Messing with clifftops never works out for the perma-plummeting Wile E Coyote, star of the long-buried but now unearthed Coyote vs Acme. He should know better. It didn’t work for Barbara Streisand either.
When the singer-songwriter sued photographer Kenneth Adelman to remove her clifftop Malibu mansion from his survey of coastal erosion, the picture in question went from being seen by a handful of people to untold millions.
Forevermore, the self-owning attempt to bury something only to make it infinitely more must-see will be known as the Streisand effect.
And so it is with Coyote vs Acme.
Coyote vs Acme – quick links
Who framed Wile?
Directed by Dave Green, Coyote vs Acme began life as a comic feature in The New Yorker. Writer Ian Frazier imagined the long-suffering Wile suing Acme Company for the innumerable times his mail-ordered weapons of supposed Road Runner destruction backfired, injuring him. This, even if Wile is, like all bruised and battered Looney Tunes, seemingly immortal and certainly indefatigable.
The concept was too cute to resist. James Gunn, the former Marvel man now firmly ensconced at DC’s house of Superman and Supergirl, adapted the feature alongside Mortal Kombat II scribe Jeremy Slater and May December co-writer Samy Burch.
Coyote vs Acme would fuse live action and animation, positing a world where humans and toons co-exist semi-harmoniously. It’s a recognisable tactic for fans of Robert Zemeckis’ 1988 cult hit Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which paired a brilliantly noirish Bob Hoskins as the mirthless, toon-averse private dick Eddie Valiant, forced to work with the Bugs Bunny-adjacent Roger (voiced by Charles Fleischer).
Kathleen Turner was uncredited but integral to the film’s success as the sultry voice of Roger’s partner, Jessica Rabbit, with Amy Irving lending her singing voice.
A host of legit Looney Tunes showed up, with the iconic Mel Blanc voicing Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester and Tweety Bird. They were menaced by Christopher Lloyd’s Judge Doom, a malevolent toon in human disguise who wanted to raze their community to build a freeway.
This malignant corporate malfeasance carries over to Coyote vs Acme, with the Looney Tunes now predominantly voiced by Eric Bauza, with Blanc having died in 1989.
A cold open, set 30 years ago, establishes that the mad scientist Dr Lorre, an old-school Looney Tunes cartoon based on real-life character actor Peter Lorre, is onto an evil, toon-endangering scheme by Acme. He smuggles out a whistle-blowing message only to be hurled into a portable cartoon hole for his troubles.
But the nefarious corporate overlords behind Acme’s explosively unreliable products, defended by John Cena’s live-action shonky lawyer Buddy Crane, aren’t the real villains of Coyote vs Acme. That title goes to Warner Bros Discovery.
Cartoon erasure
A year after the furore caused by Warner Bros Discovery canning Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s near-completed Batgirl movie, a $90 million tax write-off, the same bigwigs came for Wile and co, banking another $70 million savings in November 2023.
This is where the Streisand effect comes into play. While the Batgirl sitch was murkier – Gunn came in and rebooted DC’s cinematic universe – axing Coyote for margin tinkering was way beyond the pale.
Sparking an enormous protest campaign, folks demanded that Warner Bros release the film, holding up the sort of signs favoured by the non-vocal Wile. The backlash was so ferociously funny that the studio eventually backed down.
Instead of erasing the gang, they sold Coyote vs Acme to the marvellously monikered Ketchup Entertainment. Now in cinemas at long last, the film is rapidly approaching making its budget back.
More than that, it’s entered cinematic history as a rare David and Goliath-style win against bogus bean counters. But was Coyote vs Acme worth saving?
Watch the trailer
Best of frenemies
Absolutely. It’s a soul-glowing riot from the minute it opens, with a *disclaimer that WB is a wholly owned subsidiary of Acme, to a closing salute to everyone who believed in seeing it for themselves.
Much like Hoskin’s initially cantankerous Eddie, Coyote vs Acme features a reluctant human hero in Will Forte’s schlubby lawyer, Kevin. He’s a little leaguer doing the bare minimum, winning assorted toons chump change for challenging Acme.
His niece and new intern Paige (Lana Condor) challenges him to step up, but Kevin resists until a fed-up Wile forces his hand, bringing on a major case that earns the ire of Cena’s not-your-Buddy.
All the while, a certain carrot-chomping informant fond of spouting ‘What’s up, Doc?’ drops hints about Acme’s real deal, as the gang desperately tries to recruit the meep-meep-ing Road Runner as a star witness.
The daftness comes at an astonishing rate that only Road Runner could keep up with, with so many sight gags to snort at. Highlights include a dazed Tweety’s head being circled by chasing Sylvesters, rather than birdies, a seasoned Jim Cummings lending his marvellous vocal talents to an ever-apoplectic Tasmanian Devil, and a boastful Foghorn Leghorn (also voiced by Bauza), recalling you-know-who in the partially bulldozed White House, pulling Acme’s levers in the corporate suite. Props, too, to Elmer Fudd as a US Senator.
But for all the madcap mayhem, Coyote vs Acme is at its most gorgeous in its quietest moment: a courtroom drama in which it’s suggested that, far from mortal enemies, there’s actually a genuine bond of love between RR and his would-be-captor.
It’ll sucker punch you, welling up like you’re a kid all over again. Something Cena gets. ‘Back then, they hit me right in the bullseye, those cartoons,’ he says of his Looney Tunes-led childhood.
‘What made this idea special was that it was almost like if you’re a fan of baseball growing up and then you become a ball player, and then you get to play with the players you idolised. And because they’re all animated, none of them has aged, so you’re getting to play with these players in their prime.’
Who wouldn’t want that? More fool WB for letting go of Coyote vs Acme. Green’s triumph, alongside animation director Keith Roberts, is an absolute delight, so make like Babs and ensure everyone you know sees it. Because every once in a while, we can make corporations pay.
