by Kevin Fleischmann
Coyote vs. Acme Review finds director Dave Green transforming one of animation’s greatest running gags into a remarkably funny, heartfelt, and technically seamless feature about failure, perseverance, and the courage to keep chasing the impossible.
When Failure Is a Fact of Life
Some things in this world are simply facts of life. The sun rises in the east. Tokyo is in Japan. Christmas is in December. And every day, Wile E. Coyote, super genius, will hatch a plan to catch the Road Runner that spectacularly backfires.
Some people may look at Wile E. and see a bumbling fool. Others may see him as an exercise in epic futility. Still others may admire his grit.
Coyote vs. Acme presents a different possibility: What if Wile E.’s failures have nothing to do with his ineptitude? What if they are all the fault of an uncaring corporate behemoth named Acme?
It is a brilliant premise, adapted from Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker piece “Coyote v. Acme.” The great triumph of Coyote vs. Acme Review is discovering how successfully the filmmakers take an idea that could easily have been exhausted in a six-minute comedy sketch and turn it into a feature-length film that never loses its energy.
Wile E. Coyote Rides Again
The opening chase, evoking the classic Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner shorts, establishes the tone immediately.
The hijinks escalate quickly, from faulty rocket skates and magnetic pellets to fighter jets and cruise missiles. Yet the sequence never feels like an imitation of what came before. It feels like a continuation of everything that made the original shorts special.
The chase ranks alongside some of Looney Tunes’ best.
Then the movie does something those classic cartoons rarely allowed audiences to do.
We follow the Coyote home.
He is covered in road rash and burn marks. He walks up the stairs like an aging offensive lineman whose knees will never be the same. He is crushed, physically and emotionally. But he pulls up a stool at his workbench, rolls out a fresh sheet of blueprint paper, sighs, and begins crafting tomorrow’s plan.
In that moment, Wile E. becomes more than a cartoon.
He becomes a character.
The Super Genius Behind the Punchline
Wile E. is driven. He will endure whatever pain and humiliation are necessary to achieve his goal.
Put a ping-pong paddle in his paws, and we would be hard-pressed not to see Marty Supreme running down those desert highways.
Failure is not an option.
That determination becomes the unexpected emotional foundation of Coyote vs. Acme Review. For decades, audiences have laughed because Wile E. Coyote never succeeds. Here, the filmmakers ask us to consider what it means that he never stops trying.
Has popular culture ever produced a more tenacious character than Wile E.? Has it ever produced a lonelier creature who could use a lesson or two about the power of connection?
Director Dave Green and the film’s screenwriters expand Wile E.’s familiar personality without sacrificing what made him funny in the first place. He remains the Coyote audiences know, but now there is something recognizable beneath the flattened fur, scorch marks, and Acme invoices.
Will Forte Gives Wile E. His Human Counterpart
The screenwriters give Wile E. a perfect human counterpart in Kevin, played by Will Forte.
Kevin is a lawyer who has been beaten down by life. The further he has drifted from his dreams, the more comfortable he has become with no longer chasing them.
He specializes in “cartoon accident” cases but has not seen the inside of a courtroom in years. He encourages his clients to settle quickly and cheaply, despite the disapproval of his plucky intern, played by Lana Condor.
Doing otherwise would risk failure.
The pairing of Kevin and Wile E. is more than an easy comedic setup. They are opposites who ultimately have something to teach each other.
That unlikely partnership gives Coyote vs. Acme Review its strongest emotional thread, connecting Wile E.’s relentless determination with Kevin’s fear of trying again.
Wile E. cannot imagine giving up.
Kevin can barely remember why he once refused to.
Their relationship gives the movie an emotional center beneath all the falling anvils, exploding TNT, and cartoon physics.
These are not Shakespearean characters, nor does the movie pretend they are. But they ring remarkably true. Green and the screenwriters have not merely expanded Wile E. Coyote’s familiar dynamics. They have made him a surprisingly dimensional character in whom audiences can recognize pieces of themselves while keeping the irreverent comedy intact.
Coyote vs. Acme Makes Cartoons Feel Real
Another of the film’s greatest achievements is its blending of two-dimensional, hand-drawn animated characters with live-action environments.
It looks terrific and remarkably seamless on the big screen.
When bales of TNT explode, everyone’s hair is burned and blown backward. An animated hole in the ground poses an equal threat to Toons and humans. The physical rules of these two worlds merge so naturally that the movie rarely asks audiences to stop and admire the technical trickery.
There is a saying that the best referees are the ones you never notice. They do not draw attention to themselves through bad calls or one-upmanship. They simply blend into the movement and flow of the game.
The hybrid visual design of Coyote vs. Acme achieves much the same effect.
It is not revolutionary in the way Who Framed Roger Rabbit was when audiences were amazed by the technology and could not stop gawking at the screen. Instead, the artistry of Coyote vs. Acme is impressive because of how effortlessly ordinary it eventually feels.
As Coyote vs. Acme Review observes, that seamlessness allows audiences to believe Wile E. Coyote and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang genuinely inhabit the same world as their human counterparts.
The visual craftsmanship highlighted throughout Coyote vs. Acme Review makes the impossible feel completely natural, allowing the comedy and characters to take center stage.
Coyote vs. Acme Review: More Than a Looney Tunes Nostalgia Trip
What makes Coyote vs. Acme work is that nostalgia never becomes its sole reason for existing.
Coyote vs. Acme Review finds the film succeeding because it understands that honoring these characters means doing more than simply recreating their most familiar jokes.
Green understands what generations of audiences love about these characters, but he does not simply parade familiar faces across the screen and wait for recognition to generate applause. Instead, the movie builds on the fundamental mechanics of Looney Tunes comedy while finding something unexpectedly human inside them.
Wile E.’s endless pursuit of the Road Runner becomes a story about ambition.
His catastrophic failures become lessons in resilience.
His isolation becomes an opportunity to explore friendship and connection.
None of that comes at the expense of the comedy.
The movie still understands that sometimes the funniest possible conclusion to an elaborate plan is a giant object falling directly onto someone’s head.
Coyote vs. Acme Review: Final Verdict
Despite Warner Bros.’ well-publicized attempts to shelve the film, director Dave Green has made one of the year’s most delightful movies.
No one would describe Coyote vs. Acme as an arthouse exercise, but it is difficult to imagine how its individual elements could have been executed much better.
Like the original Looney Tunes cartoons, the film has the potential to appeal across generations. Children can embrace the escalating slapstick and familiar characters, while adults can recognize the surprisingly thoughtful ideas about disappointment, persistence, loneliness, and rediscovering the courage to pursue something that matters.
There is also a lesson here for filmmakers.
Coyote vs. Acme may not scream “film school,” but perhaps it should. The movie has a specific creative vision and executes that vision with remarkable confidence. That should be the goal of any film, whether big or small, arthouse experiment or studio blockbuster.
Ultimately, Coyote vs. Acme Review finds a movie that accomplishes something far more difficult than simply bringing beloved cartoon characters into the real world. It understands why Wile E. Coyote has endured for generations and discovers something unexpectedly moving inside his endless failures.
For nearly a century, the joke has been that Wile E. Coyote keeps losing.
Coyote vs. Acme understands that his refusal to stop trying may have been the triumph all along.
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