Some Hollywood decisions defy logic. Like, who looked at the world of Looney Tunes, those unhinged cartoons of our youth, and thought: Let’s add a bunch of personal injury lawyers.
Such is the premise of the clunky, too-earnest, live-action-toon-hybrid “Coyote vs. Acme,” a film initially mothballed by the studio only to later be featured in theaters.
It began as a 1990 New Yorker parody that imagined Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Corporation over their defective gadgets. The film then spent almost three decades in development hell, finally getting made in 2022 for about $70 million but getting shelved by Warner Bros., which decided it was better as a tax write-off.
The setting is Albuquerque, New Mexico, where humans and cartoons live side-by-side, like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” The likes of Tweety, the Tasmanian Devil and Porky Pig all populate real sidewalks, cars and courtrooms. Why Albuquerque? It’s never explained, but Bugs Bunny once famously said: “I knew I should’ve taken that left turn at Albuquerque.”
The plot joins Will Forte, a small-time personal injury attorney reachable at 1-800-0-LAWYER, and his new client, the mute coyote, who is bleary-eyed and fuming that he has cabinets full of failed Acme products used in his never-ending hunt for his white whale, the Road Runner.
“Have you ever pulled the ripcord of your parachute and only a bunch of silverware comes out? It’s not your fault,” Forte’s character says in a TV commercial.
The lawyer wants to settle with Acme — as he usually does — for just a few hundred bucks, but his client wants to take down the world’s biggest corporation. (Its slogan: “We’re a company of family values that values its family of companies.”)
There’s a vast evil conspiracy at the heart of Acme — led by Foghorn Leghorn, I say, I say — which is fiercely protected by its combative chief legal counsel, played without much subtlety by John Cena.
“These companies think they can do whatever they want and get away with all of it because they do. We’re sick of it and it stops now,” says the emboldened Forte.
The coyote’s fight comes to represent a larger struggle against corporate greed, which seemed to shadow the movie’s underdog path as it went up against its own Goliath — Warner Bros. itself.
But not too long into this mess, you’ll start to sympathize with Warner Bros. They aren’t a ruthless corporation censoring a C-suite satire: They were protecting us from a poorly executed movie that misuses our cartoon favorites.
There are echoes of “Chinatown,” “A Few Good Men” and “Erin Brockovich,” but all slightly undercut because Wile E. Coyote at his heart is a homicidal maniac, plotting to lure the Road Runner to court to murder and make a stew out of him. “You’re kind of a psychopath, aren’t you?” his lawyer asks him.
The action then inexplicably moves to Washington, D.C., where Acme tries to kill the coyote before he testifies in front of Congress, which includes Elmer Fudd as a senator. That’s right, an assassination attempt — aided by no less than Tweety, using some sort of rocket-propelled grenade launcher — in our nation’s capital. That’s despicable!
Forte and the coyote have some harsh words, and then the filmmakers up the pressure by making the law firm teeter on insolvency. There’s a chase scene involving rocket skates, a motorbike and a refrigerated truck, and there’s a final character test in the form of a massive potential payoff that our human hero must navigate.
What’s up, doc? No, really, we need a script doc.
Director Dave Green integrates the toons and humans well, but the story stumbles on using the Looney Tunes’ deep roster. Bugs Bunny appears, at last, only at the hour mark — a criminal delay for such a fan favorite — and doesn’t stick around. And Daffy Duck lends high-energy zaniness — all too short — as an inmate at St. Looneys (“for the exceptionally looney”). Instead we get more than two hours of a lethal, silent Coyote.
Samy Burch’s screenplay veers from underdog-versus-corporate power to zany detective story to end with a moral about never giving up in the face of failure, trying to remake the deeply troubled Wile E. Coyote into someone noble.
“No matter what happens, he picks himself up and tries again and again and again and again,” says Forte. “He wakes up every morning with purpose and with hope and I think everyone should be inspired by that.”
Really? By the menacing guy on the jet-propelled pogo stick and endless faulty products? This is a film only personal injury attorneys could love.
“Coyote vs. Acme,” a Ketchup Entertainment release that’s in theaters Friday, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for “cartoon violence and some language.” Running time: 101 minutes. One star out of four.
