Watch Coyote Vs. ACME!

 THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS FOR COYOTE VS. ACME BUT I HAVE TRIED TO KEEP ANY MAJOR SPOILERS OUT AND ANY MAJOR TWISTS ARE ONLY THOSE INCLUDED OR HINTED AT IN AT LEAST ONE TRAILER

Firstly I'll address the elephant in the room of the cancellation. This movie is based on a New Yorker article from 1990, with the hilarious premise:

What if Wile E Coyote sued the ACME Corporation for all the times they have sold him a product which has malfunctioned and endangered/harmed him?

Interestingly, this was suggested as a movie over 20 years ago, but it wasn't until 2022 that some wheels finally started moving. By 2023 the movie had been filmed, animated and was ready for release but then the project was shelved by Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav as a tax writeoff.

Quiz question: How many Warner Brothers were there originally?

When this was announced, the film's stars were invited to a 'funeral screening' of the movie which they thought was because it was a bad movie. However, upon watching the movie, they discovered that it was just as fantastic as they thought and were understandably baffled about why it was shelved.

After much public outcry, led in no small part to the cast and crew, WB agreed to sell the rights to another distribution company. Ketchup Entertainment, who had recently distributed The Day the Earth Blew Up, knew that the Looney Tunes were still marketable, so bought the rights to this movie as well.

The marketing team for Coyote Vs. ACME have taken full advantage of this, citing WB in all trailers (and surprisingly, the actual film) as "A wholly owned subsidiary of the ACME Corporation"

If you've seen the trailers, you'll know that it mentions gags from the classic shorts, for example:

Kevin Avery (VO from his lawyer television ad): Have you ever tried to set off dynamite, only for the detonator itself to explode?

(Shows relevant clip from Fast and Furry-ous)

Even though most of these gags have appeared in previous Looney Tunes shorts, my research concludes that most of these clips were reanimated for the movie. 

I don't know why they did this, but they managed to emulate the style of the original cartoons very well so I won't push back on that front.

Speaking of the animation, most of the Looney Tunes are animated traditionally, as most of them are limited to short cameos.

However, Wile E Coyote, Road Runner and Foghorn Leghorn, having much bigger roles, were CGI animated, to save the budget. Animation purists might find this distracting, but personally I thought it worked well.

Eric Bauza voices most of the original Looney Tunes (Wile E has no dialogue and I can't find a reliable source online for who voices Road Runner), and does a fantastic job of doing so.

Quiz question: Is it Meep Meep or Beep Beep?

Candi Milo voices the female Looney Tunes, and also does a fantastic job.

This movie is being compared to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and for good reason. All the Looney Tunes movies seem to exist independently of one another, with all the movies treating the characters slightly differently. Even Space Jam and Space Jam 2 have slightly different interpretations of the characters.

Roger Rabbit has the toons and humans living in the same reality, with the toons seen as lesser beings. Coyote has a similar interpretation, although only using Warner Brothers characters.

Roger Rabbit is loosely based on a true story about a neighborhood being destroyed to make room for a highway.

Coyote uses a similar setup, but this time more comparable to animal testing, which is one of the reasons comparisons are being drawn.

The other reason is that in order to get eyelines right and to help animators, most shots were also filmed with puppets to represent the animated characters and make the experience for the actors more tactile.

Props go to this actor on the left, who had to frequently act against multiple invisible characters:

I couldn't write a post about John Cena without a You Can't See Me joke 

The only Looney Tunes movie to date to make a profit is the first Space Jam movie, but that was essentially a 90 minute shoe commercial. One day I'll write a post about why Back in Action is a far superior film, but currently this post is a ticking time bomb as I need to get it out before Coyote leaves cinemas.

Space Jam was once accused by Chuck Jones of being a problem Bugs Bunny could have solved in 7 minutes. If you're wondering who this Chuck Jones fellow is, and why his opinion matters, he literally wrote the rulebook for the Looney Tunes.

The law firm in the movie is called Avery, Jones & Maltese, with Will Forte's character being called Kevin Avery. This is a reference to the legendary Looney Tunes animators Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese.

Tex Avery is the only one of the three who didn't actually create the Coyote or Road Runner, so it seems odd to name the character after him.

In conclusion, you should watch Coyote vs ACME. Even if you're not invested in the behind the scenes drama, it's still a fantastic film for Looney Tunes fans and comedy fans alike.

Hardcore fans will get more from the hundreds of Easter eggs and obscure characters in the movie, but even a casual viewer will still enjoy the movie.

Fans of slapstick violence especially will enjoy this movie.

The answer to the quiz questions:

There were 4 Warner Brothers- Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack

It's Meep Meep.