LOS ANGELES, Aug. 12 (UPI) — Coyote Vs Acme, in theaters August 28, is a funny and clever satire with heart. It respects the Looney Tunes and builds something meaningful out of their classic history.

Wile E. Coyote hires Kevin Avery (Will Forte) to represent him in court. He sues ACME for all the products that backfired on him in his decades-long pursuit of the Road Runner.

The entire premise applies both real-world and live-action movie logic to slapstick cartoons. If ACME were a real company, the pattern of malfunctioning products would constitute legal liability.

The premise of Wile E. Coyote in a courtroom drama is also wonderfully absurd. Avery is just a shyster with TV ads and his niece (Lana Condor) as an intern. ACME is represented by Buddy Crane (John Cena). The film treats them like it’s Erin Brockovich though.

It is Wile E.’s movie but other Looney Tunes characters appear. Each cameo tells an entire story about where they’ve been since the classic shorts.

Some characters are only alluded to, but in such clever ways that you know exactly who they’re talking about, even without a name drop.

The satire is really about something. The screenplay by Samy Burch, with story by Burch, James Gunn and Jeremy Slater, uses the repetitive persistence of Wile E. to represent the value of never giving up and continuing to try in the face of failure.

Cartoons have been suffering for our amusement. They will survive, but decades of emotional toil would accumulate. That is, if they were cumulative and not standalone one-offs, which is how this movie treats the library of Looney Tunes shorts.

Avery has a legitimate confrontation with Wile E. Since the lawyer is the only one talking in the scene, the intensity is inherently funny without losing touch with the genuine point.

ACME is a relevant stand-in for the corporate monopolies that abuse us all. Their publicity materials are intentionally reminiscent of Facebook, Apple and other well-known brands and CEO Foghorn Leghorn (voice of Eric Bauza) speaks familiar boilerplate.

Both the trial and apparently ACME’s corporate headquarters are in Albuquerque, N.M. So the city of Breaking Bad is also where the Looney Tunes life and get bashed by wrecking balls and other cases Avery represents.

Amid all of the above, Coyote vs. Acme never forgets to be a Looney Tunes movie. Wile E. recreates some classic cartoon falls and concocts wildly elaborate Rube Goldberg traps that interact with the live-action environments under Dave Green’s direction.

It delves into the mythology of the ACME company too. The film opens in 1992 with Dr. Lorre, a movie reference that pays off for older fans, as a whistleblower foiled by ACME in a chase through the ACME warehouse.

Flashing forward 30 years sets this in 2022 when the film was intended to be released. It probably wasn’t worth making it an awkward 34 years later to update it to the present. Avery and his law firm Avery, Jones and Maltese are also references to animation legends.

Coyote vs. Acme is the best Looney Tunes movie. The Space Jams are a low bar, but The Day the Earth Blew Up was really funny and Back in Action was underrated. Coyote vs. Acme is even sharper.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.