Everybody has their own weird little hill to die on. Here’s mine: I firmly believe that future historians will recognize the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes animated shorts produced between 1935 and 1964 as some of the greatest works of art of the 20th century. Yeah, that’s right, I’m putting “One Froggy Evening” on the same level as Guernica. Come at me, bro.
The Warner Bros. animation unit worked out of a notoriously rundown building known as Termite Terrace. Each 6- to 10-minute, one-reel short film included upwards of 5,000 hand-drawn cels. They were originally produced to be shown between newsreels, trailers, serials, and feature films in the days when going to the movie theater was a much looser experience. Thus, the comedy in these films had to be for everyone. Kids loved the adorable talking animals and the slapstick comedy, while Looney Tunes spoke to adults through cultural references and sly wordplay. How many people’s first exposure to Wagner came through “What’s Opera, Doc?”
Through 998 animated shorts produced during this period, directors like Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, and Chuck Jones refined screen comedy to its essence. A Looney Tunes short might feel chaotic, but they were meticulously planned — Jones famously counted individual frames to make sure his jokes landed perfectly. Looney Tunes shorts came in all shapes and sizes, but by the early 1940s, a formula emerged. One character, a square like Elmer Fudd, has a goal, but they are repeatedly thwarted by a trickster figure, like Bugs Bunny. This formula reached its apotheosis in 1949 with “Fast and Furry-ous.” The dialogue-free cartoon introduced the Road Runner, a flightless bird who spends its time zooming around the scenic Utah desert, and Wile E. Coyote, who hunts him. Since the Coyote can’t outrun the Road Runner, he has to devise increasingly ludicrous plans to catch him, usually involving products from the Acme Corporation. But these giant fireworks, rockets, and winged bat suits always fail in humiliating ways, while the Road Runner cruises on unbothered.
In 1990, writer Ian Frazier penned a short article for The New Yorker magazine’s humor section called “Coyote vs. Acme,” in which a personal injury lawyer sues the megacorp for selling obviously faulty products. Years later, Superman director James Gunn pitched a film adaptation to Warner Bros. as a way to get their historic Looney Tunes franchise back in action on the big screen. Directed by Dave Green, the film was completed in 2023, soon after Warner Bros.’ merger with Discovery, Inc. Incoming studio executives have been known to neglect projects they didn’t greenlight, but David Zaslav, who helmed the new company, took the unprecedented step of shelving a number of completed films in order to take a tax write-off, including Coyote vs. Acme. The filmmakers took to social media to insist that their film, which they had spent years of their lives making, deserved an audience. Eventually, the animation-hating Zaslav was convinced to sell the $70 million film at a loss to Ketchup Entertainment, a smaller distributor with big ambitions that still believed in the power of the Looney Tunes legacy.
Now that Coyote vs. Acme is finally in theaters, it’s clear that Ketchup was right and Zaslav was wrong. Coyote vs. Acme is the best live-action/animation hybrid since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Like that 1988 classic, real humans co-exist with cartoon characters in this world. It begins in 1992, in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Lorre, based on the actor who was frequently a caricature in early Looney Tunes shorts. After subjecting Daffy Duck to a series of strange tests, Dr. Lorre has become disturbed by what his bosses at Acme are ordering him to do, but as he is trying to leave, he is cornered by mysterious operatives who force him to jump into a portable hole.
Thirty years later, Wile E. Coyote is still failing to catch the Road Runner. After a humiliating incident with some rocket-powered in-line skates, he sees a TV commercial from the law firm of Avery, Jones, and Maltese. “Have you been injured by faulty Acme Corporation products? You may be entitled to compensation.”
In his cave, surrounded by hundreds of broken Acme products, Coyote very much believes he is entitled to compensation. He straps on some Acme spring-loaded sneakers, packs up his bindle, and heads for the big city of Albuquerque. The spring-loaded sneakers fail, but he makes it to the law office anyway, where he meets Kevin Avery (Will Forte). Kevin is not a great lawyer, or even a good lawyer. What he is good at is settling cases for peanuts, and making it up on volume. That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, it’s not working out so hot, and the firm is perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. Kevin’s niece Paige (Lana Condor) is interning with the firm, and she convinces Kevin that Coyote’s case is worth taking. When faced with the sheer scale of Coyote’s product failure, Acme lawyer Buddy Crane (John Cena) offers him a settlement that seems big to Kevin. But Coyote rejects it out of hand. He wants his day in court for reasons that are not entirely on the up and up.
Director Green gets the tone exactly right. The humans take the cartoon slapstick gags going off all around them for granted, while Foghorn Leghorn is Acme’s CEO and toons sit beside humans in the jury box. The extraordinarily versatile voice actor Eric Bauza follows in the tradition of the great Mel Blanc, giving voice to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, and the Road Runner’s “meep meep.” Wile E. Coyote remains silent throughout the proceedings, but he is one of the best-realized animated characters in recent memory, alternating between sympathetic, villainous, and hilarious at will.
Coyote vs. Acme is a near-perfect film, hilarious with heart to spare. Today, Zaslav has involved Warner Bros. Discovery in another controversial merger, this time with Paramount, which will leave the combined companies with more than $60 billion in debt incurred to fund the purchase. Zaslav will reportedly walk away from the deal with somewhere north of $800 million. Maybe that’s the reason he tried to kill Coyote vs. Acme. He knew who the real villain was.
Coyote vs. Acme
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