If you’re just joining this story in progress, Looney Tunes cartoons have been the bedrock of Warner Bros. since 1930– almost the entirety of the studio’s life.
Generation after generation grew up with Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, dozens more characters including the Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote.
Looney Tunes features scored 12 Oscar nominations between 1944 and 1963. Then they all went to television, cementing themselves in American culture.
In 2018, Warner’s began developing “Coyote vs. Acme” based on a story in The New Yorker by Ian Frazier. The premise was ingenious: After decades the Coyote would sue Acme, the company that had sold him all the weapons he’d used in his futile pursuit of the Roadrunner. The movie became like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” a mixture of live action and animation.
But when Warner’s new owner, David Zaslav, saw the movie, he shelved it. The newest Warner’s regime said it would never be released. There was outrage, so Warner’s sold the $70 million “Coyote v. Acme” off to the very, very small distributor Ketchup Entertainment for a hefty $50 million. The studio figured the movie would blow up in Ketchup’s face, and endure the same fate as the Coyote.
Now, however, we’ve got a problem. “Coyote v. Acme,” directed by Dave Green, is indeed going to explode when it’s released on August 28th — but in a very good way. The movie, starring Will Forte as Coyote’s lawyer, is sheer genius. It’s a nonstop pleasure machine, catnip for baby boomers and everyone else. It’s so clever and winning that “Coyote v. Acme” is probably going to be very, very big box office.
Warner Bros. looks, well, ridiculous. Already, with 60 reviews filed, “Coyote vs. Acme” has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. If this review can get it up to 98%, I’ll be very happy.
There’s no doubt that “Coyote vs. Acme” will be an Oscar nominee for animation. The big question will be whether the Coyote will try for lead or supporting in awards races. Probably lead. Roadrunner will go into supporting. Bugs Bunny, who’s featured, will be getting a lot of attention.
The film is certainly the descendant of “Roger Rabbit,” directed by Robert Zemeckis, and a great success in 1988. No one had seen anything like it before, a celebration of nostalgia and technology that played to adults and children at the same time.
Almost thirty years later, “Coyote v. Acme” hits all the same notes, with even more sophisticated animation and a super clever script from Samy Burch (an unexpected choice) based on a story by James Gunn and Jeremy Slater. The nostalgia value is very high. Who doesn’t know these characters? But at the same time, it’s an exploration of friendships — between the Coyote and his human lawyer, Kevin, and ultimately the long running mutual dependency between Coyote and Roadrunner. They don’t exist without each other.
This seems like a simple idea, but it’s handled here with exquisite finesse. So many times “C vs A” could have gone wrong, and collapsed into e heap. But right away Burch signals everything will be great when she introduces “Dr. Lorre” — the legacy cartoon version of legendary 40s and 50s movie star Peter Lorre — as the man behind the curtain. Once you see him — Lorre was parodied often in the old Looney Tunes — you know we’re in, all will be ok.
(Lorre is voice by multi-faced Jeff Bergman, the real star of the film, who also gives life to Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, and Yosemite Sam.(
The human cast is nearly as good as the cartoons. Like Bob Hoskins in “Roger Rabbit,” Forte as Kevin is the perfect straight-faced hero who takes Coyote’s case seriously. His assistant and niece, played by Lana Condor, has just the right amount of innocence to modify Kevin’s initial cynicism. The rest of the cast is delightful including Luis Guzman as the judge, and Martha Kelly (the droll drug dealer from “Euphoria”) as Kevin’s associate.
John Cena, the wrestler-actor, proves a shrewd choice as Acme’s cartoon like villainous lawyer.
There’s no doubt that with “Spider Man” and “The Odyssey” having pretty much exhausted their main runs, “Coyote v. Acme” could turn out to be a massive hit. Once word gets out on its first weekend, the Labor Day crowd will just go nuts. Many will want to see it a second time, just to pick up all the inside jokes and see all the Looney Tunes characters like the Tasmanian devil (as Acme’s head of PR– haha), a slimy Southern Foghorn Leghorn, Elmer Fudd (now a US senator, of course), and Porky Pig.
If the movie does take off, the large issue will be how Warner’s mishandled it, giving Ketchup — an almost non existent company — a triumph. At a time when Warner’s future is hanging in the balance, this is the wrong time for them to have made a mistake.
PS “Roger Rabbit” is owned by Disney and Amblin. What fun it would be one day to see the two films play back-to-back on a big screen!
