PG | 1h 41m | Cartoon/Live Action, Comedy | 2026
As a child, I loved “The Roadrunner Show” so much that decades later I used a YouTube-to-MP3 converter to put the theme song in my Apple Music playlists. Then, I discovered it was already available on iTunes. For Looney Tunes fans in general and “Roadrunner” fans in particular, the title and premise of “Coyote Vs. ACME” was something to get excited about!
I mean—the concept alone. (The movie was inspired by Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker humor piece). It was so logical—such brilliant, low-hanging fruit, so ripe for the plucking! It’s a substantial joke all by itself.
Had “Coyote Vs. ACME” been able to harness the original, crackling, snide, sarcastic spirit of Wile E. Coyote versus the roadrunner, it would have been an instant, nostalgic charmer that might have generated at least one sequel.
Where’s Mr. Giamatti When You Need Him?
Unfortunately, it fails to truly nail that snarky tone. There’s really only one reason “Coyote Vs. ACME” is not quite, but almost, as much of a dud as a standard ACME firecracker—the lead role of the prosecuting lawyer was a role Paul Giamatti was born to play, and he’s not here.
Like his father before him—Major league baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti successfully prosecuting Pete Rose’s baseball sins—Giamatti the younger would have prosecuted up a storm of laughs taking on the ACME corporation.
The film’s mixture of animation and live-action promised to be a variation on the award-winning “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988), the first such film to place beloved cartoon characters in the real world. It’s not nearly as good.
While “Coyote” features countless references to the venerable Saturday morning franchise (which launched in 1930), the tepid screenplay, along with Will Forte as Wile E. Coyote’s apathetic, low-energy counsel, team up to deliver, a product not quite, but almost, on par with any of ACME’s flea-bitten line of dysfunctional doohickeys.
What Goes On
Having been frustrated for decades due to being unable to finally dine upon his nemesis The Roadrunner—and the majority of that frustration being due to ACME’s products—Wile E. finally hires Kevin (Forte), a small-claims lawyer out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Coyote states that ACME has caused him untold amounts of physical and emotional damage.
Kevin is mildly terrified to step up to such a high-profile case, taking on the powerful corporation, but he reluctantly allows himself to be talked into a show-down with ACME’s in-house counsel, Buddy (John Cena), who happens to be his insufferably cocky, longtime rival, as well as former law school classmate.
Right off the bat, the more assertive Wile E. refuses to let his cowardly prosecutor accept a paltry monetary settlement from Buddy. To win the lawsuit, Kevin and Wile E. need to prove that ACME was knowingly and heavily involved in a dastardly planned-obsolescence campaign that also took advantage of cartoon creatures’ ability to withstand tremendous amounts of pain. The half-hearted attempts at social commentary about the toxicity of corporate greed are pretty low-key.
What Works, What Doesn’t
Director Dave Green clearly has a reverence for the Looney Tunes legacy. He stays true to the TV show by ensuring that Wile E. tirelessly plans and schemes in the face of a steady diet of what the U.S. military calls “No joy” (when missions fail) in regards to bagging his favorite meal. Conversely, the unsinkable, cheerful Roadrunner stays true to his traditional role of mildly mocking his would-be murderer.
In keeping with the original cartoon, neither of them speaks. The overlapping of the cartoon animals with live-action actors is seamlessly rendered. “Coyote Vs. ACME” eventually becomes a buddy comedy where two very different individuals develop a friendship, which is saccharinely sentimental and forgettable.
Likewise is the attempt to infer that, deep down, Coyote and Roadrunner need and love each other. Such a cancellation of the concept of eternal enmity, tension, and lethal intent could only come about in the toothless age of “Everyone gets a trophy.”
For fans hoping for classic “Roadrunner” slapstick mayhem staples, such as Wile E. repeatedly plummeting from tremendous heights to canyon depths with the requisite dust-puffs emanating from Coyote-shaped craters in the desert floor, such signature moments are plentiful but not nearly as funny as what they’re based on. There are also many Looney character cameos, from the famous franchise leads (Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety) to the minor also-rans.
While both Cena and Forte play the straight man to animated co-stars clowning, “Coyote Vs. ACME” nevertheless puts too much spotlight on its live-action characters, which ends up making the time-honored Looney Tunes stars be mere supporting players in their own movie.
But one of the main reasons the originals were definitive—while a bevy of voice actors (and possibly AI) reproduce the various voices of the Looney stable here—was that the inimitable Mel Blanc voiced the entire Looney Tunes pantheon of characters all by himself: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, Speedy Gonzales, Tasmanian Devil, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, and Elmer Fudd. Not to mention that for Hanna-Barbera and other studios —Blanc voiced 400 voices altogether. Long live Mel Blanc.
Paul Giamatti even looks a little bit like Mel Blanc. Paul should play Mel in a Mel Blanc biopic.
‘Coyote Vs. Acme’
Director: Dave Green
Starring: Will Forte, Lana Condor, Tone Bell, Luis Guzmán, Martha Kelly, John Cena
MPAA Rating: PG
Running Time: 1 hour, 41 minutes
Release Date: Aug. 28, 2026
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
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