Coyote vs. Acme represents the feel-good comeback story of the year. The film will open in theaters on August 28th, completing one of the wildest fights a film has ever had to make it onto the screen. It started as a concept that DC Studios head James Gunn came up with in 2015, and handed off to his buddy, Jeremy Slater. The project was announced by Warner Bros. eight years ago, in August of 2018, and underwent several creative changes, with Samy Burch (May December) becoming the screenwriter, and Dave Green (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows) taking over as director. The film was shot all the way back in 2022, and you would think getting it in the can was hard, but it’s only where the problems began.
When Warner Bros. merged with Discovery between 2021 and 2022, the new executive team shelved several high-profile films that WB had already shot, including DC’s Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme. Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t have faith that the film was worthy of being a summer theatrical release, but the first critical reviews are proving them very wrong.
As of writing this, Coyote vs. Acme‘s first wave of critics’ reviews (31 and counting…) have the film sitting pretty at a Rotten Tomatoes score of 94%. That has to feel validating for Dave Green, star Will Forte (MacGruber), and the rest of the cast (Lana Condor, Luis Guzmán, Kenneth Choi, P.J. Byrne, Tone Bell, and John Cena (among others), as well as Jame Gunn, who is quietly still attached as a producer.
“It’s a pleasure to report that the film is a hilarious delight, one of the best live-action/animation films ever, and will be treasured by Looney Tunes fans (and who isn’t one?) who will be thrilled seeing their favorite cartoon characters return to the big screen,” writes Frank Scheck of THR, leaving no room for uncertainty about his opinion.
Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com was similarly happy with the end result of the film, writing, “Consistently clever and funny, Dave Green’s Coyote vs. Acme opens with the funny credit that this is ‘Based on a True Story’ … just one of the first of many smart, unexpected jokes in a movie filled with them. In a time when excuses for children’s entertainment are often just marketing to get kids to buy new toys or force their parents to maintain a streaming subscription, Coyote vs. Acme understands that you can be both gloriously silly and remarkably smart at the same time.”
Of course, not every critic loves the film (hence the 94% score), as Variety’s Owen Gleiberman writes, “It could have been called ‘Remembrance of Rube Goldberg Bombs Past.’ Yet there’s a certain way that ‘Coyote vs. Acme,’ next to those cartoons, feels neutered and tame.” Perhaps Mr. Gleiberman didn’t comprehend the datedness of his references when he wrote it, but we don’t think many younger viewers going to see Coyote vs. Acme will get hung up on that issue…
According to Coyote vs. Acme‘s synopsis: “After decades of being blown to bits by bombs, demolished by dynamite, mangled by magnets, battered by boulders, trampled by trains, tricked by tunnels, sprung by springs, steamrolled by steamrollers, maligned by misfires, bedeviled by bungees, rattled by rockets, backstabbed by bat suits, rocked by rocket skates, upended by unicycles, quaked by quake pills, rubberized by rogue bands, and hurled headlong off every cliff in the Southwest, Wile E. Coyote (Genius) finally fights back.”
“Teaming up with billboard accident lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte), he takes on slick corporate counsel Buddy Crane (John Cena) and ACME, Inc., the profit-obsessed conglomerate behind every one of the Coyote’s chaotic catastrophes.”
Coyote vs. Acme will be in theaters on August 28th.
