I can see why they wanted to can Coyote vs. Acme

When the world heard that a movie with a very promising concept -- that famous Roadrunner hunter Wile E. Coyote was suing Acme for their faulty products -- was being shelved by Warner Brothers so they could take a tax write-off, the outcry was swift and deafening. And for sure, I was part of that outcry. In addition to an idea that sounded good going down the drain, meaning I'd never see it, it was an ominous development to learn that a movie studio could just stymie the creative efforts of thousands of people, at what seemed like the drop of a hat. 

And then it started happening with other movies. I'm not sure if I actually have the sequence of events right here, but Batgirl was a very public casualty of the same mindset. There were others whose names I'm not remembering right now (and am apparently uninterested in doing a very simple Google search). 

But Coyote vs. Acme was not done. The bad press and public disappointment was so great that Dave Green's film was resuscitated. It opened in the U.S. a few weeks ago, about the time it was playing at the Melbourne International Film Festival. In fact, this film was so much of a curiosity that it played MIFF even though this is not the kind of movie you usually see at MIFF. 

And early word of mouth was good. A friend of mine raved about it on Facebook.

Well, I can see why they wanted to cancel it.

My wife and I watched this last Friday night, a screener version with my email address watermarked right into the center of the image. Pretty obnoxious. They could have put it in one of the corners and still achieved the desired impact of the watermark. I guess they thought some enterprising pirate might try to video the image and crop out a watermark in a corner? An absurd suggestion, but that's all I can think of.

Surely that played some small part of why it disappointed us. But the movie bore the lion's share of that disappointment.

Coyote vs. Acme starts out in a very promising manner. You get a montage of Wile E. Coyote's most spectacular equipment fails from his many dogged days pursuing the Roadrunner. (Meep meep.) Then you see him spot an ad for a local ambulance chaser (played, in what seemed like a very promising development, by Will Forte), and get the idea to sue Acme for product malfunctions that should have killed him a hundred times over. If not for the fact that he's, you know, indestructible.

It turns out this great idea is no greater than an idea for a seven-minute Saturday Night Live sketch. In fact, you can imagine an excellent version of that sketch, and it might have even starred Forte when he was a cast member.

And that gets at part of the issue with Coyote vs. Acme. Forte was on Saturday Night Live from 2002 to 2010, and even back then, the Looney Tunes were already starting to fade from the zeitgeist. To me personally, they're nowhere near it now. My wife and I asked my younger son to participate in the viewing, and he initially agreed when he thought we were talking about going to the cinema to see it, not that we meant "No, starting in the next 15 minutes." But if he had watched, I feel like he wouldn't have gotten any of the jokes or Easter eggs regarding this musty IP, and to be certain, whatever charm Coyote vs. Acme has relies on that sort of familiarity. 

There are other promising elements. John Cena plays Acme's lead attorney, a cowboy hat-wearing smooth talker, and I like him too. But like Forte, he ultimately feels wasted. 

And the problem is, everyone gets wasted because they are working so hard to turn a seven-minute idea into a 103-minute movie. Realizing they had so little, the filmmakers could have made this movie 85 minutes. That would have been perfectly fine. In fact, it probably still would have been 78 minutes too much, but it would have been better.

So what did they do with those extra 78 minutes, or rather, we should say, those extra 96 minutes? Unclear.

The movie doesn't even delve into back stories for its human characters. We know Forte's character is a bit lost because he lives in a motel. But we learn nothing about his family life or what brought him there. Cena, as the "villain," obviously doesn't warrant any such introspection either. Then there is Forte's assistant? legal clerk? who is played by Lana Condor, and she's on screen a lot but has no inner life. To say nothing of the fact that this actress, star of the To All the Boys movies, has zero charisma.

Instead this movie has a lot of "legs spinning fast, no forward momentum" -- both literally and figuratively.

Let's talk about the literal first. I thought I would be charmed by the Looney Tunes stuff, with things bouncing around the screen and characters receiving should-be-fatal injuries by blasting through walls or being flattened by pianos. But you know what, no. I was not. It felt tedious. Every time.

I should say that I don't really care for many of the previous movies done in this style. Like, I never liked Who Framed Roger Rabbit? all that much and I have still seen it only that one time in the theater. 

But strangely, I did quite enjoy Space Jam: A New Legacy, with Lebron James, a few years back. I don't like the original Space Jam, but the sequel really worked for me, even when it did not work for anyone else. 

