. Acme' delayed?
So of course I was excited by the thought of Warner Bros. making “Coyote vs. Acme,” and not just because I love the cartoons so much. I was also thrilled because it’s based on Ian Frazier’s brilliant story of the same name that ran in The New Yorker in 1992. As the title suggests, Wile E. Coyote, always chasing but never catching the Road Runner, sues Acme Inc. for selling him all of the defective gadgets he’s used to try to catch his nemesis over the years.
Among the story’s delights: “Such injuries sustained by Mr. Coyote have temporarily restricted his ability to make a living in his profession of predator. Mr. Coyote is self-employed and thus not eligible for Workmen’s Compensation.”
The thrill turned to disgust when a debt-riddled Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it wouldn’t release the movie and would instead use it as a tax write-off, along with “Batgirl” and “Scoob! Holiday Haunt.” But “Coyote vs. Acme,” unlike the other movies, was finished, just awaiting release.
The art vs. commerce debate is rarely this well-defined.
The resulting outcry ended only when Ketchup Entertainment announced it would release the movie. Thank goodness. Think of it as a victory for the good guys. And think of "Coyote vs. Acme" as a movie that will make you laugh and, if you squint just a little, serve as a pretty spot-on metaphor for the little guy standing up to authority.
What is 'Coyote vs. Acme' about?
The film begins with a chase scene that's both a callback to the glory days of animation and an important clue to where it's leading. Then it's on to a kind of greatest hits (or tragedies, depending on your perspective), with Wile E. Coyote failing miserably in his painful attempts to catch the Road Runner. (Another gem from Frazier's story: "Repetition of blows along a vertical axis produced a series of regular horizontal folds in Mr. Coyote’s body tissues — a rare and painful condition which caused Mr. Coyote to expand upward and contract downward alternately as he walked, and to emit an off-key, accordion-like wheezing with every step. The distracting and embarrassing nature of this symptom has been a major impediment to Mr. Coyote’s pursuit of a normal social life.")
He's finally had enough, so he responds to a billboard ad for the law firm of Avery, Jones and Maltese (a nod to the great animators Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese). The sad-sack Kevin Avery (Will Forte) is a long way from his Harvard Law School days. He's seen lawsuits like the one the coyote wants to bring ― in fact, he's settled them, for pittances. There's no fighting Acme, now an industrial titan that makes seemingly everything, and its lead counsel, Buddy Crane (John Cena), a law-school classmate of Kevin's whose career has gone in a decidedly different direction.
His niece Paige (Lana Condor), a recent law-school graduate, wants to take up the case, but Kevin accepts failure as his lot in life. You simply can't beat the system, so why try? But the coyote's willingness to get blown up, squashed or repeatedly fall hundreds of feet to the desert floor, only to brush himself off and keep trying, proves to be too inspirational to ignore.
The real-life parallels are obvious, and maybe inspiring
Hmm. See any real-life parallels here? Fighting the good fight against overwhelming odds? Yeah, I see it, too. What's more, while it's noted several times that no real harm comes to the cartoons who are injured by Acme's products, it creates a caste system in which they are by default treated like second-class citizens. As for Acme, could there be even more nefarious reasons its products don't work?
All of this is set in a "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"-like universe, in which cartoons live in the real world. So when Wile E. Coyote and Acme wind up in a Senate hearing, of course it's chaired by Sen. Elmer Fudd. When the case is in court, naturally the judge (Luis Guzmán, perfect) must choose between his real-life gavel and his oversized cartoon one. And when Kevin and Paige find Daffy Duck, well, he is now living up to his name.
Daffy, Bugs and plenty of other beloved cartoons make appearances; Foghorn Leghorn is even a blowhard Acme boss. (There is also a great, instant dismissal of serial harasser Pepé Le Pew.) It's a blast from the past updated to reflect the contemporary world.
If you grew up loving these characters, it's also a coping mechanism. I'm sure first-grade me, sitting on my grandmother's couch watching Wile E. Coyote slam into a canyon wall, believed I had problems. The Looney Tunes gang helped, if not solve them, at least alleviate them for a time.
"Coyote vs. Acme" suffers from some spotty plotting and chases its own tail a little bit, but it has the same effect. It's a reminder that yes, sometimes you fall off a cliff, let's say, or a huge corporation threatens an artistic achievement to enrich itself. But like the coyote, you keep fighting anyway. Beep-beep.
'Coyote vs. Acme' 4 stars
Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★
Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★
Director: Dave Green.
Cast: Will Forte, John Cena, Lana Condor.
Rating: PG for cartoon violence and some language.
How to watch: In theaters Friday, Aug. 28.
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Media commentary with a side of snark? Sign up for The Watchlist newsletter with Bill Goodykoontz.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Coyote vs. Acme' is a victory for the little guy, in more ways than one
