Coyote Vs. ACME: A smash riot

Coyote Vs. ACME (2025) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five); rated PG, for cartoon violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.6.26

Chuck Jones would be thrilled to bits.

 

When he and writer Michael Maltese co-created the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, for the 1949 Warner Bros. cartoon short “Fast and Furry-ous,” they likely thought this pairing would be a one-off.

 

Paige (Lana Condor) and her Uncle Kevin (Will Forte) are about the experience the
chaos that results from even a seemingly innocuous ACME product ... and they'd also
better be careful with what's inside that box.

As if.

That ingenious tribute to the silent-movie slapstick efforts of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd became — at the risk of citing the infamous oxymoron — an instant classic. 

 

Jones went on to direct 25 more theatrical shorts featuring the doomed efforts of Carnivorous Vulgaris (the Coyote) to catch Accelleratii Incredibus (the Road Runner), up to 1980’s “Soup or Sonic.” While the first dozen or so arguably are funnier and more clever than what followed, as a whole it’s still an awesome body of work.

 

I’m therefore delighted to report that director Dave Green and his team of writers — Samy Burch, James Gunn and Jeremy Slater, inspired by Ian Frazer’s hilariously deadpan 1990 humor piece in The New Yorker — have faithfully adhered to Jones’ wit, style and frenetic comedy pacing with this phantastic feature film.

 

Full disclosure: What follows is an unapologetic and shamelessly biased five-star review by someone who has, from the moment I was old enough to appreciate his work, long worshipped at the altar of All Things Chuck Jones ... and I now have no trouble adding this marvelously chaotic blend of live action and animation to that pantheon of cartoon comedy.

 

The premise here is as golden as it is simple. After the film opens on Wile E.’s most recent attempts to catch his prey — each failing, due (as always) to faulty engineering — the Coyote finally realizes that the blame, all these years, is not his. No, he has been the victim of dangerously defective ACME products.

 

The obvious solution: a product liability lawsuit.

 

But something even more sinister is afoot here. A prologue reveals that longtime ACME scientist Dr. Lorre — an intentional caricature of Peter Lorre, one of numerous movie stars lampooned in early Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies shorts — has become convinced that the work he has been doing, on the clandestine “Project Sisyphus,” is unacceptably dangerous. He manages to box up one mysterious item before being caught and — true to ACME form — forced to step into a small circular black hole. He vanishes, after which the hole is carefully rolled up and placed in storage (!).

Scoob: A doggone hoot

Scoob (2020) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for mild suggestive humor and fantasy peril
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.10.20

Scooby-Doo, the nervous Great Dane with a nose for supernatural-style trouble — and a manner of “speaking” borrowed from Astro, on The Jetsons — has covered an amazing amount of territory since solving his first cast back on Sept. 13, 1969.

Our young heroes — from left, Velma, Fred, Shaggy, Daphne and Scooby-Doo — don't
know it yet, but they're about to solve their first mystery.

The character and his human sidekicks have never notbeen ubiquitous on television, thanks to well over a dozen variations on their initial 17-episode run … not to mention numerous direct-to-video films and several (mostly) live-action entries.

It’s safe to say that Scooby-Doo has eclipsed Rin Tin Tin and Lassie as the world’s most famous canine screen hero. (No accident, these days, that we refer to a crime-solving detective’s posse as a “Scooby gang.”)

Director Tony Cervone’s Scoob, debuting on HBO Max and other video-on-demand platforms, is guaranteed to keep the lovable pooch vibrant for additional years to come.

Cervone’s pacing frequently has the frantic intensity of classic Warner Bros. cartoons, and the script — credited to no fewer than six hands — definitely captures the original Scooby vibe, while inserting snarky asides and droll one-liners that’ll keep adults equally entertained. The voice talent is solid, and longtime Saturday morning cartoon fans will have fun spotting all the supporting characters borrowed from other Hanna-Barbera shows.

The film is littered with additional Hanna-Barbera “Easter eggs”; you’ll want to pay careful attention to billboards and street signs.

Scoob also serves as an origin story, of sorts, with a lengthy prolog that shows how a clumsy puppy with hilariously oversized paws chances to meet 10-year-old Shaggy Rogers at California’s Venice Beach. Of course, they bond over a shared sandwich, and thereafter become inseparable best buds.

Halloween arrives shortly thereafter, at which point Shaggy and Scoob meet up with Daphne, Velma and Fred. During a pell-mell attempt to retrieve Shaggy’s bag of Halloween candy from a supposedly haunted house — with Scoob hindering as much as helping — the quintet exposes the actual culprit behind these faux scary doings.

(That’s key; classic Scooby-Doo adventures always seemed to involve dire supernatural events, ultimately revealed — after all manner of pratfalls and red herrings — to be the work of decidedly Earthbound human baddies.)

Nebraska: A memorable trip

Nebraska (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and vulgarity
By Derrick Bang

I’ve been waiting 40 years for Bruce Dern to snag this sort of role.

And so, I would imagine, has he.

When David (Will Forte, left) insists on seeing the house where his father Woody (Bruce
Dern, center left) grew up, the building's sad, dilapidated and abandoned state aptly
mirrors Woody's dismay over the lifetime of disappointment that haunts him. Woody's
wife Kate (June Squibb) takes advantage of this excuse to dredge up unpleasant
memories, while David's brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk) warily watches his combative
parents, wondering if they'll flare into another squabble.

The American film industry has no shortage of unsung and underappreciated actors, male and female. Some carve out respectable careers as supporting players: familiar faces who, with their mere presence, immediately raise the quality of a given movie. Jack Warden, George Sanders, Joan Cusack, Shelley Winters and George Kennedy come to mind.

Others work just as hard but never quite achieve name-brand recognition: forever hoping for that one golden shot that’ll make all the difference, usually retiring into obscurity without having had that chance.

Thanks to Nebraska, Dern is one of the lucky ones.

Until now, he has been the stalwart second banana in projects as varied as Smile, The Great Gatsby, All the Pretty Horses and Coming Home, the latter earning him a well-deserved Academy Award nomination. Leading roles have been few, but I’ve never forgotten the intensity of his essentially solo turn in 1972’s Silent Running (a sci-fi entry dismissed as preposterous at the time, which has become more uncomfortably prophetic with every passing year).

Dern brought life not only to his own role in that cautionary tale, but also to the three boxy, robotic “drones” that — thanks to his persuasive performance — developed their own individual personalities. No small feat, decades before CGI magic was even a gleam in anybody’s eye.

Even then, Dern was a master of earnest, heartbreaking passion, imbuing his sad-sack characters with the forever chagrined intensity of the eternally downtrodden and disenfranchised. Men who nonetheless cling to even the faintest hope, no matter how preposterous.

A great work of art doesn’t emerge from an empty canvas, of course; Nebraska also owes its deliciously biting charm to its rich script from newcomer Bob Nelson — a remarkable big-screen debut — and the sensitive, perfectly modulated direction of Alexander Payne, who has delighted us with misfit sagas such as Sideways, Election and The Descendants.

Payne usually writes or collaborates on the scripts for his film; Nebraska marks the first time he has fully surrendered the screenplay chores. But it’s easy to see why; Nelson’s droll premise and mordant execution display the same slow-burn humor and slightly left-of-center sensibilities, while granting us a central character every bit as stubborn, irascible and resolutely unlovable as Jack Nicholson’s title character in Payne’s About Schmidt.

Tone is everything in Payne’s films, and Nebraska could be considered Fargo on downers: somewhat quieter and slower, but every bit as rich with Midwestern quirks and slow-drawlin’ ambiance.