(courtesy IMP Awards)
We’ve become so used to the well-structured cycle of movie hype and promo, which always finishes with the release of said ballyhooed film either in the cinema or a streaming platform, that the idea that you could make a film and actually never released it, not because it’s bad but because there are tax write-off advantages, seems almost too impossible to imagine.
But that is precisely what happened to Coyote vs. Acme, which was finished and sitting on a shelf, ready for release, and having tested positively with audiences, likely to do very well thank you very much with its Who Framed Roger Rabbit? mix of animation and live action.
Apparently this kind of behaviour is not unique to this film as this excerpt from an article from Australia’s ABC News makes startlingly clear but the lengths the new executives went to was:
Burying films made by a studio’s former heads is a classic Hollywood move.
Back in 1988, Terry Gilliam’s underrated The Adventures of Baron Munchausen scored glowing reviews and four Oscar nominations but became the biggest box office bomb of all time, purely because the new heads at Columbia Studios buried and under-promoted the film’s release as revenge against their predecessors (and Gilliam).
But axing a completed film as a tax write-off was something totally new.
What saved Coyote vs. Acme was good old online outrage, so outrage and hashtag fuelled (#ReleaseCoyoteVsAcme and #SaveCoyoteVsAcme) that Warner Bros. agreed to let the filmmakers find someone who was willing to stump up the cash to distribute the film instead of its reluctant originating studio.
That they clearly did is evident in this review, and proof that good art, if championed by those who made and believe it, can find an audience; currently tracking at well over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, Coyote vs. Acme is a very good movie, no, a GREAT one and absolutely upends any expectant apathy you might have as a filmgoer that the endless conveyor belt of films we are used to is all but inevitable.
It’s clearly anything but, and the one thing that struck this reviewer over and over during the taut and magnificently told 103-minute runtime of Coyote vs. Acme, was intense gratitude that a film this clever, and funny, and vibrantly heartfelt, that’s full of meta classic Looney Tunes references and yet is still instantly accessible to modern audiences unencumbered by nostalgia, ever made its way to us at all.
Based on the book of the same name by Ian Frazier, Coyote vs. Acme sees the Coyote, who it is humourously made clear only has a limited number of signs (he never speaks but the makers of the film handles this so imaginatively), decides to sue the Acme Corporation which you may recall supplied all of the outlandish contraptions which Coyote used in an endlessly failed attempt to land his frenemy Road Runner (Eric Bauza who supplies the voices for 11 characters including Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck) and which always broke spectacularly in some way.
Holed in his cave full of Acme products piled high to the ceiling – he is dubbed a high-volume user in the subsequent court case and it’s clear much of Acme’s profits rest with him – Coyote hears an ad from pulpy strip mall ambulance-chaser lawyer Kevin Avery (named for Looney Tunes animator Tex Avery) for anyone who’s, rather specifically, had an array of wacky products injure in hilariously specific ways.
They are, of course, the many ways in which Coyote has been injured, though he always bounces back, even from cliff falls and being trapped under a huge boulder, and he decides that after another day of Road Runner evading and humiliating him that he’s going to get some recompense.
Alas, Kevin, played with weary laziness and then revived audacity by Will Forte is only interested in the simplest and least problematic of trials and suggests a minimal claim with the easiest chance of low-compensation success, but Coyote, who comes across as tenacious, thoughtful, inventive and unexpectedly vulnerable at times – it’s always tricky fleshing out a much-loved legacy character but writer Samy Burch manages it with masterful aplomb – is having none of it and before you can say a mountain of broken Acme products suffered in what should be a fairly finite file box, they off to court and then to Congress to plead their case before Senator Elmer Fudd, just one of a vast array of Looney Tunes characters who make it into the film, either substantially or in cameo.
While the storyline is a reasonably straightforward David Vs. Goliath, innocent consumer vs evil corporation, headed by CEO Foghorn Leghorn who’s aided and abetted in nefarious legal skullduggery by Acme Corporations’ legal counsel Buddy Crane (named after an early Looney Tunes character), played with playfully villainous intent by John Cena, it’s what the filmmakers do with that is truly remarkable.
They take an uncomplicated plot (not a putdown; simple is often best) and fill it with legacy Looney Tunes characters from the relatively obscure like Dr Peter Lorre, and Claude the Cat through the big marquee names like Bugs Bunny, who acts as a Deep Throat-like informer, Tweety, Taz Devil (in an hilarious courtroom appearance which steals the scene!), Porky Pig and Daffy Duck who is in classically comedically-rich zany form.
At no time though do any of the character feel like they are simply there to tick a character inclusion box and all of the perfectly pitched oneliners and masterfully realised sight gags have their place and time and contribute to the feel of a film that acts as a love letter to the classic characters while still giving them room to do their 21st century thing.
It also manages with wit, zaniness and a sense of the ridiculousness firmly in tow, to be incredibly affecting and an unexpectedly incisive stab at the evils of corporate America, which is apropos not simply because of the current tech bros climate but because of the way the film almost didn’t see the light of day.
That, of course, wasn’t the intent when the film was made because everyone was fully expecting it to be released on schedule, but as an act of retrofitting analysis it works and works a treat, helped along by a protagonist in Coyote who is all kinds of full-formed character realness, full of his trademark need to catch the Road Runner (though even that is given a fresh and moving spin) but also vulnerable, much put-upon and as much as victim as anything else.
In short, Coyote vs. Acme is inspired! A seamlessly realised blend of live action and animation, it channels all the much-loved vibes of classic Looney Tunes while giving it a funny, clever and heartfelt modern sheen which makes you laugh (A LOT), makes you feel all the things, and leaves you immensely grateful this wondrously good is ours to enjoy at all.
Remember to kaboom responsibly …