Coyote vs. Acme and Dolly Parton

The movie Coyote vs. Acme comes with some buzzy lore: it was famously shelved, and almost didn’t see the light of day. But it’s here now, and it’s good and looney! It follows Wile E. Coyote when he decides to sue the Acme Corporation for manufacturing crappy, ineffective products. The cast includes Will Forte, John Cena and Lana Condor. We also talk about our favorite Dolly Parton musical performances. If you want more animated capers, check out these episodes: 'Minions & Monsters' is, oddly enough, a love letter to Old Hollywood https://www.npr.org/2026/07/03/nx-s1-5877885/minions-monsters-is-oddly-enough-a-love-letter-to-old-hollywood In 'Toy Story 5,' playtime's over and screentime's in https://www.npr.org/2026/06/19/nx-s1-5862016/in-toy-story-5-playtimes-over-and-screentimes-in Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:46Speaker 01

  The latest Looney Tunes movie is Coyote vs. Acme, and it's got a pretty ingenious premise. Wile E. Coyote finally reaches a breaking point in his Sisyphean pursuit of the Road Runner, and he decides to sue the Acme Corporation for manufacturing crappy, ineffective products. Who does he call on for help? An unambitious accident lawyer played by Will Forte.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  The movie comes with some buzzy lore and hype. For corporate reasons, it almost didn't see the light of day. But it's here now, and all that behind the scenes drama aside, we can say, it's good. It's Looney. I'm Stephen Thompson.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  And I'm Aisha Harris. And joining us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is our co-host Glen Weldon. Hey, Glenn.

• 1:26Speaker 03

  Hey, Ayesha.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  All right, well, there's not much setup needed here. Coyote vs. Acme is based on a humor article that was published in The New Yorker. And as we alluded to earlier, back in 2023, Warner Brothers Discovery pulled a notorious move and shelved the completed movie as a tax write-off. Now, it was eventually acquired by Catch Up Entertainment, and it's in theaters now. Stephen, I'm going to start with you. Was it worth the wait?

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's certainly a good movie. I mean, in terms of what it's worth and whether it's worth it, you never like to see this kind of maneuvering done. You know, once you make a movie with a really, really promising plot and a lot of talent behind it, you hope that that movie actually gets to come out and people get a chance to judge it for themselves. And now that it's out, I really, really enjoy it. I think the concept does a lot of work here. This is a very, very clever conceit. And as such, I think the kind of the first act of this film is probably the strongest because it's where they're establishing this premise. It's also where they're using kind of the most kind of iconic Coyote and Road Runner footage. Some of the best visual gags kind of pop up in that first third.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Once they get into the mechanics of grinding through the plot, I think it loses a little bit of steam. But this is a movie that is made with an extraordinary amount of love. Love for these characters, love for the history of animation, the number of little inside jokes. There's a character who's patterned after Peter Laurie, whose name is Peter Laurie. You know, the lawyers in this film are named Avery, Maltese, and Jones. Those are famous animators. Like, this film is made with deep love of animation, and it's kind of getting into that Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Chippendales Rescue Rangers, you know, the movies that I love

• 3:15Speaker 02

  that combine cartoon and live action in kind of inventive and colorful and funny ways. This is in that tradition, and I enjoyed it enormously.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Glenn, how about you?

