Director: Dave Green
Cast: Will Forte, Lana Condor, Tone Bell, Eric Bauza
Have I Seen It Before: Never. And there was a long stretch of time where we weren’t going to get to see the film at all.
Rest assured we’ll address that part again before we’re done.
Did I Like It: If you can get over the notion that only the Warner Bros. cavalcade of cartoon stars appear here, this film almost becomes—at least on a spiritual level—the sequel to <Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)>* we knew could have been out there.
It is zany, and dare one say, looney, and regularly funny, but it actually works within the confines of a legal drama, even if it is one largely played as satire. I’ll throw an extra bit of praise that you might not see in other reviews: There’s a slight structural parallel to A Few Good Men (1992) here, and this film avoids a mistake Reiner and Sorkin walked right into. Changing out Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup for Foghorn Leghorn**, the entire legal strategy at the end of the film is deciding that the heavy wants to admit his malfeasance, as he doesn’t think what he’s accused of should be a bad thing at all. In A Few Good Men, the final shot is telegraphed minutes before they lower the boom, deflating some of the dramatic tension. Here, Will Forte gets the idea seemingly at the last minute, giving him an almost Bugs Bunny air—thematically appropriate—of cleverness at just the right moment.
The film is easily one of the most pleasing of the summer, and indeed the year. Which brings us to the controversy. Warner Bros. nearly took a tax write-off in lieu of releasing the film at all, citing that this film, along with a Scooby Doo holiday special, and the Michael Keaton-starring Batgirl, were simply not releasable.
Well. Not only is Coyote vs. Acme obviously releasable, it’s quite good. Tell me Batgirl was unreleasable again. I’m not going to believe you***.
*And we’re likely never to see that level of inter-conglomerate cooperation, unless Disney buys up Warner Bros., or the other way around. Which is not even in the competition for strangest thing that might come to pass.
**That pitch alone should have kept the film on Warner Bros. release schedule.
***I’ll believe that it doesn’t fit in with your current continuity of DC films, but hardly anything fits into that. Now what’s your excuse?