A New Legacy tells us two things:

1) The Looney Tunes are, actually, sort of still in the zeitgeist. This movie is only five years old, and since it came out, there has also been The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, released only two years ago. So in the context of Warner Brothers' continuance of the public visibility of its IP, Coyote vs. Acme is not totally out of left field. 

2) I myself have the potential to like the interacting of Looney Tunes characters and human beings, if it is done right.

When you watch Coyote vs. Acme, you are never struck by individual poor decisions. At any given moment, the next scene follows reasonably from the one before.

But the whole thing just feels flat and undifferentiated. "Flat" was my wife's choice of word, and she wasn't only talking about the 2D animation. (To be clear, it would not have been an improvement to make these characters CGI.) "Flat" as in unable to muster any sense of stakes, or intrigue, or emotional investment, or even interest. 

So when the suits at Warner Brothers were looking at Green's final cut, they must have thought the same. They must have seen the legs spinning in a dervish of potential energy, but the body itself not actually moving anywhere. 

Reason enough to seek a tax write-off if you ask me.

To be clear, I'm glad that did not happen. I still stand behind the fact that we should get to see every completed movie, even if it is an abomination. In fact, the greater abomination it might be, the more I want to see it. Coyote vs. Acme is not an abomination. It's just tedious. 

But then everyone seems to really like it. Holy crap, it's got a 96 on Rotten Tomatoes. 

How do I account for this? I expect there are two different things going on:

1) Many critics share my feeling of horror that a completed movie, one with such a delightful concept, could be completely "disappeared." They have to heap praise in order to show Warner Brothers just how wrong it was.

2) Nostalgia goes a long way.

But was Warner Brothers wrong? Maybe in their actual choice to seek the tax write-off. But not, in my estimation, in their judgment of the merits of the film.

I'd been struggling to start my review, but I better get on it because I have to post it one of the next three days. It comes out here on Thursday, and the idea with new reviews, especially when I've gotten a long lead time on watching them, is to post either the day before, the day of, or the day after the theaterical release.

This post has at least gotten my juices flowing about what I want to say. And there are, obviously, a lot of things I want to say.

I just wish I didn't have to say them. I wish I loved Coyote vs. Acme. But sometimes, the giant behemoth mega corporation trying to make a sketchy financial transaction is also right. 

Shitting all over Space Jam

It's quickly becoming apparent that the most out of sync I was with 2021 popular opinion was when I named Space Jam: A New Legacy my #41 movie of 2021, putting it at the 76th percentile of all the movies I watched last year.

In truth, I actually sort of wanted to put it higher, given how much fun I had watching it in the theater with my kids, but the extraordinarily negative response to it had already gotten to me.

That negative response now has been etched in permanency with its four Golden Raspberry nominations announced earlier this week, including worst picture.

The other three: worst actor (LeBron James), worst remake, ripoff or sequel and worst screen couple (James and any Warner Cartoon character).

The nomination for James is especially surprising, since I thought people at least acknowledged he's a better actor than Michael Jordan.

How much different of a movie did I see than everyone else saw?

I was so taken with the movie, and James in particular, that I wrote a whole post about how the film prompted me to reconsider my stance on James as a cultural icon. Whereas I always hated him for his switching of teams, which was announced in the most self-aggrandizing manner possible, and most recently, his joining of -- and bringing a championship to -- the Los Angeles Lakers, I now considered the possibility that I may actually like him.

For everyone else, Space Jam made them stop liking LeBron James, or hate him even more than they used to.

I don't get it.

It's a fun movie, or at worst, an innocuous one. It takes familiar cinematic tropes about fathers and sons and tries to at least do right by them. And it has some good visual effects, some cheeky (and I believe intentional) references to the usage of intellectual property, and a really winning comedic turn by James, who actually does well in the sentimental moments as well.

But those in charge of the Razzies appear to believe they are tapping into the zeitgeist in their multiple nominations for Space Jam: A New Legacy, as these awards are designed to indict movies that are particularly terrible, that we all know are terrible, and whose very terribleness makes us laugh.

(There may be something to the zeitgeist dislike of the movie, or at least further evidence of it. Trey Parker and Matt Stone also dropped in casual rips of it in their two South Park COVID specials released at the end of last year, which I just finished watching.)

