If the Looney Tunes aren’t the hardest working entertainers in show business, I don’t know who is.
In the last 96 years, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and all their wacky friends have starred in a dozen feature films, 14 original TV shows and more than a thousand cartoon shorts. They won Oscars. They played basketball to amuse the orgy nuns from Ken Russell’s “The Devils.” And, more to the point, they’ve spoofed just about everything there is to spoof. After chucking dynamite at Superman, Robin Hood, the Barber of Seville, “Fantasy Island,” “Ghostbusters,” “Flash Gordon” and “The Rover Boys,” what else could they possibly lampoon? French philosopher Albert Camus’ contemplation of absurdity and self-slaughter, “The Myth of Sisyphus?”
Anyway, “Coyote vs. Acme” is the Looney Tunes version of Albert Camus’ contemplation of absurdity and self-slaughter, “The Myth of Sisyphus.” The film stars Wile E. Coyote as a tragic stand-in for the human condition — which, in fairness, he always was. Every day, he tries to capture the Road Runner, and every day, he fails, in part because the Road Runner is the fastest creature on two legs, but mostly because Wile E. relies on Acme mail-order products, which are always defective and literally blow up in his face. And yet, like the figure in the ancient Greek legend, he never stops rolling that proverbial boulder uphill, no matter how many times it rolls back down and squashes him like a pancake. What’s worse, he has to keep buying from Acme because it’s a monopoly. And its products will always hurt him because monopolies are evil.
In “Coyote vs. Acme,” Wile E. tries something new. He hires a lawyer, Kevin Avery (Will Forte), to sue the Acme Corporation. Avery gave up on his own boulder decades ago. Now he settles every case without a fight. Besides, what’s the point in fighting the Acme Corporation? They own everything. They own the judges. They write the laws. They’re the boulder, and the boulder always wins.
But you can’t keep a Wile E. down. The voiceless cartoon canine forces Avery to fight the ultimate uphill battle, and the movie won’t stop until he defeats [checks notes] Warner Bros.
Literally. Warner Bros. is canonically a subsidiary of the Acme Corporation. The revelation makes so much sense that, after the studio fought tooth and nail to keep “Coyote vs. Acme” from ever being released — shelving the all-but-finished film for a tax write-off in 2023 — it almost plays like a marketing stunt. Then again, what’s easier to believe: that monopolistic corporations don’t care about anything but money, or that they care so much about telling stories about the little guy that they manufactured a controversy that made them look like garbage for years before finally letting Ketchup Entertainment release their movie instead?
“Coyote vs. Acme” is a film about the futility of nobility and the nobility of futility. It’s the Looney Tunes version of classic courtroom dramas like “The Verdict” and “Erin Brockovich,” and although it parodies those films it also tries, successfully, to make us feel the way those other great underdog stories make us feel. The filmmakers know how hard a person has to fight just to make a corporate entity flinch. They also know that the flinch is, by itself, important. Even if you don’t win. Especially if you don’t win. Nobody can roll a boulder up a hill but if everyone tries, maybe we’ll finally get somewhere.
It’s all very intelligent and moving, but is “Coyote vs. Acme” funny? Yes. “Coyote vs. Acme” is gut-bustlingly hilarious. Dave Green knows these Tunes by heart, and the comic timing on this film’s countless sight gags is on par with some of the best Looney Tunes shorts. That level of hilarity is impossible to sustain uninterrupted for 103 minutes but that’s not objectionable. That’s why the original shorts were short in the first place. Audiences can’t live on madcap wackiness forever.
The shrewd screenplay by Samy Burch (“May December”) — based on a story by Burch, James Gunn and Jeremy Slater and inspired by a 1990 New Yorker article by Ian Frazier — takes the “story” part of its story seriously, which periodically resets the joke-o-meter. All the dramatic beats set up future lunacies while also working consistently as satisfying, albeit ludicrous, drama.
Will Forte lives at the center of these two extremes, adorably sad-sacking his way through “Coyote vs. Acme,” a perfect foil for the world’s most motivated carnivore. Forte ambles from one plot point to another, pre-defeated, eager only to crawl back into his hole. He’s not an antihero because he’s morally conflicted. He’s an antihero because he doesn’t believe in heroism. After all, heroes don’t save the world from corporations. That’s not how heroes work. That’s not how corporations work. (Then again, shelving ingenious, crowd-pleasing movies isn’t how corporations are supposed to work either.)
Jean Luc-Godard said every film is a documentary about its own actors. Somehow, “Coyote vs. Acme” is a documentary about its own, unpredictable future. Green’s film dramatizes all the awful things that were about to happen to itself, and the fact that it’s finally out — and that it was brilliant all along — is an ironically cheerful conclusion to a film about constant struggle.
The fight is always worth fighting. The boulder is always worth pushing. And although Wile E. Coyote will never catch that Roadrunner, his chase inspires us all. Even when he falls off a cliff. Especially when he falls off a cliff.