• 3:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I picked up on that sincere, not ironic love, too. And I think that's one of the reasons this very circuitous path to movie theaters is maybe made it go down a little bit easier for me because I knew it wasn't coming directly from Warner. So I knew it wasn't just an excuse to kind of keep the IP alive, you know? It just wasn't some kind of way to refresh the the brand in a way that, you know, come at me millennials, in a way that the Space Jams of the world always felt like, hey, let's make these characters hip and appeal to the youth of today. And, you know, this is drawing from those original shorts. They are not drawing from the more contemporary Space Jams, Looniversities, Tiny Toons, Tasmanias. The gags and the characters come directly from the old shorts.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Coyote does not refer to himself as a super genius.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  This is true. This is true, even that. So it's not like those original shorts right now have a huge cultural footprint. They're not like ripe for takedowns because, I mean, I would argue that the Space Jam has a bigger cultural footprint than any of the original Looney Tunes shorts do. And, you know, when I was a kid, these old shorts were basically a public utility. They came to your house like water and electricity, and they were ubiquitous.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  And were just as valuable.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Exactly. And they were on endless loop, which is why they wormed their way into the very soft brains of of my generation. I knew I was going to like this when some of those D-listers, real D-listers, started showing up, like Peter Laurie, who, I mean, the Looney Tunes version of Peter Laurie, he showed up in 1941's Hollywood Steps Out, which is an amazing text we'll have to talk about. I think we already talked about it on the show at one point. I really knew when Miss Prissy showed up. Miss Prissy is a goose from a lot of the Foghorn Leghorn shorts. Speaking of Foghorn Leghorn as evil Matlock, there is a cosmic inevitability to that.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  We both know it would be very, I say, very unpleasant for everyone involved if anything bigger, I say bigger, were to become public.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Some really good jokes. There's jokes involving Wile E. Coyote signs. There's a joke that there are a limited number of signs. I love that joke. But also, they have to be credited here for really acquitting themselves well because if you are determined to draw from those original shorts and not the Spaces Jams and the Tiny Toons, that's fraught because that's a challenge for yourself because these shorts have not all aged equally well. Bugs Bunny is eternal. Speedy Gonzales is not. But I knew they knew what they were doing when they figured out how, in the year 2026, Common Era, to do a Pepe Le Pew joke.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  And when they came up with the gag that is in this movie, I hope they pushed themselves away from the desk, took the rest of the day off, and went out to Musso and Frank's and had some martinis because they just, that is a mind field that they just jeté across in such a smart way.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  So good.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  I like this a lot. I think I'm picking up what Stephen said. I like the jokes so much. I like the jokes more than the story because I saw the story as a way to kind of hang the jokes on, you know, something, an infrastructure to kind of hang the jokes on. And I was fine with that. Those are good jokes.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Look, I'm a millennial here, and I was raised on the entire cocktail of Looney Tunes. So the Looney Tunes, the old cartoons were playing on Nickelodeon when I was a kid. So I got my full, like, that. I also loved Tiny Toons. And then Space Jam is Space Jam. It's not a good movie. I can admit this. It's not a good movie. The soundtrack was far better than the movie. And that was also the era when the Warner Brothers or whoever was licensing out Looney Tunes characters to like dress in urban wear and like wear baggy clothes. Like, I grew up on all of that. And so having that be a part of my childhood and having all those things, I love the fact, and I think you all picked up on this well, which is that, like, this is honoring the

• 7:08Speaker 01

  original spirit of Looney Tunes in a way that maybe they haven't necessarily done more recently in more recent outings of this. And the jokes are there, and this is the type of movie where you can be on your phone while watching it, but you're going to miss most of the best parts of this movie.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  You're going to miss good stuff.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  So much of this is visual. And the fact that Wile E. Coyote doesn't speak, and they they stick to that. They're not going to make him all of a sudden start speaking. He is one of the main characters, and he has to do, like, the animation here is just really fun. And it feels like a throwback. I miss that. I miss having that feel of like the tactility of the hand-drawn animation. I love that. And I also think it's just like, I do think the second half, I was chuckling a lot once they get to a courtroom scene and the Road Runner testifies. And it's like, it's just, I love those little sound gags and things like that that are happening. And I did kind of find myself wondering while watching it, like, the story, once you get into what Acme is doing, I couldn't help but think about modern day atrocities and

• 8:11Speaker 01

  things like that. And like, what is this movie trying to be?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  I couldn't help but think of modern day atrocities raves Aisha Harris.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Like, I was just like, hmm, there's some parallels to things in history that have happened, you know, that sort of thing. It's still Looney Tunes, right? So it's not heavy-handed. And perhaps if you're not as, like, my, my brain is just poisoned by horrible things, like, that is where my brain went. But it's also the type of movie where if you're not thinking about those things, it's not going to matter. This is fun. It's light. The fact that they kind of made this into a whole bigger deal than it might have been otherwise, if they hadn't, if Warner Brothers Discovery hadn't shelved it, like, I don't know. I think it's just like perfectly fine and perfectly fun and a great way to just spend 100 or so minutes of your time. Like, kids will like it. Adults will like it. It's fun.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  It's absolutely for all those people. And I really want to throw in a good word for John Cena, who is so game here, who is so silly here. He's kind of the the big bad. He's, he is essentially one of the closest things we have in this realm to a human cartoon character.

