Infamously shelved by Warner Bros. and rescued by Ketchup Entertainment, Dave Green's Looney Tunes animation/live action mashup Coyote vs. Acme is ingenious, hilarious, wildly entertaining, and downright lovable.
Wile E. Coyote is trying once again to catch the Road Runner with Acme products, which continue to backfire. He sees an ad for lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte), of the firm Avery, Jones & Maltese, who promises to help those that feel victimized. Coyote makes his way to Albuquerque to meet Avery, but finds him to be a small-time lawyer only interested in small settlements. The Coyote's huge mound of evidence, consisting of tons of faulty Acme products, earns him a settlement of $50,000, but the Coyote turns it down, demanding to go to court.
Worse, Avery will have to face his old law school nemesis, Buddy Crane (John Cena), now a slick high-priced lawyer for Acme, in court. Even trickier, Avery and his team, which includes his plucky niece Paige (Lana Condor), realize that they must get the actual Road Runner in court as a witness to the Coyote's pain and suffering. Then, thanks to help from a secret whistleblower, the heroes learn that Acme is actually covering up some dark secrets.
Coyote vs. Acme is easily the best thing of its kind since Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Space Jam and Looney Tunes: Back in Action notwithstanding), and even captures that goofball, anarchic spirit so well that it could have been a sequel.
It's crazy to think that the movie focuses on a pair of characters that don't speak (the idea came from a 1990 humorous essay published in The New Yorker), but the filmmakers run with it. Coyote and Road Runner use their black-lettered signs to "speak," and there's plenty of hilarious miming, plus the Road Runner has a memorable scene in which he answers questions with "Beep Beep for Yes and Beep for No."
Will Forte is at his best as the lawyer who gave up years ago and takes the easy road, eventually finding inspiration in the Coyote's refusal to stop chasing his dreams. It's a great message, in addition to its fearless anti-corporate and anti-animal-testing themes.
John Cena is very funny as the villainous lawyer; he shares screen time with Foghorn Leghorn, who, here works for Acme and is also a villain. Lana Condor rounds things out with her forward-thinking Paige. (Tone Bell and Martha Kelly play the other members of Avery's sad but funny little firm.)
Overall, it's perhaps not terribly surprising that Coyote vs. Acme is so sidesplitting and clever, so technically and visually amazing, or so zippy and delightfully chaotic, but what is surprising is how touching it is with its unexpectedly sweet friendships. Don't walk… run to see this one.
