Coyote VS. ACME: A Eulogy or Review?
The Looney Tunes Make Their Long-Awaited Return in a Movie that Will Either Save the Once-Famous Franchise...or Flatten it Like an Anvil.
The once-cancelled, long-delayed, almost-mythical Coyote vs. ACME finally reaches the silver screen. Hyped and championed and repeatedly petitioned for release, it seems the fans finally got their way. They won the fight!
Or did they?
Truth be told, the only true winner (or loser) will be Ketchup Entertainment, a small studio who purchased the film for a maybe remorseful $50 million. It was an act of sheet altruism considering the film, despite its merit, is far from being a guaranteed blockbuster. Indeed, on its opening weekend (Aug. 28-30), the film scored a flatulent 16 million—not a terrible number, but not the thankful signal of vindication the studio, no doubt, was hoping to claim. Heartbreaking as it may be, the Looney Tunes brand has been struggling over the past twenty years. And David Zaslav, cold-hearted brute he may be, was not without reason to torpedo the movie. Indeed, if the public doesn’t care about these characters, then why should he?
Such is the test, now, for all those who decried the evil Hollywood execs and money-cruncher types who had deprived them of their prize. Fans raged over the film’s cancellation. Forums went crazy; angry YouTube videos were made. And yet, now that the film is out, the response is modest. Muted. Tepid. The film’s halfhearted opening isn’t going to be enough to convince those black, Hollywood hearts. Coyote vs. ACME can’t be a marginal success. It needs to be a hit—a statement that the public still cares about these cartoon critters.
Zaslav, in other words, must be proven wrong. And so far, he hasn’t.
But demographical questions aside…is the movie good? The good news is that, yes, yes it is.
Anyone who cares about the looney brand, or anyone craving some simple, innocent entertainment, should see it. Should support it. Should help it save face.
But the movie, despite its inspirations and ensuing hilarity, is a strange creature. Though comparisons to Disney’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit are inevitable, the movie is better likened to another Disney experiment: the Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie released on Disney+ in 2022. Both movies share a similar style, jettisoning the lush, hand-drawn animation enjoyed by Roger Rabbit for a more processed, cel-shaded feel. In other words, the animated characters that populate Coyote vs. ACME’s landscape are actually 3-D constructs manufactured in a computer, then rendered to resemble a 2-D fixture. And this means, depending on the characters’ respective angle to the camera’s, they sometimes look off-model. Distorted. Uncanny.
The movie’s plot also spins into weird directions. The coyote suing the duplicitous ACME corporation is a simple enough premise, but it soon detours into the cliches of a conspiracy—an increasingly common hallmark of the genre. In Roger Rabbit, the evil Dr. Doom conspires to bulldoze Toon Town. In Rescue Rangers, Peter Pan secretly kidnaps toons and forces them to star in his awful bootleg, Disney-knockoffs. But in Coyote, the conspiracy is almost mundane by comparison: ACME has been using select toons as unwitting product testers. When Wile E.’s rocket skates explode in his face, ACME notes the glitch for a future revision. When the coyote’s batsuit flies him into a cliff, ACME knows the product isn’t quite human-ready. Toons like Wile E. are essentially the company’s bug testers and guinea pigs. Or, in the Coyote's case, an unwitting crash test dummy.
This revelation turns what was a personal vendetta between Wile E. and ACME into a nationwide scandal; it’s no longer just the coyote who's suffering under ACME’s machinations, but all of toondom! Or, at least, those ACME super-users stupid enough to keep using the company’s products again and again. And therein lies the problem. More than a real, sinister conspiracy, it’s really just a contrivance that doesn’t quite work. As Foghorn Leghorn states near the film's denouement: Toons can’t die or even stay injured for more than a minute. Who cares if they occasionally get flattened like a pancake if it serves the greater good?
In-between the sleuthing and chase scenes, the movie explores other themes. Loneliness. Friendship. Perseverance. Taking responsibility of one’s life and destiny. These motifs serve the narrative better than the conspiracy angle but still feel a bit forced. Wile E. is lonely? He secretly hopes to forge a friendship with his ambivalent lawyer? The lawyer is supposed to both learn from and bond with a toon who, really, only has one hobby…one reason for existence? To catch a bird who runs really fast?
And perhaps this is Coyote vs. ACME’s greatest dilemma—properly converting what are profoundly one-dimensional characters into beings more relatable, heartfelt...even real. Can the film convince audiences to feel sorry for this carnivorous malcontent who was never meant to be a “good guy” in the original cartoons? Wile E.’s cinematic journey here is rife with reliable gags and laughter. But the pathos and sappy sentimentality he’s also written to evoke are much like his rocket skates…they fizzle at best. And, at worse, they explode.
