Coyote vs Acme review: Was it worth the wait?

Mr. Coyote? Coyote. Part live action, part animation, Coyote vs Acme looks a little different than most movies and theaters right now and its backstory is just as unconventional. The movie was originally made to be released by Warner Brothers, but it hits theaters today under an independent distributor called Ketchup Entertainment. CBC's Jackson Weaver is here with all the details of that controversial backstory, but before we get into that, Jackson, first off, just give us a rundown. Yeah, I mean, we know Looney Tunes, I assume all of us know the Looney Tunes, you know, you have Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, of course, Wile E. Coyote. Now, as you mentioned, this isn't a typical movie that you see in theaters or even a typical Looney Tunes cartoon. You've seen some of that chase and that's really the best preamble for this film. We have like a little bit more of the clip I want you to see and maybe you can clue into exactly what is going wrong for the Coyote, which is something that we see going wrong in all the old cartoons, but let's take a look. So, of course, what we see there, you know, everything's going wrong. And a little bit further on to that clip, he crashes off into a wind turbine named Acme, the rocket skates made by Acme, of course. And in this universe in which real people and cartoons exist side by side, some of the cartoons start to get the idea of, hey, all of our schemes are going wrong because of this huge corporation of this terrible capitalist society we're in. So there is a lawyer in this film played by Will Forte. Now, he represents different cartoon characters in class action lawsuits against that big corporation. Wile E. Coyote ends up being his big client. It's a mix of kind of like a courtroom drama where the corporate lawyer played by John Cena, the terrible CEO, Foghorn Leghorn, and then we have the little guy fighting against him. But it's also, of course, just a very extended Looney Tunes cartoon with that type of humor. Yeah, it's always Acme. Acme is the shadiest corporation in the world. I can say that because it's not real. Now, there is some controversy around this film and it's coming out. I spoke about it briefly, but explain how we got here. It's very convoluted. So we're going back to the 90s. Warner is acquired by Time. They create Time Warner, the largest media corporation in the world. And it starts off this kind of chess match of all these different companies trying to acquire one another. Consolidation, all these different moves. Happens a bunch more times with Warner. In 2000s, there's this AOL merger. That's disastrous. They take on a lot of debt. 2018, it's AT&T, I believe. In 2022, it's Discovery. Now, we have all of these different machinations and this huge amount of debt in this company. David Zaslav, the new CEO, says, how do I save some money? He starts taking things off of HBO Max, their streaming platform, because he can get tax write-offs for those. And then also, some movies start ending up disappearing. There's the holiday, or rather, the Scooby-Doo film. There is a film, Batgirl, that disappears as well. And of course, this film goes nowhere. A year after it's made, it is taken off of the schedules. After that, the creators, Will Forte and director Dave Green are heartbroken. They've made this film for about $70 million. They want people to see it. And the fact that Warner Bros. is ostensibly getting a reported $30 million tax write-off is not really making them feel much better. No, of course, yeah. So outside of that, there is an outcry. People that like Will Forte, that like Looney Tunes, say, what are we doing? We're disappearing art in order to fill our coffers. That's not right. In walks the company you mentioned, Ketchup Entertainment. They're kind of an indie distributor. They're allowed to buy this film for $50 million. And they have done it before as well. There's another film, Looney Tunes, The Day the Earth Blew Up. Their other kind of big movie that they took and released and had some success with. And as it stands now, they're really looking to take a loss potentially. But there is a little silver lining in that, you know, we're talking about it. And the through line of the film being little guy fighting big evil corporate company. Some people are seeing parallels between real life, let's say. Yeah, I mean, and that's, you know, that's a lot of baggage that you just explained there. And that could potentially hurt a film too. But it sounds like there's potential here for it to actually help in many ways. Yeah, I mean, I think initially, this was really just a hoorah moment. We are going to show this to you and we're going to engender some good feelings for having done so. But the tracking for this film, the numbers have really started to trend up. It went from about $8 million projected opening to around 16, 17 at this point. A lot of excitement. Very, very positive critical response. People saying it's amazing, it's great. It's what you want to see. And that positive feeling of one for the little guy is really kind of fueling that success. Yeah, you're going to think I'm weird. I'm one of those people. I think more so than the Odyssey, more so than Spider-Man. This is the movie I've been wanting to see all summer. Not just because of the story behind it, but I love Wile E. Coyote, my favorite Looney Tunes. So the important question, how does it work as a movie? I will say on the one hand, it's not geared to me at all. It's a family film. It's a comedy that doesn't necessarily ring true for me. But for most people, this is going to land. If you like Looney Tunes, if you like Will Forte, if you like the narrative that we see outside of it, absolutely a great film. I think we have a star rating show that I gave it. So me personally, three out of five. But again, not for me at all. I think most people are going to rate it much higher than I did. I'm predicting a six out of five on the Carcassole rating scale. Jackson Weavers, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, man.