• 9:18Speaker 05

  Talked to PR about this, you know? It's a local paper, and pretty flattering. You know, I'm going to win this case as fast as I can, but in the meantime, I think things like this make us look pretty good in the public eye. Not ideal, but you know, it's like killing two birds with the

• 9:31Speaker 05

  One stone.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  That presence serves him perfectly in this film. And he's one of those people who is generally appealing to all ages. And that is one of the things I really came out of this with is like, yes, there are like references that only old people are gonna get in this movie. But this is a movie that kids will enjoy. This is a movie that adults will enjoy. This really is one for everybody.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I mentioned that I like the jokes more than the story, but let's, let's talk about the story. I mean, there is an element here of maybe to some young people who see it for the first time, this is baby's first anti-capitalist screed, you know? Good for them. You're kind of giving the kids something they need to hear. But it's located in, it's always placed in really good animation that sticks to the dynamic that's important. Wile E. Coyote is so expressive here and the Road Runner is not, which is the gag, right? That's exactly the dynamic that makes those shorts work. You've always got in every relationship, you've got one partner who is hugely emotional and anxious and the other person is just dead eyed.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  It's attachment theory.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  It's exactly that. One partner turning themselves in knots, one person going, you know, I think I really like vanilla. Like, that's it. That's the vibe. And at the climax, we cut back and forth between the Coyote and the Road Runner. And it's so funny how you've got Wile E. going full Meisner, you know, emoting all over the furniture. And we keep cutting back to essentially the Road Runner, who is essentially a stick figure. It's so funny and it knows that it's funny and it uses that and it doesn't try to, I don't know, co-opt it or invert it or deconstruct it. It's just that. And there's a courage to that in 2026 that I loved.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I also like Will Forte, I think, is an interesting character. Like, John Cena is great, but I also think it was, I, while watching, I was like, is he kind of like Jimmy McGill, but like more benign version of Jimmy? It's set in Albuquerque, for one thing. So like, that was already.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  And then the fact that he's kind of like this down and out, lazy, like, doesn't really wanna work, but this is his job and he's the billboard type of lawyer. It's just like a reference to Better Call Saul. I don't know, but I was here for it. And I liked the sort of back and forth between his character, Will Forte's character, and the Coyote. And there are moments where the Coyote is like, again, the Coyote doesn't talk. So like, so much of this is about what he draws and what he writes and how he expresses himself. And there's a particularly funny moment where, you know, the Kevin Avery character learns something about the Coyote and thinks that he's being duplicitous in a way. And it's like, I thought that was funny. Like, yes, like, the Coyote has one thing. He is a one-track mind. That is what he does.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  But like, it works. And that's, again, it's not straying from the spirit of Looney Tunes. It's very true to it while expanding in this very kind of clever way. It's like, yes, acne products are awful. They don't work. And I think so many of us can relate to, to those types of things where it's like, it's supposed to work and you have failed me. You have not made it easy for me. And I don't know how much more there is to say about this, except it's fun.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  I mean, I think the genius of setting it in Albuquerque is, A, you get to draw in the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote because that's their setting. But also you get to use the, I knew I should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque joke, which is a staple of Looney Tunes. So it's so, so smart. It's kind of bringing, it's y'all come, and I like that.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  And I do think, you know, this is, you know, one of many efforts to kind of keep these characters in the public eye. And, you know, we've talked about Space Jam. We haven't talked about The Day the Earth Blew Up.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Which is a fairly recent vintage Looney Tunes movie, which I watched on a plane recently. And, you know, I don't think it's quite as kind of satirically sharp as this film, but it also has its moments. And if you get a chance to catch that on streaming, they're still doing some lovely things with these characters. You know, for, for me, I'm always going to miss the voices of Mel Blanc and June Foray, you know, who are two of the most irreplaceable voices in the history of entertainment. But like Eric Baza and Candy Milo, who do those voices here, do they sound exactly like the voices that they're trying to imitate? No one could, but I think they do a lovely job.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  The writer, screenplay is credited to Sammy Birch, who also did the fantastic movie May December. And so like, those are two very different movies, but also like, she's doing something here that I think is just really breezy. It's like, and it understands the material. And I think that that's the best we could hope for, for a franchise that is like many, many decades old at this point.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  It also gives the answer to the folks who watch May December and are like, I don't know if it's trying to be funny.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Oh, come on. If you didn't know, you thought, oh, my God.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Different question.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Well, I think we can all agree that it's fun, worth checking out. And up next, we're actually gonna be scrapping what's making us happy this week because we, we're just gonna let this week go by without talking about the one, the only, the incomparable, our queen, Dolly Parton. She gave us so much and we're gonna talk about some of our favorite musical performances after the break.

