Coyote v. ACME (4/5 Stars)

Chuck Jones’s Rules for Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Cartoons

Rule 1: The Road Runner Cannot Harm the Coyote Except by Going “Beep-Beep!”

Rule 2: No Outside Force Can Harm the Coyote - Only His Own Ineptitude or the Failure of the ACME Products

Rule 3: The Coyote Could Stop Anytime - If He Were Not a Fanatic. (Repeat: “A Fanatic is One Who Redoubles His Effort When He Has Forgotten His Aim.” - George Santayana)

Rule 4: No Dialogue Ever, Except “Beep-Beep!”

Rule 5: The Road Runner Must Stay on the Road - Otherwise, Logically, He Would Not Be Called Road Runner

Rule 6: All Action Must be Confined to the Natural Environment of the Two Characters - The Southwest American Desert.

Rule 7: All Materials, Tools, Weapons, or Mechanical Conveniences Must be Obtained From the ACME Corporation

Rule 8: Whenever Possible, Make Gravity the Coyote’s Greatest Enemy.

Rule 9: The Coyote is Always More Humiliated than Harmed by His Failures

The foregoing rules were laid down as a guide for those animators who would take on the challenge of a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon. They are pretty strict and given the constraints you would think that all forms of this sub-sub-sub genre of Looney Tunes would stay confined to the strictures of a five-minute length cartoon. And for decades that was the case.

Then in 1991, Ian Frazier, a writer for the New Yorker dreamed up a different scenario, one involving a personal injury attorney bringing a case on behalf of Coyote as against ACME Corporation for product liability. It was a much beloved short story confined entirely to the opening statement of Coyote’s attorney in the United States District Court, Southwestern District, Tempe, Arizona. Here is the link:

https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35463

A few excerpts:

“Mr. Coyote states that on 85 separate occasions he has purchased of the Acme Company (hereinafter, “Defendant”), through that company’s mail-order department, certain products which did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labeling…”

“...Again, Defendant sold over the counter, without caveat, a product which attached powerful jet engineers (in this case, two) to inadequate vehicles, with little or not provision for passenger safety. Encumbered by his heavy casts, Mr. Coyote lost control of the Rocket Skates soon after strapping them on, and collided with a roadside billboard so violently as to leave a hole in the shape of his full silhouette…”

“..As the Court is in no doubt aware, Defendant has a virtual monopoly of manufacture and sale of goods required by Mr. Coyote’s work. It is our contention that Defendant has used its market advantage to the detriment of the consumer of such specialized products as itching powder, giant kites, Burmese tiger traps, anvils, and two-hundred-foot-long rubber bands. Much as he has come to mistrust Defendant’s products, Mr. Coyote has no other domestic source of supply to which to turn. One can only wonder what our trading partners in Western Europe and Japan would make of such a situation, where a giant company is allowed to victimize the consumer in the most reckless and wrongful manner over and over again…”

Therein lies the dual inspirations for this movie Coyote v. Acme. But how to go about actually making this movie. You have the cartoons with their very strict rules, characters that do not speak, and nearly identical plots. Then you have this New Yorker short story that takes place in that most verbal of locations, a courtroom, and importantly, does not feature the Road Runner.

Not surprisingly, it took over thirty years to figure out how to make this movie. [And then, we will get into this further below, an evil corporation attempted to kill it for tax purposes.] But it was worth the wait because Coyote v. Acme is an exceedingly clever movie that somehow betrays neither of its wildly opposite inspirations. The screenplay was written by Samy Burch, with help on the story by James Gunn and Jeremy Slater.

Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The movie starts with an animated short, a very good Coyote v. Road Runner cartoon, before revealing that the animated characters inhabit a world where toons and humans live side-by-side. The key to this story is the central relationship between Coyote and his counsel, Kevin Avery of Avery, Jones, and Maltese, a billboard attorney that specializes in cartoon accidents. Kevin Avery (played by Will Forte) is a loser like Coyote but in a completely different way. Whereas Coyote is a fanatic consumed with an impossible goal for which he never stops chasing, Kevin is afraid of failure and lacks the motivation to try for a victory. He chases easy settlements and avoids trials. These two foils were made for each other. (Where the Road Runner fits in, I won’t give away).

