Film Review: Coyote vs. Acme

Coyote vs. Acme
Director: Dave Green
Warner Animation Group, Troll Court Entertainment, Keylight Pictures
In Theaters: 08.28.26

Shoutout to my coworker at Eddie Bauer who told me about Coyote vs. Acme last year, before he was unceremoniously laid off. I was also (a little later) laid off due to store closure. I guess Eddie Bauer isn’t very popular anymore, likely due to cost-cutting in clothing production. The result is low-quality, easily-broken clothing. My waterproof jacket leaks and all my T-shirts are unraveling at the stitching.

Meanwhile, Coyote vs. Acme was in production hell. Shot and shelved in 2023 as a tax loss, fans and filmmakers rallied for its release, and they’ve got it. The question: Was it worth all the bother?

After failing to catch the Road Runner once again, Wile E. Coyote tricks a lawyer, Kevin Avery (Will Forte, Nebraska, Booksmart), into suing the Acme corporation for sabotaging their toon-centered products, leading to the discovery of a dark conspiracy.

Kids’ entertainment should be weighed on a scale from “You should be ASHAMED to show this to your child” to “You NEED to show this to your child.” To boil it down to its diseased bones, ashamed movies shapes and colors designed to maximize child attention. Think of the Minions franchise. Sure, those are fun movies, and they expound a moral, but the point of those movies isn’t to innocently engage your child. Rather, they want your child to not think at all by indoctrinating them into consumerism. It’s the type of thing a real-life Acme corporation would aspire to do.

Movies you NEED to show your child are engaging both for the purpose of entertainment and artistic merit. Think Ratatouille, The Iron Giant or Paddington — great movies filled with creative presentation and interesting moral questions. Ratatouille isn’t just trying to teach your kids that making art is important, but it’s also teaching them about the value of art as a whole and that there is no such thing as bad art, only bad critics.

Where does Coyote vs. Acme land? Closer toward NEED than ASHAMED. This is a very engaging and entertaining film that tries to make courtroom drama appealing to children with recognizable cartoon characters. Where it fails is with a generic ending, which feels kind of disappointing. This is almost a film about the evils of monopolization that draws close comparisons to real corporations, except when it comes to pass, the film underplays its deeper meaning with a very surface-level one about friendship.

Still, the craft of this film is great. It uses its recognizable characters well and doesn’t stoop to shoving them in your face like Space Jam (a movie that belongs, firmly, in the ASHAMED category, if you were curious). Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Tweety Bird are very minor characters that support the story instead of driving it. The film opts for deeper (deeper in the sense that kids probably wouldn’t recognize them) cuts like Dr. Lorre or Foghorn Leghorn. 

It minimizes action sequences in favor of character-heavy humor. It reminds me of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in that way, as both films are dramas first and cartoons second. Both films are excellent in their ability to let the cartoon characters interact with the physical world, though the way the characters interact in Coyote vs. Acme feels almost tangential to reality where Roger Rabbit feels material.

Forte is a pleasure in this, and he should be in more things. I am constantly surprised by John Cena (The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker). His comedic timing is brilliant, and he is capable of digging deep for dramatic performances (though he has yet to be given a Smashing Machine, but I am hopeful it’ll come). In this, I feel the script and direction really prevent him from being menacing. The voice cast is fantastic, particularly Eric Bauza, who nails it as both Bugs and Daffy, and I’m pretty sure he does almost every character Mel Blanc did. I’m tired of people belittling career voice actors. They are actors, just as animation is cinema.

So was it worth the trouble? I think so. It may not be the greatest movie ever made, but I am, above all, pro-creativity. The kids genre is infested by morons who view kids as retention and money. It’s just sick to imagine these people producing art for anybody, and frankly, they should be exiled for their crimes against intellect. Coyote vs. Acme was clearly made by people who care. They love these characters, and they respect you and your children’s intellect, for the most part. Again, it’s afraid to be too intelligent out of fear that your child may look away or be confused, and that’s a shame. If anything, we should be confusing kids with things they can’t understand. It inspires curiosity and creativity. It gives them a reason to keep watching movies, engaging their brain and bringing them back again and again in an attempt to better understand it. But maybe I’m thinking way too hard about it. —B. Allan Johnson

Read more reviews by B. Allan Johnson:
SLFS Summer Showdown: Naked Lunch vs. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Secondhand Screenings’ Survival Guide

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