Coyote Vs Acme Review: Rescued Looney Tunes Satire Falls Short of Bee
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- Coyote Vs Acme is based on a 1990 Ian Frazier gag in The New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs column about Wile E Coyote suing Acme over gadgets that always malfunction, with the film reframing Wile E from a "homicidal psychopath" into the "Erin Brockovich of the cartoon world."
- Warner Bros initially shelved the film as a tax writeoff before it was rescued, a decision the reviewer notes must have felt like an "ironic cartoon anvil" to director Dave Green given the movie's satire of corporate arrogance.
- Will Forte plays Wile E's hapless underdog lawyer and John Cena plays Acme's "sinister, smoothie" counsel, while Wile E, Road Runner and an animated Peter Lorre appear as 2D cartoon characters inside a live-action world.
- The review compares the film's premise unfavorably to Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie, calling that 2007 film "a much funnier and more ingenious comedy about cartoon creatures suing corporate behemoths."
- The closing credits feature The Clash's "I Fought the Law" rather than the Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers track "Roadrunner," which the reviewer flags as a miss for franchise fans.
- The film targets America's litigious culture and monopoly capitalism through "obsessive and hyperactive pedantry" that the reviewer finds exhausting but arguably intentional.
Why it matters: Coyote Vs Acme's release after a public shelving-then-rescue saga gives Warner Bros a live-action/animated hybrid whose corporate-suit premise mirrors its own real-world decision to write the film off, a self-referential irony the reviewer's mixed verdict suggests doesn't translate into a stronger movie.
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