The serendipity of choices that feel just right fills this movie from wall-to-wall. Of course, Kevin Avery has a past colleague that is lead counsel for ACME who is better looking and smarmy and played by John Cena, that most cartoonish of actors. Of course, Foghorn Leghorn is the villain CEO of ACME Corporation, that Tchiakovsky’s “1812 Overture” provides the soundtrack for the climax, that Bugs Bunny shows up as a type of whistleblower to a secret corporate plot called “Project Sisyphus”, and that Coyote has an ulterior motives to suing the ACME Corporation (which I won’t divulge) that is truly stupid but wholly within the nature of his character.

The Coyote v. Road Runner cartoons were okay to laugh at because Coyote seemed to always get what he deserved. He didn’t have to chase after the Road Runner. But at the same time, there is something wrong when the ACME’s big corporate lawyer rants that “We all know who is responsible. All of his injuries are self-inflicted.” That isn’t true. We’ve seen the cartoons. The ACME products malfunction all the time. And it isn't okay for it to just happen to a cartoon who will be okay after two seconds. There is this real underlying sense of injustice here. You may not want Coyote to catch the Road Runner, but you do want him to succeed against ACME.

Some movies have production horror stories that magnify the themes of the movie. Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo are very good examples of that. Other movies have production horror stories that are maybe interesting but are kind of irrelevant to what the movie is about like Jaws. Coyote v. Acme lives in the first camp. After Coyote v. Acme was written, shot, and animated, the new CEO of Warner Brothers decided to kill it for tax purposes. (I think this was the same jerk that changed the name of “HBO MAX” to “MAX”). Movies in development are canned all the time for all sorts of reasons. But Coyote v. Acme was complete and then killed. That never happens. And certainly not to a clearly good movie. For a few years it seemed like no-one would get to see it, like not even on streaming, because to distribute it in any form would screw with the tax-write off. Given that hundreds of people had worked on it, this too was another corporate injustice.

Many different things happened, the most important of which was the relative theatrical success of a Daffy Duck/Porky Pig movie called The Day the Earth Blew Up, but Coyote v. Acme was finally released in August 2026, four years after it was made. I am happy to relate that it has made its money back and is profitable. And it's a good movie too. Also, I think that hated CEO has been fired. HBO does have its name back.

One last note for the late voice-actor savant Eric Bauza, who played Bugs Bunny, Charlie Dog, Daffy Duck, Dr. Lorre, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Gossamer, Porky Pig, Road Runner, and Tweety in this movie. Indeed, I think he voiced every Looney Toon but the Tasmanian Devil and Coyote (neither of which speak). He will be sorely missed.

Nebraska (3/5 Stars)

I’m not entirely sure what Writer Bob Nelson's and Director Alexandar Payne’s relationship with the north middle of the country is, but they sure don’t seem at all impressed with it. For example, the film is shot in black and white but this doesn’t have anything to do with a particularly dark plot or mood. Instead it seems to be a judgment on the location of the movie, the empty spaces and depressed towns between Billings, Montana and Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s like Payne didn’t think they deserved color. Nothing is going on so you might as well not try to liven it up.

“Nebraska,” is a comedy and as the comedy it is trying to be it is perfect. The little hitch is that it is attempting to satirize sparseness and boredom and even a perfect satire of such subjects will invariably move slow and contain fewer jokes than the usual comedy. We are treated several times to scenes of people drinking beer, watching TV, or both. This reviewer finds that such scenes lend an odd feeling of unaccomplishment. The characters are doing exactly what I myself am doing while watching it. 

