Finally, Coyote Lawyers Up

t’s folly, really, trying to review a Looney Tunes movie like “Coyote vs. Acme” from an insurance perspective.

In the old cartoons, of course, Coyote would try to cleverly trap Road Runner, but the plans always backfired, leaving Coyote smashed, twisted or blown up. In the live-action/cartoon movie mashup released in August, Coyote sues Acme, the manufacturer of the various products — magnets, ball bearings, TNT — that foiled his plans. The product liability angle could not be clearer.

So, is this a movie about insurance?

Of course not! The Looney Tunes were cartoons. Granted, “Coyote vs. Acme” is a hybrid, mixing live actors and animated characters, but how much realism do you want? Do you want to see: Depositions? Fights over venue? Definitions of the word occurrence?

Or do you want to watch stuff blow up in the coyote’s face?

The movie’s inspiration — a 1,500-word New Yorker piece — took the concussive approach. Ian Frazier’s story is a simple opening statement from Coyote’s attorney. It is funny because it chokes the slapstick into a stentorian courtroom voice:

At this point, Defendant’s product should have thrust Mr. Coyote forward and away from the boulder. Instead for reasons yet unknown, the Acme Spring-Powered shoes thrust the boulder away from Mr. Coyote. As the intended prey looked on unharmed, Mr. Coyote hung suspended in air. Then the twin springs recoiled, bringing Mr. Coyote to a violent feet-first collision with the boulder, the full weight of his head and forequarters falling upon his lower extremities.

Frazier was inspired by a cassette he found while downsizing his parents’ estate. He wrote the story on a typewriter, dropped it into a manila envelope and snail-mailed it off – in 1989. It was published the following February.

Yeah, 36 years to get to the screen.

Frazier wrote at the tail end of the liability crisis. Changes in case law had unleashed a crippling bout of social inflation. Only a few years earlier, insurers were so under-reserved that the whole industry could have been considered technically insolvent.

But this movie is not a nostalgia trip to the days when asbestos was the next asbestos. It’s nostalgia to when even before you could read or speak, you could divine Coyote’s plan (2-meter cannonball rolls off a valley cliff to flatten Road Runner) and watch it kerblooey (cannonball misses Road Runner, rolls up the opposite valley wall, flies in air and lands on Coyote).

On that score, “Coyote vs. Acme”does just fine. As Frazier told a roomful of cinephiles on August 30, 2026, in Montclair, New Jersey, the movie is a string of sight gags — just like the Chuck Jones originals.

Sure, there is a plot: Coyote finds a billboard attorney (Will Forte) and sues the evil corporation. And there are complications, like Coyote needs Road Runner as a corroborating witness but would rather have the bird under glass.

But the story exists mainly to link slapstick blackouts, with a couple other merry bits tossed in: The plaintiff lawyers are generally sad sacks who worry that the weekend mini-golf tourney might make them miss work Monday. Looney Tuners like Daffy, Bugs et al. land cameos. Tweety Bird, a spy for the defense, reprises his signature: “I tawt I taw …”

Acme’s fanatical lawyer (John Cena) blisters him:

“You tawt you taw? I don’t pay you to tink you taw. I pay you to taw!””

With all that, I tawt I taw some flaws. Some of the visual gags are complex, and the director doesn’t let them breathe so viewers can lock in the setup. A chase near the end involves rocket skates, some sort of motorcycle, exploding eggs fired from a bird-shaped gun, a refrigerator on the coyote’s back, and some more stuff — but too many for me to write down in a dark theater.

But the fun-to-tedium ratio, the moviemaker’s equivalent to signal-to-noise, is favorable. Sure, things drag late. The climax of the court case is not nearly the end of the movie, and the rest feels tacked on. And the ending scuttles the film’s subversive theme – that it is noble to persist even if you know you will never succeed.

But worrying about all that is like fretting about insurance as the theater lights dim. It gets in the way of the film’s goal — throw a lot of fun at the screen and hope some sticks.