Coyote vs Acme review: Beep beep! A joyous and smart ode to childhood without sermonising and lazy nostalgia

I'll admit it: I was a little terrified about Coyote vs. Acme. The teasers were charming, yes, but you can't trust charm these days.

What if this was one of those 'childhood property gets a gritty reboot' jobs, and the film opened with Daffy Duck getting picked off in the first act just to prove that childhood, like innocence and Blockbuster Video, is dead?

Or worse, what if it turned out to be a two-hour PSA about screen time, the modern parent's poison of choice, with just Looney Tunes cosplay?

I did not have to worry. The moment Daffy waddled across the opening credits, something in me, tired of bloated, self-serious blockbusters and the industry's habit of field-dressing our childhood icons for spare parts, finally exhaled. Coyote vs. Acme is a genuinely joyful, delightfully batty ride, one that takes the oldest fantasy of every '90s kid, what if the cartoons were real, and I just ran into them at the mall, and builds an entire legal thriller on top of it.

And thank goodness or Will Forte, Lana Condor, and John Cena, who commit to the bit with total sincerity, holding conversations with what I can only assume were tennis balls on sticks and somehow making us believe they're locking eyes with Bugs Bunny. I need the blooper reel of Cena earnestly delivering "you tawt you taw a puddy tat" to a piece of foam on a C-stand, and I would pay full price to see it.

The case of the century

The premise is pure Looney Tunes logic: Wile E. Coyote, having survived one exploding Acme product too many, this time a pair of catastrophically misfiring rocket skates, decides he's done falling off cliffs for free. He wants justice, and he wants Acme to pay for it.

So, we meet Kevin Avery (Will Forte), a lawyer whose best years are visibly behind him, currently subsisting on the ambulance-chaser's diet of quiet settlements with corporations too big to sue and just guilty enough to pay hush money. Avery would very much like to settle this one too and go back to ignoring his own washed-out potential. Coyote has other plans, and it's genuinely funny watching a cartoon character bulldoze a grown man's midlife crisis simply by refusing to give up.

On the other side of the courtroom: Buddy Crane (a career-best John Cena), the impeccably punchable CEO of Acme, radiating the specific arrogance of a man who has never once read the safety warnings on his own products.

Coyote's optimism is, naturally, absolute, he demonstrates his never-say-die philosophy by repeatedly launching himself off a cliff throughout the film, and why wouldn't he? He's a cartoon. Physics is optional and mortality is a rumour. That relentless, consequence-free hope turns out to be contagious, and it's what eventually cracks Avery open, pushing him to dig into the rot underneath Acme's polished PR, because Avery, it turns out, knows exactly what it feels like to be steamrolled by a system built to protect the people who already have power.

The reunion tour

The supporting cast is where the film has the most fun, and the needle-drops of nostalgia are used with genuine wit rather than lazy fan service. Taz appears in court with the deadpan formality of "Mr. Devil," which is somehow the funniest possible way to introduce a tornado made of teeth into a legal proceeding.

Foghorn Leghorn shows up as exactly the blustering, self-appointed disruptor you've met a hundred times on LinkedIn. Bugs Bunny is holding evidence that could crack the entire case wide open, playing coy about it in the most Bugs way imaginable, and Tweety gets recast, delightfully, as an unlikely antagonist. Sylvester, unfortunately, is criminally underused; there was clearly a bigger, better bit available for him that the film never quite cashes in on.

A looney courtroom comedy

Structurally, the film is smarter than it needs to be: it's a buddy-cop movie wearing a courtroom drama's clothes, with Avery and Coyote forming the kind of odd-couple partnership that shouldn't work on paper and absolutely does on screen. The emotional high point isn't even in the courtroom, it's a surprisingly tender reckoning between Coyote and the Road Runner, as the two of them realize that decades of cliffs, magnets, and elaborate humiliation have built something like a friendship. It's a swerve into sincerity that could easily have curdled into schmaltz, but the film earns it.

Underneath all the anvils and Acme catalogues, the film's thesis is refreshingly unfussy: big corporations run the roost (literally, in this case), and the only real defense is stubbornness, self-belief, and the willingness to actually show up. It's a message a lesser film would have delivered as a lecture. Coyote vs. Acme delivers it as a punchline, with snark that keeps the film smiling even when it's making a point.

The pacing sags a little in the middle stretch, a few scenes could stand to be tightened, and there's an actual movie fighting for room amid all the cameos, but this is a genuinely funny, unexpectedly warm surprise. It respects its cartoon legacy instead of strip-mining it, and honestly, that alone should count as a legal precedent.