Shortly after taking the reins of Warner Brothers, CEO David Zaslav quickly cancelled several movies that were either already complete or near to it, baffling observers and angering many creatives. While subsequent gossip alluded to at least some of them being of poor quality, having finally been able to see the revived live action / animation hybrid comedy Coyote vs. Acme, I can safely say that wasn’t the case with this one. I don’t think I personally will ever know exactly what prompted Zaslav to try and bury the movie, but given that he was trying to steer the company towards an acquisition—likely from Paramount—and the core plot of this film amounts to a scathing critique of corporate greed, it’s easy to make a few inferences about his motivations.

Anyone familiar with Wile E. Coyote knows that he is almost single-mindedly obsessed with catching his nemesis the Road Runner. Luckily for his feathered foe he is also pretty inept at achieving his goal. But the majority, if not all, of his failures can easily be attributed to the shoddy products he is forced to use made by the Acme Corporation (no known relation to our local supermarkets).

Kevin Avery (Will Forte) runs a small law firm that frequently handles personal injury cases for toons that have been injured by Acme’s wares, always quickly settling for small cash payouts, but when Coyote approaches him with the mountains of incidents the company has put him through, he refuses to settle and more or less forces Avery to take the company to court, launching him into one of the nation’s highest profile trials against Acme’s high-powered attorney Buddy Crane (John Cena).

Filled with slapstick gags that should bring a smile to the face of Looney Tunes fans of any age, including an especially thrilling chase sequence through the streets of Washington, DC, it’s hard to resist the movie’s charms, even if it feels as though the script could have benefitted from the addition of more jokes. While most of the human cast is given little to do, Forte and Cena play well off of each other and the cartoons around them, but this is the Coyote’s movie through and through. He actually gets a surprisingly solid emotional arc, allowing for the character to experience more personal growth than one would expect.

Coyote vs. Acme isn’t exactly the big-screen comeback these characters deserve, but it’s a solid bit of family entertainment that didn’t merit being left to rot on a shelf either. The anti-conglomerate message couldn’t be more timely and the themes about what we can accomplish when we learn to work together are sweet and well-handled. Leaps and bounds better than the Looney Tunes’ last movie, this proves that there is still life left in these characters, as long as they are handled by the right filmmakers. Hopefully that’s not all, folks. ★★★½

Rated PG for cartoon violence and some language.