It’s not that high of praise to say COYOTE VS. ACME is the best Looney Tunes movie. So how about the only Looney Tunes movie they should make?

I mean I think SPACE JAM is kind of funny, they’re not all DAFFY DUCK’S MOVIE: FANTASY ISLAND, but these characters were made for shorts. The feature length HOW THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE really couldn’t match the energy of the brilliant show by the same people, and it’s even worse when they pretend all these characters are friends and have them standing around together like The Muppets. But this new one is different. Instead of setting out to come up with a new Bugs Bunny movie or whatever it comes from a 1990 New Yorker article by Ian Frazier about what would happen if Wile E. Coyote tried to sue the Acme Corporation over all the defective products he’s bought from them.

It’s a rock solid concept combining the joke conventions of the Road Runner cartoons with the format of a court room thriller, or an ERIN BROCKOVICH type whistleblower drama. I knew the idea going in but I still got such a good, deep laugh from the way it’s laid out: Wile E. (as everyone calls him), fresh from another day of catastrophically failing to catch the Road Runner using various contraptions, returns to his cave, where an ad on the TV catches his attention. The questionable attorney Kevin Avery (Will Forte, LIFE OF CRIME), who specializes in cartoon law, is asking if you’ve ever experienced things like pushing a detonator but the detonator blows up, or pulling a ripcord and only silverware comes out – things we see in flashes of classic Wile E. Coyote shorts. If so, you could be entitled to compensation.

The trouble is Kevin isn’t ready for a case like Wile E.’s. He believes he can quickly settle for $300 over faulty rocket skates, but Wile E. – who communicates through gestures and “a limited number” of signs – has a literal mountain of other failed Acme products. When, to Kevin’s horror, the petition goes to Acme’s intimidating head counsel Buddy Crane (John Cena, 12 ROUNDS), he’s offered what would be his biggest settlement ever… but Wile E. literally tears it up and sets it on fire.

So, with the help of his idealistic niece/intern Paige (Lana Condor, Jubilee in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE) and his partners Dottie Jones (Martha Kelly – As soon as I heard her voice I knew this had to be that cop on Common Side Effects who sounds like Tig Notaro) and Sal Maltese (Tone Bell, TRIGGER WARNING), Kevin has to work the case for real, and actually have a trial.

It was funny watching this so soon after A TIME TO KILL. Made me wish it was set in the south with everybody sweaty all the time. There were some parts where Paige had to sneak off to follow some lead that did remind me of the Sandra Bullock character. Kevin starts out seeming inept, then slowly gets his footing as he starts to believe more in the case and in himself. He he has to deal with the tough Judge Troppogrosso (Luis Guzmán, HAVOC) but also things like his client trying to bring explosives into the court, and Acme forcing Tweety to do dirty deeds for them by threatening Granny.

The way they work in other Looney Tunes characters is all very smart. Limited Daffy and Porky (who recently starred in THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP), Foghorn Leghorn as asshole CEO of Acme (would also be in the KKK if this was more like A TIME TO KILL), Elmer Fudd as a risible senator, very funny references to the two most problematic characters, and I just loved the idea of a mysterious Deep Throat type informer on the phone who to them is an anonymous whistleblower but to us is clearly Bugs Bunny.

The tone is just right – so many jokes, both verbal and visual, most of them hits by my measure, but the cast all have the discipline to play it seriously, even Cena. I usually like him and I know he leveled up doing Peacemaker but he hasn’t always worked as a straight man. Here he gets the funniest dialogue in the movie (dressing down Tweety) and delivers it to perfection. More importantly, Forte is obviously he’s very funny and gets laughs right away but he plays his gradual slide into caring very sincerely and got me invested than I would think possible.

Wile E. Coyote was always my favorite Looney Tune. Making him the underdog (not a pun) protagonist was a risk, but I think it works. It requires stretching the character a little, but not as much as it seems at first – there are some funny twists that I think are in character. Eventually you’re asked to care about him, but the context of this ask is so funny I didn’t have a problem with it. I approve his portrayal. #YesMyWileE

I can be an animation nitpicker, so in that spirit I must note that most of the animation here is done with 3D models mimicking drawings, rather than actual drawings, even though it would fit the premise better for them to look traditional. I know that Richard Williams, who directed the old school hand drawn animation for WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, was a one-of-a-kind genius the likes of which no longer exist, but it makes me sad that almost 40 years of technological advances have, rather than making it easier to do something like that again, made it so that no one will ever even try. Kind of fucked up on that one, technology. That said, most of it looks good and definitely better than CHIP ’N DALE: RESCUE RANGERS, which I also liked but had the same complaint about.

(My main issue is that Elmer Fudd looks weird. But I forgive it.)

Eric Bauzman, who voiced Daffy and Porky in THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP, plays pretty much all of the Looney Tunes here, except Candi Milo (COOL WORLD) plays the women and Jim Cummings the Tasmanian Devil.

James Gunn (credited as producer) was the one who sold WB on the New Yorker article after previous option-holders had failed. The script is credited to Samy Burch (MAY DECEMBER), story credit to Gunn, first-draft-writer Jeremy Slater (MORTAL KOMBAT II), and Burch. Director Dave Green’s previous films are EARTH TO ECHO (which I haven’t seen) and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS (which I was surprised to like quite a bit).

And it’s very important that I note that cinematographer Brandon Trost previously shot Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN II, MACGRUBER, and of course David DeFalco’s CHAOS. So obviously he does a good job here. He’s a professional.

There’s a danger of expecting too much from COYOTE VS. ACME, given its bizarre history of infamous fuckface CEO Foghorn Leghorn David Zaslav planning to delete it as a tax write-off until months of backlash shamed him into selling it to another company still active in the film distribution business. (Adil & Bilall’s BATGIRL and SCOOB! HOLIDAY HAUNT weren’t so lucky.) Obviously it was worth the fuss just on principle, but now that I’ve seen it I believe COYOTE VS. ACME specifically was worth fighting for. At the same time, I want to emphasize that it’s just a little partly animated comedy, clever but modest. Maybe the best movie like ROGER RABBIT, but definitely no ROGER RABBIT. Just a good afternoon that I’m glad I got to see big with a bunch of other laughing people. I don’t want to promise more than that.

Except… I was surprised to be a little moved by this movie. It’s very casually a movie for our times, reflecting so many of the frustrations we’re all feeling in a surprisingly accurate way. Plenty of other movies have an evil, monolithic corporation that seems to make everything and run everything and openly exploit everyone. But there’s something more specifically 2020s about the way this one doesn’t even pretend to give a shit about making good products. They actually don’t want them to work, as part of their business model. And they’ll pay a settlement because it’s nothing or they’ll terrorize you in court because you have nothing. The judge is biased toward the corporation, the news reports are biased toward the corporation, the trial is a joke, the senate are all corrupt idiots with no interest in truth or justice or helping their constituents, so the hearing is also a joke. The system is corrupt and broken from top to bottom with no recourse.

And the movie doesn’t even pretend we can win, exactly. But it sees Wile E. Coyote’s endless attempts to catch the Road Runner as a model for never giving up. He gets burnt to a crisp, or to a pair of eyeballs, he plummets from great heights, smashes through rock, gets flattened by trains and boulders, but every time in the very next scene he’s no longer disheartened, he’s moved on and he’s trying his next idea. We use Charlie Brown trying to kick that football to represent falling for the same shit over and over again, but why not take inspiration from this one? Why not admire his stubborn tenacity? It’s just stupid enough to be beautiful.