The movie has other quirks, too. While the movie happily combines toons with fleshy human beings, no explanation is given for the odd juxtaposition. Roger Rabbit, at least, gives the toons a point of origin—Toon Town. And also, a purpose—to be the actors in Hollywood’s theatrical line of cartoons. Despite the “how” of their existence never being explained, it’s clear these toons are exactly what they seem to be: creatures made of ink and paint. (Oddly, the "species" aren't called toons here, but cartoons.) Big and small, humanoid or animal, impervious to permanent damage and apparently ageless…these beings exist without cause or explanation. They’re just there. And the movie offers no insights why.
This goes for the classic toons, too. Although Porky, Daffy, and Bugs all make appearances, they’re robbed of their respective histories and filmographies. No longer actors or allies or antagonists as the case may be, they exist divorced of everything that came before. This Daffy doesn’t know Bugs Bunny, wouldn’t understand who or what Duck Dodgers is, wouldn’t even recognize the company known as Warner Bros. (if the company even exists in this continuity).
So, some advice: Go watch Coyote vs. ACME as one might enjoy one of the classic 7-minute shorts. Go to laugh. Go to bond with the kids over a brand now classified as vintage entertainment. But don’t go asking too many questions. Don’t go expecting a believable plot or a life-changing experience. Please turn those logic circuits off.
Go because it’s fun seeing the coyote get blown up. Simple as that. It’s the true reason why these characters exist.—D
So, what happened to the Looney Tunes? How did a property that once earned billions every year become relegated to reruns on obscure channels like MeTV? How did a brand that once spanned vitamins and Michael Jordan commercials and Christmas specials become reduced to, at best, funny images slapped on a t-shirt? The logo on a bag of no-slip gravel? Even a source of controversy?
Of all the reasons, the primary culprit was Warner Bros. itself. Unlike Disney, which built its foundation on Mickey Mouse and his silly stable of friends, Bugs Bunny and friends were but a mere facet of Warner’s greater catalogue. The toons were a useful money-maker, sure, but hardly a pillar of the company. Essentially taken for granted, Warner (known then as TimeWarner) allowed the lucrative toons to fade away from mainstream TV, stuffing them exclusively on its Cartoon Network. And as the network fought for relevancy against rivals like Nickelodeon and The Disney Channel, the toons’ mindshare likewise diminished.
In short, over the last twenty years, the Looney Tunes have faced the ultimate disgrace of going from superstars to being the mere motes of nostalgia drifting on the edge of millennial memory. The current generation has no reference, no context, no shared experience with the wascally rabbit and his screwball friends. And this is the reality Coyote vs. ACME is up against. Is this film a nostalgic nod to the past intended for wistful, misty-eyed X’ers and older millennials? Or is it meant to reintroduce the Looney crew to younger folk otherwise clueless to who these toons really are?
It’s a true conundrum for a work like Coyote vs. ACME. Although filled with plenty of explosions and slapstick, the underlying plot isn’t exactly relatable to the average tyke: Wile E. Coyote is suing mega corporation ACME over its long-line of malfunctioning products. Adults might appreciate the absurdist but still relatively believable scenario. They might get the irony, in other words. But whether the tots will make the same connection--or will be able to still enjoy the movie if they don’t--is the gamble poor Ketchup Entertainment now faces.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Chip 'N Dale: Rescue Rangers are probably Coyote's closest correlates. And while Roger is still holds the S-tier medal in regards to these films, Rescue Rangers is a surprisingly decent modern-day romp through an array of cartoon cameos and tropes. Coyote falls somewhere between these two movies.
After delays and even a cancellation, the fabled Coyote VS. ACME is revealed to be real, hitting theaters Aug. 28, 2026. But the question remains: Will enough people go see it?
The Looney Tunes were once icons--as relevant in the '90s as they were in the '40s. Bugs was pals with superstar Michael Jordan. Bugs and his friends were a staple of the Saturday-Morning cartoon generation. And even characters like the lusty Pepe Le Pew were appreciated for being the incorrigible, and clueless, amusing nuisances that they were. Is Pepe a misogynist? Like the coyote, he's more lonely than anything. (And way too confident.)
The movie has some great chase scenes and spectacles, including this rocket skate sequence in which the Coyote comes oh so close in nabbing the Roadrunner...but not really.
Though most of the classic faces of Looney Lore return, they're still oddly disconnected from the shorts, the earlier films, even their parent company. Their personalities are the same, but this is not the same "Daffy" or "Tweety" as recognized from the cartoons. (Bugs, playing his part both cool and vaguely meta, seems to be the only one maybe in on the greater joke.)
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