In an alternate dimension, Coyote vs. ACME is released as a late-summer footnote. That’s not damning director Dave Green’s film with faint praise; it’s being realistic about the Looney Tunes’ theatrical odds in 2026. But then, of course, we do indeed live in this world. So, a movie about a cartoon coyote taking on the Man can reflect our current reality. This is instructive.
Armed with a clever script from Samy Burch, Coyote vs. ACME discovers an incredible lane in which to run: the Looney Tunes legal procedural. Bedevilled in his quest to capture the Road Runner, the mute Wile E. Coyote conscripts loser lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte, halfway to being a cartoon already) into suing the titular omnipresent mega-corporation over its dangerously defective products. It’s a silly idea, made all the more ludicrous by Green’s eye for all manner of cartoon pratfalls in the film’s margins. That a mega-corporation in our world (Warner Bros., owner of these characters) previously tried to bury the film (allegedly for tax purposes) only adds to the joke, and its eventual existential resonance. Now, if it feels bizarre to describe the social and political merits of a film in which Foghorn Leghorn tries to big-time Wile E. Coyote in front of a congressional hearing, that’s because it is. Yet it’s satisfying, too, to laugh at a movie so clearly made with love to be a capital-F film, with cinematography and compositions that work to capture this inherent surreality. More lessons abound here.
There’s also a grand sense of history in Coyote vs. ACME, a tangible notion that these characters and the world in which they exist (or have created, our world) have real value. It’s in the cameos by Bugs Bunny as a Deep Throat-esque figure, the cartoon ghost of Peter Lorre, and other goofy gags. Cinema is amazing because it has room for all this: the real and sublime, plus rocket skates, dynamite, and a preening John Cena. Do not take it for granted.
