Coyote vs. Acme

After this came out, I read reviews that said how surprisingly warm and emotional and inspiring the movie was. How it took a surprisingly complex situation -- the untouchable mega-corporation trying to bully the everyman in an effort to avoid justice -- and applied it to the Looney Tunes universe. That it was the best real world/animation blend since Roger Rabbit. I was prepared for a let-down. These movies that blow up big without initial studio backing have a hit-and-miss track record with me, mostly miss, and I was afraid it would be that again. So I'm happy to say that I quite enjoyed this movie. I didn't think it was the greatest thing since pants with pockets, but it was a lot of fun. Every morsel of praise thrown its way has been, for the most part, earned. It is funny, it does have a sweet story at its core, and it does the unlikely-friendship well. The David vs. Goliath court battle story is familiar, and CvE doesn't do anything new with it, but it's how they do it that makes it come alive. And the ways they use the Looney Tunes characters is inspired; almost every character you can think of gets a role, right down to their Peter Lorre caricature, and they're put in all sorts of unexpected positions. Elmer Fudd is a tenured senator? Foghorn Leghorn as a CEO? Gossamer (the big red monster) as a process server? Inspired. The human characters are no slouches either. Will Forte is cast perfectly as a slovenly failure of a lawyer who handles cartoon injury cases and always settles them for pennies because he's afraid to try hard. Lana Condor is a beam of sunshine and optimism, which is a role I've seen her in before and she does with ease, but she's also the movie's conscience. And if you were among the many disappointed with John Cena's heel run in WWE, well, this will fill the void that left, as he is a delicious, smarmy, amoral bastard. If CvE can be said to have faults, I'd say there are two. One is minor, and that is the quality of the integration of the live action and animation. Most of the time, it was good, but there were occasions where it was a bit wonky, enough to stand out. The second, larger flaw is that, while it is funny, it isn't quite as funny as it wants to be. I don't mean that CvE thinks it's clever, because that's not the case; CvE is trying, earnestly and desperately, to get your laughs through tried and true Looney Tunes-style humor. But that style is only good for so many laughs. In a 7 minute short, it works wonders. In a 100 minute movie, it's a car that eventually runs out of gas. There's only so many times one can see a pratfall or an Acme product backfire and react. Fortunately, by the last act, the movie has almost entirely switched gears from humor to sincere storytelling, but even then, I'd stopped chuckling before the slapstick ran out. I still enjoyed it, but my sides weren't splitting. I'm glad the movie got saved and we were all given a chance to see it. Coyote vs. Acme is a charming, inventive movie about friendship, fighting not because you think you can win but because the fight needs to be fought, and the rights of the person versus the might of the corporation. Animation fans and old Gen-X'ers who grew up watching these characters on Saturday morning will get a kick out of it, and will appreciate the novelty of the idea.