The even funnier thing -- or maybe I should say bemusing, or maybe I should say infuriating -- is that they usually only devote one or two spots to a big tentpole movie that comically underperformed from a critical perspective. Many of the nominees are actually not movies that are in the zeitgeist. The movie Karen, which trailed Diana: The Musical for the second most nominations with five, and the thrice-nominated The Misfits are not movies I have even heard of. And I hear of a lot more movies than the average person.

So of all the genuinely ill-conceived and cynical "remakes, ripoffs or sequels" that come out every year, this is the one they chose to pile on? This is the one they broadsided with the collective weight of their comedic power?

Like I said, I don't get it.

I did have a 2021 movie that would have slotted right in to the categories in which Space Jam was nominated, which was my #170 of 2021, The Matrix Resurrections. That was at the 0th percentile of my rankings. I could make arguments for Keanu Reeves as worst actor, for Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as worst on-screen couple, easily for worst remake, ripoff or sequel, and certainly for worst picture. I mean, it was my own worst picture of the year. 

But I guess when you are out of sync with popular opinion, as every critic is at one point or another, it shows up in multiple films, not just the one. 

If you can honestly say you had a better time with Matrix Resurrections than with Space Jam, you're definitely out of sync with me. 

I may like LeBron James now

This is just about the tenth anniversary of LeBron James ascending to the role of villain in my world.

"The Decision," the extremely obnoxious television special devoted to where James would choose to play after his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers ended, aired in the summer of 2010. Okay so that's 11 years. I conflated listening to coverage of LeBron's "decision" with my friends Dave and Lauren's wedding in March of 2011, because I remember the road I was driving on while listening to the coverage on the radio. I guess I was also on that road for another reason in the summer of 2010.

I had never minded James before that, when he was just an exceptionally talented Ohio boy made good on his hometown Cavaliers, doing his best to bring them to greatness but never having the supporting cast to allow him to get all the way to his goal of an NBA championship. 

But he was close -- very close. The Cavs had made it to the finals in 2007, and had won their conference in both 2009 and 2010, the latter being James' last year in a Cleveland uniform. It was worth trying to find that supporting cast, not jumping ship for another team.

But James did jump ship, famously "tak[ing] his talents to South Beach" to join the Miami Heat. For some reason, that phrase "I'm going to take my talents to South Beach" became for me the embodiment of an arrogance in James I was just discovering, as well as the necessary quitter attitude to leave the fan base and city that had loved him to join a team that was already championship caliber (having won it all only four years earlier), a kind of piling on that has since become very common in the NBA as more and more teams try to assemble a "super team." It could also be because that quote was immortalized when it was incorporated into a hip hop song at the time, so I had to keep hearing it. 

It was the perfect timing for me to get a new NBA villain, as Kobe Bryant's Los Angeles Lakers would not win another championship while he was still on the roster, and the Lakers were my New York Yankees of basketball. (Actually, the Yankees were really my baseball Lakers as I started following basketball first.) Bryant was the face of that team that beat my Celtics in 2010, but I don't think they even made another finals while Bryant was there -- actually, they didn't make another finals until 2020, nine months after Bryant was killed in that helicopter crash. (Rest in peace to a man I think of fondly now that he's gone.)

My new villain lost his first NBA finals with the Heat, to my inestimable joy. But James won it all the next two years, permanently validating his choice to bail on his hometown team. It was like the two Super Bowls won by one of my biggest football villains, Eli Manning, whose own shenanigans related to what team he was going to play for were the main reason I didn't like him. Once he'd won them, there was no taking them away.

James experienced a slight uptick with me when he returned to Cleveland, vowing to finish what he started years ago, and succeeding in 2016 when he finally brought a championship to a city truly starved for them. (The Indians haven't won since 1948 and we won't even talk about the Cleveland Browns.) But that didn't last as he left Cleveland again and went to the hated Lakers, creating another super team by bringing in Anthony Davis, and winning it all again last year -- his fourth championship overall, only one of which was not tainted by James seeming like he specifically chose the path of least resistance. Only Cleveland truly needed his "talents" -- Miami and LA already had either the personnel, or the history as an organization, to get by without them.

As I told you, the Lakers are tied with the Yankees as my most hated teams in professional sports. When James took them to a championship last year, it allowed LA to tie my Celtics for the most championships (17) in NBA history.

