Editor’s Note: Can you make a successful comedy today based on the audiences’ nostalgic affection for classic Looney Tunes characters? Freeline Media critic Mike Fields takes a look at the new movie Coyote Vs. Acme – how exactly does it treat our old friend Wile E. Coyote? Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
Coyote Vs. Acme
First off, Fuck Warner Brothers and Fuck David Zaslav!
In 1991, there was a movie and title class action with Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, which detailed the lengths to which a corporation would go to protect itself from any legal liability.
This is a sequel.
It’s been decades, but the Acme Corporation, which was founded by lovable cuddly Marvin Acme, has become a conglomerate run by evil CEO Foghorn Leghorn and his general counsel Buddy Crane, whose mission it is to quash every lawsuit filed against Acme.
Our friend Wile E. Coyote has been exploded, crushed, pancaked, blown up and anything else you can think of by these bad Acme products. He is a “high usage user” of Acme products who remains trapped in a cycle of consuming products that repeatedly fail him. So he turns to attorney Kevin Avery, son of Tex, at the law firm of Avery Maltese and Jones. Kevin is a down on his luck lawyer who specializes in cartoon law. He even has a full set of the books on Anvil Law, but he’s a type of guy who settles the cases quick and easy; however, he is in the thick of things when his zealous associate/niece Paige files a lawsuit that lists every product that Mr. Coyote has used and the matter turns into a huge cause célèbre. This is a lawsuit that can put the global acme corporation out of business so they respond with the usual skulduggery.
This is one of the funnier Warner Brothers (fuck them), Looney Tunes, hybrid live action/animation, movies in a very, very long time. I have to admit that I laughed a lot during this picture, even though it is a very silly movie, but there are some things from one’s childhood that never gets old and that includes cartoon characters having products backfire on them. Is it of the same caliber as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? In a word, no.
But it has a lot of heart.
It was actually kind of genius to have Will Forte play Kevin Avery as he gives off that loser MacGruber vibe, and he also gives off the fact that he just doesn’t want to be involved with this case. He wishes he could’ve settled it for the $50,000 that was offered to him initially, but his client — super genius — turned it down because of his own ulterior motives. Kevin would’ve given up the fight but for the efforts of his niece Paige who shows the unbridled enthusiasm that every recently graduated lawyer shows before they get ground into a pulp by the reality of the world. Lana Condor has bucketloads of enthusiasm as Paige.
John Cena is very cartoonish as Kevin’s old Harvard Law classmate, Buddy Crane (Denny Crane?) He plays a well structured comedic villain as does PJ Byrne as his assistant, Bill Pellicano, who, it turns out seems to be as unlucky as Mr. Coyote.
The jokes are fast and furious, the in-jokes are cute (Avery, Jones and Maltese are the names of the chief animators of many of the Road Runner-Coyote cartoons) the vocalizations actually harkens back to the original Mel Blanc vocalizations and are done so well by Eric Bauza, the cartoon drawings seem drawn rather than computer animated, but that might just be a virtue of how the animation was combined with the live action. There are some neat clips from Mr. Coyote’s earlier run-ins with the Acme products and the first 15 minutes of the movie was a terrific laugh-fest.
I would say the movie dragged in the middle, as if the writers had a strong beginning and end of the film but struggled with how to keep it together, keep it together, keep it together – KIT – and it sort of devolves as there is a hearing in front of the U.S. Senate, which is just so improbable, that they should have kept it in the courtroom of Judge Troppogrosso (Luis Guzman). One thing about the Senate scene was that the writers and directors got the ages of the Senators correct — OLD! The movie took place in Albuquerque (on the way to Pismo Beach) and I expected Saul Goodman to make a cameo appearance.
I still laughed a lot as did everyone else in the audience and the movie had enough for us folks that grew up with Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies as kids in the 60s and 70s as well as those of us whose children and grandchildren watch this today.
A very special thanks to Ketchup Entertainment for rescuing this movie from the dusty basement of David Zaslov’s moldy, foul-stenched home because it was definitely worth a WATCH.
3.5/5 – no, an extra half star to FUCK DAVID ZASLAV
4/5
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@gmail.com