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• 16:05Speaker 01

  Welcome back. Dolly Parton died on Tuesday. The songwriter, actress, and philanthropist was 80. And to say she was a singular talent feels like such, such an understatement. So we wanted to talk about some of our favorite Dolly Parton performances. And to be very, very, very clear, we are not saying these are the best or her most significant contributions or even things you haven't heard of because, look, we are, we're kind of basic. Like, we can be, we admit it, but it's Dolly. It's okay. These are just some of the things that we in particular really, really love. And, look, it's Wednesday morning, we're still processing. So Stephen, where do we even begin? Like, where do we begin?

• 16:48Speaker 02

  I mean, it's interesting because, you know, one of the places that I began when I first just started thinking about her enormous cultural footprint was, I was like, we need to remember that she's an amazing songwriter. You know, she wrote more than 3,000 songs. She was a towering songwriting talent, but she was also a towering interpreter of other songs and including a lot of her hits, you know? In the 80s, when I was falling in love with country music for the very first time, she had a song called Why'd You Come In Here Looking Like That? That is like one of the most quintessentially campy Dolly Parton songs imaginable, but she didn't write it. Like, she was an incredible interpreter of other people's words.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  And so the clip that I'm bringing is from her 1976 variety show, Dolly, a clip that's been going around a little bit in the aftermath of her death. It's her in her kind of classic trio setting with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt from 1976, singing Bury Me Beneath the Willow.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  You hear in her voice, she is a spiritual heir to the Carter family. She is able to embody that spirit. While still, if you watch the full clip, there's still this twinkle in her eye. There's still, at one point, there's this kind of knowing smile. The breadth of her humor and her just kind of emotional availability to the song. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous clip. All three of these women were slash are wonderful and their voices, you know, just blended in this totally timeless and I think spectacular way.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think this is a great pick. And there is something about her voice and the way, like you mentioned the blending, that is, that is so much, I think, of the appeal of Dolly is that her ability to harmonize with various voices over the years. And, and I think that might be why, not to give away my, my pick, but like, mine is also a duet. We, we love seeing her interact with a song, but also interact with the other people who she sang those songs with. And she had such a connection in a way that I think this clip in particular really pulls out really well, Stephen. So I was kind of surprised to realize or remember that Dolly Parton somehow had never actually appeared on The Muppet Show. I thought she had, you would think she would have.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, it makes sense, doesn't it?

• 19:21Speaker 02

  It just seems like she would be.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Why wouldn't she have been? And then I remembered, no, the clip that I love is actually her performing with a Muppet, not on The Muppet Show, but on a different variety show, her own show, Dolly, which is different from Stephen's Dolly. This Dolly was premiered in 1987 as opposed to Stephen's Dolly, which was from the 70s. And so she had a couple of variety shows with her namesake. And here I am choosing Dolly performing Everyday People, the Sly and the Family Stone classic with Kermit, performed by Jim Henson. And it is delightful. She's wearing this very cute, like, little hot pink polka dot top. She's got the big hair and her and Kermit are just having a good time talking about Everyday People.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  And it's just really delightful. Let's hear a little bit of that.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Ribbit, ribbit.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  My god, that woman contained multitudes.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Multitudes, multitudes. Like, I don't need to overanalyze this. I just think if you want to bring a smile to your face, you watch this clip, you listen to this clip. It brings me so much joy, and I've seen it going around in the wake of her passing. "The Muppets Never Failed to Make Me Happy," and "Dolly Never Failed to Make Me Happy," and I think this is just a perfect encapsulation of that. And that is my pick.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  It's a great pick because, again, on paper, it might not seem like that's the song for her. It's exactly the song for her. That whole ethos of that song, "I am no better and neither are you," that's exactly who she was. She was everyday people. He was everyday frog.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, look, she's covered everyone from Prince. Like, she contained multitudes, and I love that. And I love that she was, as Glenn said, an everyday people and everyday person. All right, Glenn, now give it to us. I know you've got a very great pick here.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Okay, well, we've talked on this show, I realize, many, many times about this song.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Okay, that is, of course, "Hard Candy Christmas," which, another song which was not written by Dolly, as we've been talking about. It was written for the show "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" by songwriter Carol Hall. Dolly performed it in the 1982 movie version. She released it as a single. And then she performed it on Bob Hope's Jolly Christmas Show. Now, kids, ask your grandparents about the Bob Hope specials. We don't have time to go into it here. They were these kind of shticky comedy that was dated upon arrival. Like, it aired, and it felt like a dinosaur. But, look, "Hard Candy Christmas" is great. It is also, we have to admit here, inescapable. So what I want to talk about with y'all is that specific performance on that specific Bob Hope special, which you

