There’s a poignant poetry in the Sisyphean quest of Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote. This born yearner roams the desert, trying to catch and eat the Road Runner, his attempts becoming increasingly more unhinged and self-destructive as the bird evades him at every turn, with a cheerful “beep beep!” Still, Coyote tries and tries again, often foiled by his own reliance on faulty technology procured from the Acme Company.

In 1990, Ian Frazier penned a humor piece for The New Yorker, imagining the legal proceedings between Wile E. Coyote and Acme, extrapolating what would happen if Looney Tunes happened in the real United States: The consumer would sue the pants off them.

That piece has now been adapted into “Coyote vs. Acme,” a live-action/animation mashup that sees Coyote procuring the services of billboard lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte) in order to make his grievances with Acme known. Or is it just another elaborate scheme to trap the Road Runner?

“Coyote vs. Acme” has faced its own wild journey of obstacles to make its way to the screen. Originally a Warner Bros. film, it was shelved in 2023 as a tax write-off, but the public backlash was so great that the studio allowed the filmmakers to seek distribution elsewhere. Three years after the dustup, the film hits theaters thanks to Ketchup Entertainment. It's a resurrection as miraculous as Coyote emerging, blackened, from a desert crater, after an unfortunate mishap with an explosive Acme product.

That is cause enough to rejoice, and it helps that the film, directed by Dave Green and written by Samy Burch (with a story by Burch, Jeremy Slater and DC Studios head honcho James Gunn), is a sharp, satirical and silly excavation of the some of the ills that plague our culture, while paying loving tribute to the Looney Tunes, too.

It becomes a legal potboiler about whistleblowers and corporate malfeasance in the vein of “Erin Brockovich” or “Dark Water,” and makes some pretty damning arguments about monopolies and tech companies that use their consumers as unwitting test subjects. No wonder David Zaslav’s Warner Bros. tried to sweep this one under the rug.

Burch’s screenplay is more adult drama than kid-friendly cartoon, but it works for the generation who grew up on Looney Tunes, with their shocking violence and often provocative humor. Sex pest Pepe Le Pew is quickly dispatched, and Bugs Bunny is reconfigured as a “Deep Throat” type character. Bugs helps lead Coyote, Kevin and Kevin’s doggedly determined niece/intern Paige (Lana Condor) to uncover the dark corporate conspiracy at the heart of Acme, where inventor Dr. Peter Lorre has been silenced for years.

Voice actor and Mel Blanc successor Eric Bauza provides all the voices for the Tunes characters, including Bugs, Lorre, Road Runner, Tweety Bird, and Foghorn Leghorn, the blustering CEO of Acme, who weaponizes the full might of his legal team, led by Buddy Crane (John Cena), whose turquoise bolo ties only get bigger and bigger. Green blends the natural humor of the actors with the signature style of the Tunes, and never breaks the internal rules.

Coyote never speaks, only communicating with placards, but the filmmakers make him a fully realized character, a tragic figure tortured by his own internal demons (his never-ending quest to catch the Road Runner), which makes him the perfect hyper-user of Acme products to be exploited by the company.

The familiar characters and lore allow for some freedom in making incisive cultural commentary. It’s cloaked by the characters, and our knowledge of them makes it easier to get into what the filmmakers are trying to say about big companies beating up on the little guy. If the Looney Tunes are the lab rats for Acme, what does that make us, with the massive conglomerates that rule our reality?

Still, “Coyote vs. Acme” extracts something so existentially beautiful from Coyote’s futile, endless quest, from which he derives a sense of purpose, drive and identity. What is Coyote if not chasing Road Runner? What is Road Runner if not being chased? Through their odd-couple journey, even Kevin, the washed-up, disaffected lawyer, learns to find purpose and meaning in his life and work again.

“Coyote vs. Acme” might be a goofy comedy, and perhaps, if WB had released it three years ago, it would just be a lightweight riff on the Looney Tunes. But in 2026 — after the 2024 presidential election, and after Zaslav ran Warner Bros. into the ground, exiting with a fat paycheck— it takes on a new resonance, about big, bad companies, and the little guys who stand up to them. Wile E. Coyote, role model? We could certainly stand to learn a little something from him about tenacity.

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‘COYOTE VS. ACME’

3.5 stars (out of 4)

Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes

Rated PG for cartoon violence and some language.

Where to watch: In theaters Friday, Aug. 28

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