John Cena, Will Forte and Lana Condor lead Coyote Vs Acme, and it’s a minor miracle the film still exists. But is it actually any good? There’s a danger with Coyote Vs Acme, in willing it to be better than it actually is. Given the torrid journey it’s endured to the screen, which I’m coming ... Coyote Vs Acme review | The movie they tried to bury
John Cena, Will Forte and Lana Condor lead Coyote Vs Acme, and it’s a minor miracle the film still exists. But is it actually any good?
There’s a danger with Coyote Vs Acme, in willing it to be better than it actually is. Given the torrid journey it’s endured to the screen, which I’m coming to, it’s hard not to root for it, and it’s hard to put that aside when finally writing my thoughts on the film. I’ve tried to be a model professional here: I’ve watched the film twice, and sat on my thoughts for a fortnight or so.
But nope, I can’t help it: I loved it.
Necessary backstory: Coyote Vs Acme, as some of you know, nearly didn’t exist. Never mind that Warner Bros stumped up $70m or so to make the film, it then seriously pondered (and it has form here) simply deleting it and taking a tax write-off instead. By some miracle, it escaped this fate, found another buyer, and years after they actually shot the live action footage, we get to see whether it’s worth it.
The concept has a bit of Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers and The Brady Bunch Movie about it. That something fictional and of its time moves into the contemporary present day. Sod it, I’ll throw a soupcon of The Muppets into the mix as well.
In this case, as seasoned fans of short cartoons will be well aware of, for decades, Wile E Coyote has been trying to stop the fast-moving Road Runner. He’s been a regular customer of the Acme Corporation, using its many traps and devices to try and secure said bird. Things, inevitably, haven’t gone to plan.
The concept sitting underneath Coyote Vs Acme then – and it actually goes all the way back to a magazine article at the start of the 1990s – is what would happen if Wile E Coyote got fed up, and decided to sue Acme for its incompetence?
It’s a clever hook, and Samy Burch’s screenplay expands it, to bring in Will Forte as a down and out no win, no fee lawyer by the name of Kevin Avery. Avery is straight out of a John Grisham novel: when we meet him, he’s quick to settle his cases, he wants the shortest route to a small payday, and is struggling to keep his tiny law office going.
The Venn diagram is thus: the Looney Tunes cartoons of old, the idea of mixing them into a modern live action world, and a John Grisham legal thriller to give the story a spine.
Remarkably, it doesn’t just work. It works exceptionally well.
There’s a real reverence and appreciation for the cartoons right from the off, not least when we see a selection of classic encounters near the beginning that help set the scene for those new to the characters and format. Furthermore, we see Wile E Coyote in live action/animation world, still struggling to catch the Road Runner.
It’s very funny, very quickly.
What’s both ironic and striking is – and I’d imagine every review you read of the film will make note of this – how the film’s narrative ties into its treatment by its previous owners. That Coyote Vs Acme opens up into a story of what lengths a corporate monolith will go to in order to suppress some of its decision making.
I’m watching it both wondering how it got greenlit in the first place, and whether anyone in the Warner Bros boardroom quite understood just how its actions were reflected in the film. Or cared.
Specific to the film though, it’s ridiculously entertaining. There’s Lana Condor and Will Forte as the Davids, John Cena as the corporate bastard Goliath, and a whole bunch of cameos from the Looney Tunes world (along with sly asides in the dialogue) making for a rich cocktail, and the tonal line it walks is particularly impressive.
It plays the core film straight, letting dialogue and situation earn the laughs, rather than mugging for the camera. Plus, the slapstick element is superb. Characters too play by the rules: in lieu of being able to talk, Wile E Coyote has a tremendous line in comedy signs, and the movie has a lot of fun with them.
Visually, the integration of the live action and animated worlds is something we’re pretty used to since Who Framed Roger Rabbit did the groundwork in the late 1980s. What’s interesting is how many characters naturally work on screen, how well the 2D animation sits within it, and how it feels so alive. Cameos aside, the background characters are on the same treadmill as the rest of us. It’s a film that’s on our side.
Dave Green is the director here, and while I’ve enjoyed some of his work previously, I’d not seen quite the diligent hand for comedy he’s displaying here. I guess I could get a teeny bit picky about the staging of some of the courtroom stuff towards the back end of the film, but even then, the gag rate is constant, the hit rate not far behind.
It’s such an inventive film, this, clearly made and bursting with heart. But fundamentally, as a sheer piece of entertainment, aside from all the corporate shenanigans, it’s by distance the funniest film I’ve seen all year. It won’t outgross, or come close to outgrossing, something like Toy Story 5. But I do wonder if one or two of the people involved in something like that end up watching a movie as sly, subversive, funny and broadly entertaining as Coyote Vs Acme, and get a teeny bit jealous.
See it, then, for two reasons. One: it’s terrific. Two: because I fear the only language billionaire companies ultimately understand is hard cash.
This deserves to be a raging success.