• 22:28Speaker 03

  can find on YouTube. Dolly does not perform this song in front of an audience, which might seem a little odd. She performs it, and we're adults, we can admit this, she lip syncs it, really. In a very odd kind of music video thing, she is in this weird atrium at the top of several flights of stairs, which she proceeds to walk down very thoughtfully. I think it's maybe a soulless, I-love-the-'80s office building. And it's all taupe and chrome and gold. And you're gonna ask me, are the stairs carpeted in a kind of muddy mushroom brown? Yeah, yeah, they are. But the point is, it's decked out for Christmas, specifically in the glitziest, the tackiest, the cheapest, the gaudiest decorations with

• 23:12Speaker 03

  tinsel and lights. And it's also, not for nothing, perfect. Even if it doesn't match the song, because it really doesn't. Like, I mean, "Hard Candy Christmas" is about having to tighten our belts because it's going to be a lean Christmas, because we have no money. And she's singing this song in the center of this cathedral of gaudy capitalist excess. Now, the reason it works is because it matches the singer so well. Dolly Parton prided herself on looking glitzy, shiny, tacky.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  In her words, cheap.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  Cheap, are the words she used. She also used, like, when she talked about the kind of women that she emulated when she was a kid, she called them trashy and trampy. The people who did not get Dolly Parton did not realize how everything about her look was a choice, was considered, was a deliberate statement, really. And what she was doing, essentially, was she was rejecting the notion that she grew up with, that piety and sanctimoniousness and moralizing were the hallmarks of a good person. She firmly believed that we left judgment to God, like, that it wasn't something humans should be wasting our time on. And so much of who she was and why she was so beloved flows from that. Her charity work, her support of queer and trans folks, her work with child literacy, it all comes from

• 24:26Speaker 03

  this idea that we focus on making this world better, the next one's not up to us. And just, I want to close by just saying a quick word about her lip syncing in this video. I know a little something about lip syncing. It is so tight. It's like, she does what any self-respecting drag queen does. When she performs this song, it's about acting it, selling it, delivering it. Nobody could deliver a song like she could. So, I mean, if you can, if you have the means this weekend, go see a live drag show. Because just know that if you do, you'll be doing it in her name.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yes. I love this pick. It's gonna be hard to hear this this Christmas. I'm not gonna lie.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Well, you know, as we've already noted, all of these songs that we picked were not Dolly Parton penned. And, look, we have to acknowledge that part of the reason why we love her is her ability to craft a song. And so we're gonna go out on a song that she called her personal favorite, "Coat of Many Colors." Stephen, why don't you, like, lead us out on this?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  This is maybe my favorite Dolly Parton song. And one of the reasons for that is it works on multiple levels. On one level, "Coat of Many Colors" is kind of surveying a lot of the most common tropes in country music. It is a song about growing up poor. It is a song about your mother and how your mother treated you so well. It is a song about appreciating the simple things in life. It's about applying lessons from the Bible. But when you dig deeper into the song and kind of the final lesson of the song, the song is about loving what you have and living without shame. And I think that ties into

• 26:11Speaker 02

  so much of what we talk about when we talk about how much we love and appreciate Dolly Parton, when you talk about who she championed, who she was, how she lived her faith. This song, to me, is just a perfect embodiment of that.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, you nailed it, Stephen. This is a song about defiance in the face of judgment, of loving where you are, of loving where you came from, and owning where you came from.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  It's totally her.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Well, I couldn't have said it any better than you two. So that brings us to the end of our show. Stephen Thompson, Glenn Walden, thanks so much for being here and helping us all just celebrate Dolly a little bit.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  That's right. Thank you so much. Thank you.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  And this episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Lemon Sherburne, and Mike Katsev, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. And thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next week.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini. This message comes from Angie. Angie has been helping homeowners find skilled pros to get their home projects done well for over 30 years. For everything, from minor repairs to major remodels, find reviews, pricing, and booking at angie.com or on the Angie app.