I give you all this background so you understand why I might have gone into Space Jam: A New Legacy with my kids on Thursday night, its opening day here in Australia (a week ahead of the U.S.), with an all-time high hatred of LeBron James and everything he stands for. In fact, this background is basically what gets covered in the film's opening credits, so anyone who hasn't followed James' career can be brought up to speed. I may have been cherry-picking in my hatred of James -- for example, I conveniently ignored everything he's done to help disadvantaged communities and his work as an SJW -- but when it comes to professional athletes, it's not always rational. You latch your hatred onto certain things -- like, affiliation with a particular sports franchise -- and look past the things that offset the things you hate. (It's kind of like how I am able to feel more fondly toward Republican politicians after they're retired. When they're still in the game, I can only see that team affiliation.)

I also give you all this background to tell you how surprising it is that after Space Jam: A New Legacy, I may like LeBron James now.

This is not only a surprise because of the movie's star. It's also a surprise because I really did not like the original Space Jam, which starred Michael Jordan -- who I always back in any discussion of the greatest basketball players of all time, especially when James is presented as the other option in the argument. In fact, I can't now fathom what I could have possibly found so disagreeable about such a surely harmless film, but my retroactive rating of it on Letterbox (assigned in early 2012, probably ten years after I saw it) was 1.5 stars. If I didn't like the Space Jam starring Michael Jordan, who I always liked, what chance did I have of liking the one starring James?

Well, it happened. This movie basically tickled me pink from the very beginning. And James played a big role in that.

I may not think James is a better basketball player than Michael Jordan, but he is definitely a better actor. He's got a lot more range and is a lot more comfortable in the role of performing. He's funny and his exasperation with the Looney Tunes he interacts with is priceless. When his face hits an invisible barrier and slides down, his lip and cheek dragging against the glass surface as gravity pulls him toward the floor, it's comedy gold. 

This doesn't come out of nowhere. Depending on how you define an "actor," James has 21 acting credits on IMDB. The only one I really remember is Trainwreck, where I found him to be the best part of the movie -- and it wasn't really even that close. 

I don't suppose I thought James would be inept here, knowing he had the basic skills to be an actor (or at least to play himself), but I was wary of the ways his ego would seep through into the project and sully it for me. Having watched this movie, I now think that my whole idea of James having an overblown ego may have itself been overblown. Just because he said he was going to "take his talents to South Beach" does not mean he is egotistical. I mean, the man demonstrably has talents -- that's just fact.

In fact, Space Jam: A New Legacy is more than happy to needle James a couple times -- a real sign of how good of a sport he is, since you know he would have signed off on everything related to how he was depicted. I mean, there's nothing that approaches a roast or anything like that, but the character played by Don Cheadle -- an evil algorithm (don't worry, it works) -- does give him what for a couple times. At one point he talks about all the teams James has left -- "Cleveland again" -- which I thought was a smart acknowledgment by James of all the fans he has disappointed over the years. 

Then there's Al G. Rithm's response to the comment by James' son, Dom, who is played by actor Cedric Joe. Dom James is talking about how his dad is one of the greatest ever in his line of work, and Al responds with a bit of a high pitch in his voice, "Well I think the jury is still out on that." The James I thought I knew would have had all the characters in the film recognize his superiority over Michael Jordan in the great binary between the two of them, and even though it's the villain voicing this doubt, I don't think that changes the effect of the moment. 

Fact is, James is too smart to make this a simple ego project for himself. He's mostly a very strong character, of course, but he's happy to undercut himself a couple times, knowing he can take it. You win more people over with modesty than braggadocio. 

Also I reckon James is too hard of a worker to allow an inferior product to go out under his name. That's why Space Jam: A New Legacy feels like such a tight ship, even at 115 minutes in length. The animation is good, the jokes are funny, and the film has heart. James wouldn't have accepted anything less.

And I wasn't the only one in my family who kind of loved the movie. My older son, who is in a huge basketball phase right now, quite liked it. Surprisingly, though, it was the younger son, who doesn't even care about sports, who said it was among his five favorite movies of all time. And he's not the one who usually talks about where things rank for him all time -- that's his brother's move. I guess even non sports fans can be charmed to death by LeBron James. 

I said I always mellow on villainous athletes and politicians after they retire. At age 36, James probably won't retire for five more years -- or who knows, maybe he has the "ego" to keep playing even longer than that. 

But Space Jam: A New Legacy has definitely pushed forward my mellowing timeline when it comes to James. 

In fact, against all odds, I may even like him now.