In my review of The Alto Knights, I used the following words: I don’t know how they managed to convince David Zaslav to make this project. Then again, since this is the guy who canceled films like Batgirl and Coyote but gave the green light to this one, it’s fair to say he doesn’t exactly have the brightest mind, right?
Now, after watching Coyote vs. Acme, I found myself thinking about those words once again. Just to get a few million dollars in tax write-offs, they had decided to destroy finished films that had reportedly been very well received at test screenings. I loved Coyote vs. Acme so much that even the thought of almost never being able to watch this film made me furious. But this film, packed with one clever joke after another and barely wasting a single moment, took all that anger away and replaced it with a sense of optimism that good, genuinely creative work can still be made in cinema.
One of my favorite things about this film is that it is adapted from Ian Frazier’s “Coyote v. Acme,” published in The New Yorker in 1990. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but it’s a short, humorous piece written in the form of a fictional legal complaint filed by Wile E. Coyote against Acme, and it served as the inspiration for this film. I appreciate and admire humor the most when it comes from small details that nobody would normally pay attention to. Ian Frazier’s piece is one of the finest examples of this. The film, in turn, masterfully brings his idea to the screen.
For years, Wile E. Coyote has been constantly exploding, falling, and getting crushed while trying to catch the Road Runner with rocket skates, dynamite, magnets, and countless other products he buys from Acme. One day, he has had enough and goes to Kevin Avery, a lawyer in Albuquerque (he looks a little like Saul Goodman, doesn’t he?), for help. The goal seems simple enough: sue the company over its defective products. But as the case grows, it becomes clear that Acme’s products aren’t malfunctioning by accident; cartoon characters are being used as guinea pigs for products that will eventually be sold to humans. Kevin, his niece Paige, and Coyote take on the massive corporation run by Foghorn Leghorn, fighting both in court and in the field. Coyote’s real goal, however, is to get the Road Runner onto the witness stand so he can finally catch him there.
The film transforms the classic Looney Tunes humor into a legal comedy and a critique of corporate conspiracies. Somehow managing to do so many things at once, watching this film feels like spending time at an amusement park. On one hand, there’s constantly another joke coming your way; on the other, a beloved Looney Tunes character suddenly appears when you least expect it; and underneath all that fun, you realize that the film actually has something it wants to say. That might be my favorite part of it. The film manages to be both genuinely funny and surprisingly sincere without ever taking itself too seriously or saying, “Look how clever and meaningful our message is.”