At times though the movie rises from its slumber to deliver some really good material. My favorite involves the introduction of Woody Grant's overweight nephews, Bart and Cole to his son David, played by Will Forte. David is not the most successful man in the world and sheepishly explains that he only sells stereo equipment in Billings. The nephews don’t respond because they don’t have jobs. After an awkward pause, Woody’s brother speaks up. "Bart here did some jail time.” Such is the excitement in ‘Nebraska’ where nothing happens, everyone is unemployed and overweight, and alcoholism is rampant because, fuck it, what else is there to do. In the end though, this is what keeps ‘Nebraska’ from being a ‘must-see’ movie. That is unless you are actually from Nebraska, than I guess you would have to see it because, I guess, what other movie is set in Nebraska. Then I suspect the people in the middle of the country would hate this movie. I remember raving about "Fargo" once to someone from North Dakota only to find out that everyone there despised the movie's portrayal of their accents. This movie may work the same way, though I suspect the people who deliberately left the place for greener pastures may absolutely love it. 

The plot is set in motion when the octogenerian of the family, Woody Grant, gets it in his head that he won a million dollars in a sweepstakes competition. He can’t drive and he won’t trust public transportation so he attempts to walk to Lincoln, Nebraska where the company is located. His sons, David and Ross, played by Bob Odenkirk, try to explain to him that the newsletter is a complete scam meant to sell magazine subscriptions. “I didn’t even know they still did this,” David states. He’s right. I haven’t seen one of those ‘You may have already won a million dollar’ junk mail letters in about a decade. Nothing will dissuade Woody though from setting out time and again on foot and in bad weather. 

David finally agrees to drive Woody to Nebraska because the man is really old and doesn’t have anything else going for him. A pit stop in Woody's old hometown becomes a much longer detour. Father and son walk around and take a look at the old haunts. Everything is changed and nobody recognizes Woody. Except at the bar. People recognize Woody at the bar. Woody tells everyone in the town that he has won a million dollars and for some incredibly odd reason everybody believes him.

Here, Payne’s satire of Middle America perhaps becomes too mean. It may be a little too much to believe that everyone believes Woody’s story about winning the lottery, even after his sons try to explain that it is all just a scam, but these apparently are really desperate people living in really quiet desperation. The family descends on Woody complaining about how his alcoholism cost them money over the years and demanding that they get a share of the winnings. They won’t take any talk of a scam for an answer. Everyone really really needs the money.

The performances are great, and especially noteworthy because they represent some of the finest performances in several careers, one of which is an especially long career. That would be Bruce Dern, who at 77 years old, is in his first lead role in a good movie for the first time. His Woody Grant is a alcoholic mess of well-meaning dementia. Dern does a particularly good job of seamlessly interweaving Grant’s lucid moments in with his delusions so they really seem like they are coming from the same very old person. We learn a lot about Woody Grant in this movie and by the end you sort of hope he gets his money, not for him but for what he wants to do with it. Will Forte does a great job as well in the thankless task of the straight man holding together a cast of crazy characters. Will is mainly known for comedy, notably SNL and 30 Rock, and is yet another example of a comedian ably putting together a dramatic performance. Then there is Bob Odenkirk, who has done better things (Mr. Show, Breaking Bad) but is always a delight to see on screen in any incarnation. Final mention of the two nephews played by Tim Driscroll and Devin Ratray. They gather some of the best laughs by just sitting next to each other and grinning. It's good stuff.

I expect the Academy will love this movie way out of proportion because it is about an old white person, which coincidentally is the majority demographic of the Academy. I bet they all like it even more because it is in black and white even though there is no particular reason for it. The last movie Alexander Payne made about an old white person was “The Descendants.” That won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, which was just a really terrible thing to happen. I have the sneaking suspicion that the writing for this one will be similarly nominated. It’s good writing, but it’s not great because it can't be. There isn't the ambition that is generally needed to make the writing great. Here’s hoping that it at least won’t win anything.