"Coyote vs. Acme"

 ☆☆☆½

Had it been made a generation ago, Coyote vs. Acme would have been hailed as a visionary masterpiece, a film of technical innovation and ingenuity. But since Who Framed Roger Rabbit got there first 38 years ago, Coyote vs. Acme can't claim high ground. That leaves the question of whether it works on its own, as a clever satirical comedy, and it mostly, but not completely, does.

What happened to Coyote vs. Acme on the way from its origins as a New Yorker magazine article — a sly spoof on the ridiculousness of corporate legalese — to a movie released by a tiny company called Ketchup Entertainment is strange and convoluted. It's stupid and unbelievable. It would have made a great cartoon.

In a nutshell, you probably know, Coyote vs. Acme was deemed a financial liability for the studio that produced it, Warner Bros., taken as a tax write-off, and shelved. For a couple of years, it sat, completely made and completely unseen. Now, little Ketchup has managed to get it into movie theaters.

Is it worth the wait? Maybe. Is it worth all the legal hand-wringing? Absolutely not. It's a fun, silly, weird, slightly overlong blend of animation and live-action, in which the long-suffering Coyote finally has it up to here with exploding, malfunctioning, injury-causing Acme products. You know, the ones he uses to try to capture, kill and eat the Road Runner, who only wants to speed through the desert going beep beep. (Or, as many fans insist, meep meep.)

Coyote, let's be honest, isn't a nice guy. Never has been. But the point of the cartoons is that nobody, even someone who wants to catch, slaughter and consume a little desert bird, deserves all that pain and torture. It's fun to see him hurt because he's trying to do such an awful thing. Then again, he's trying to do it because he's hungry. Really hungry.

Coyote, then, is a bit of an anti-hero. We want to see him succeed, but maybe not really. In Coyote vs. Acme, he enlists the help of a human lawyer Kevin Avery (there are lots of inside jokes for Looney Tunes fans), who sues Acme all the time for a few lousy bucks. But Coyote wants more. Much more. And soon the cartoon and the human are uncovering a vast conspiracy by Acme to do awful things to cartoons.

Yes, it's a lot like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There's even a scene where the human and cartoon characters enter a tunnel. It doesn't have Roger Rabbit's visual wit or satirical intelligence, but it's still pretty good. When it finally gets to the courtroom, things bog down, and there's a very strange decision by the writers and director to make a sweet, popular and mostly (but not always) innocent character into a genuine bad guy. 

Nonetheless, fans of Looney Tunes and cartoons as a whole will have a great time; people who grew up with Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies always on in the background will also enjoy this. Animation purists may be on the fence, since it takes liberties with a lot.

But it's inarguably entertaining, Will Forte brings humor and intelligence to his work as Kevin, and it's all  visually splendid and just funny enough. At times barely maybe, but it is good-humored and good-natured enough to be consistently entertaining while offering a wonderfully sly little wink-and-nod to what's happening in the world today. 

Viewed September 10, 2026 — Regal Sherman Oaks

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