At the beginning of this movie, the filmmakers thanked those of us whose writing and posting online helped keep this movie from suffering a cruel fate, of being destroyed and deleted without being seen by the company that had made this film and then afterwards regretted it. Whatever regret that they had may have been assuaged somewhat by their receiving $50 million for the rights, but heightened by the way that the film cleverly and slyly jokes about Warner Brothers being a division of Acme Inc. in the opening credits. This joke becomes noticeably sharper when seen in light of the rest of the film. Indeed, the complicated way that this film was released after having been completed for years and held hostage after post-production by the company who owns the rights to the Looney Tunes because the film had been made in a way that would seem to implicate big companies in general in the way that they tend to operate by bringing pain and suffering to those unable to defend themselves or to receive justice.

In order to understand and appreciate this film, it is important to know that this movie takes the logic of the Looney Tunes cartoons and puts it in a context that adds considerable bite on several levels. For one, tunes appear in this movie (as they did in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”) as beings who are seen as being lesser beings in some fashion, though in this movie they appear as politicians in Congress, CEOs of companies, ordinary residents of America’s cities and rural areas, and as members of juries. The lesser status mainly involves the way that toon justice lacks the procedural protections for the tunes that the ordinary justice system has, vividly seen when the trial judge of the titular court case chooses which gavel to use, and picks a toon one rather than the regular material gavel for ordinary human court proceedings. For another, the movie makes an argument strongly against the utilitarian grounds that the suffering of toons is validated and justified by the benefits that are provided to people, an argument that appears closely connected to attitudes relating to animal testing and other similar ways in which practices that are repugnant are justified by the dubious service that is done to humans thereby. Although the movie focuses on Wil E. Coyote as the main character, the tunes around him are portrayed vividly and poignantly, and a great many of the viewers of this movie will relate to the underdog story that the movie provides. It must be noted, without spoiling too much, that while the movie is very harsh (and justifiably so) on the misdeeds of large companies and the corruption they are often involved in and the scandalous nature of their rent-seeking ways, the film is not anti-capitalist in its basis so much as holding companies to a far more rigorous moral standard than they hold themselves, and at least some of the language used by Foghorn Leghorn should strike a nerve with contemporary political discourse.

At its heart, though, even though this is a live-action-animated hybrid Looney Tunes movie made on a modest budget, that it is at the same time an immensely human sort of tale. Most of the human actors we see on screen are lawyers, and the movie vividly portrays the contemporary divide between wealthy corporate lawyers and much more shabby and impoverished lawyers whose idealism in ground down in poverty. This point is made without making the film a melodrama, and the seriousness of the movie is leavened with plenty of humor, even an in-joke by one character that cartoons are supposed to be funny so it is improper when cartoon characters appear and are not funny. Indeed, this movie has some serious and deep elements that are not really funny at all, and the film succeeds in large part because the cartoons (especially the persistent and noble titular coyote, but not only him by a long shot) carry so much emotional weight. Indeed, one of the most poignant scenes of the whole movie features a set of important questions answered only with meep for no and meep meep for us from the roadrunner that shows that the bird considers Wil E. Coyote to be a genuine friend, something that does not seem unreasonable upon viewing the movie.

Without spoiling the plot of the movie, the film uses the famous logic of the Looney Tunes cartoons in a way that serves justice. Neither Wil E. Coyote nor the roadrunner speak, though both use signs. A few longtime characters have cameo roles. The film has a strong David vs. Goliath feel and viewers who enter the film aware of shows like Better Call Saul will see some parallels with the action on-screen. It is perhaps little surprise that a company like Warner Brothers would see in Coyote Vs. Acme a film that was giving a lot of criticism to how they operate as a company, and how large firms in general justify their deeds by the power they possess and by the greater good they pretend to provide. What is perhaps more amazing is that they let the film be made in the first place and then were persuaded with some profits to let the film be released anyway. And that is to our gain as this is a film well worth watching.