Pop Culture Happy Hour - Coyote vs. Acme and Dolly Parton

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

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 HollywoodIn 'Toy Story 5,' playtime's over and screentime's inConnect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport 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.See 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

So hey, before we get to the show, you, yes, you with the impeccable taste in podcasts, if Pop Culture Happy Hour has ever helped you win a group chat debate, find a hit series before everyone else, or just pretend you saw that movie, you definitely didn't, and look, we've all been there, we've done it, even me, do us a solid and leave the show a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps more people find us, and it helps us make the show even better for you. And we thank you for it. The latest Looney Tunes movie is Coyote v. Acme, and it's kind of, a pretty ingenious premise.

Wiley Coyote finally reaches a breaking point in his Sisyphian pursuit on the Roadrunner, 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. 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 loony.

I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Aisha Harris. And joining us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is our co-host Glenn Weldon. Hey, Glenn. Hey, Aisha. All right, well, there's not much setup needed here. Coyote versus Agby 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 Catchup Entertainment, and it's in theaters now. Stephen, I'm going to start with you. Was it worth the weight? 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 roadrunner footage. Some of the best visual gags kind of pop up in that first third. 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 Lorry, whose name is Peter Lorry. 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, Chippendale Rescue Rangers. You know, the movies that I love 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. Yeah, yeah. Glenn, how about you?

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, just wasn't some. kind of way to refresh 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, literacies, tiny tunes,

Tasmania's. The gags and the characters come directly from the old shorts. Yeah, the coyote does not refer to himself as a super genius. 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 right 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. And we're just as valuable.

Exactly. And they were on endless loop, which is why they worm their way into the very soft brains 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 Lorry, who, I mean, the Looney Tunes version of Peter Lorry, 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. We both know it would be very, I say, very unpleasant for everyone involved.

if anything bigger, I say bigger, were to become public. Some really good jokes. There's jokes involving Wiley Coyote's signs. It'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 tini's tunes,

that's fraught because that's a challenge for yourself, because these shorts have not all aged equally well. Bugs Bunny is eternal. Speedy Gonzalez 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 peppy Lepew joke.

Yes. 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 Musu and Franks and had some martinis because they just, that is a mindfield that they just jeteed across

in such a smart way. It's so good. I like this a lot. I think I'm kind of picking up what Stevenson. 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 in infrastructure to kind of hang the jokes on. And I was fine with that.

Because are good jokes. 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 love Tiny Tunes. And then Space Jam.

is space gem. 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 Lutie Tunes characters to like dress in urban wear and like where back you could. 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 original spirit of Looney Tunes in a way that. Maybe they haven't necessarily done more recently and 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. You're going to miss good stuff. So much of this is visual. And the fact that Wally Coyote doesn't speak and 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 roadrunner testifies. And it's like it 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 things like. that and like what is this movie trying to be? I couldn't help but think of modern day

atrocities raves Aisha Harris. Like, I was just like, hmm, there's some parallels so 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 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 Bros. Discovery hadn't shelved it. I don't know. I think it's just like perfectly fine and perfectly fun and a great way to just spend a hundred or so minutes of your time. Like kids will like it. Adults will like it. It's fun. It's absolutely for all those people. And I really want to throw in a good word for John Sina, who is so game here,

who is so silly here. He's kind of the big bad. He's essentially one of the closest things we have in this realm to a human cartoon character. Talk 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, 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... One stone. 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 going to 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. 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, it's good for them. You know, 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. Wiley 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. It's attachment theory. 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 Roadrunner. And it's so funny how you've got Wiley going full Meisner, you know, emoting all over the furniture. And we keep cutting back to essentially the Roadrunner, who's 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-opted or inverted or deconstruct it. It's just that. And there's a courage to that in 2020. that I loved. Yeah. I also, like, Will Forte, I think, is an interesting character. Like, John Cena's great. But I also think it was, I, while watching it 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. And then the fact that he's kind of like this down and out, lazy, like, doesn't really want to 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, Wolf Forger'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 it was funny. Like, yes, like the coyote has one thing. He is a one-track mind.

That is what he does. 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, Acme products are awful. They don't work. And I think so many of us can relate to those types of things where it's like, it's supposed to work.

And you have felled 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. I mean, I think the genius. of setting it in Albuquerque is A, you get to draw in the Roadrunner and Wiley Cagot because that's their setting. But also, you get to use that I knew I should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque job, which is a staple of Loonie Toad. So it's so smart. It's kind of bringing, it's y'all come.

And I like that. Yeah. Yeah. 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. Oh, right. Which is a fairly recent vintage Looney Tunes movie, which I watched on a plane recently.

And 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 me, I'm always going to miss the voices of Mel Blank in June 4A, 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. 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 light, 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. 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. Oh, come on. If you didn't know, you thought, oh, my God. Yeah, I know. Different question. Yes, yes.

Well, I think we can all agree that it's fun worth checking out. And up next, we're actually going to be scrapping what's making us happy this week because we, we just do. going to 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 going to talk about some of our favorite musical performances after the break. 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 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'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?

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.

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. You hear in her voice, she is a spiritual error 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. 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 so much, I think, of the appeal of Dali is that her ability to harmonize with various voices over the years. And I think that might be why not to give her.

away my pick, but like mine is also a duet. 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 Dali Parton somehow had never actually appeared on the Muppet show. I thought she had. You would think she would have. Yeah, it makes sense, doesn't it? It just seems like she would be. Why wouldn't you have been? And then I remember, 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 Stevens Dolly. This Dolly was premiered in 1987 as opposed to Stevens 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. And it's just really delightful. Let's hear a little bit of that. Ribbit, ribid. We got to hear together. My God, that woman contained multitudes. 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 Dali never failed to make me happy. And I think this is just a perfect, like, encapsulation of that. And that is my pick. 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 in neither a you.

That's exactly who she was. That she was everyday people. Yeah. He was everyday frog. 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. Okay. Well, we've talked on this show. I realize many, many times about. this song. Lord, it's like a heart candy Christmas.

I'm waiting down. Okay, that is, of course, Heart 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 Horhouse 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 sticky comedy that was dated upon a rival. 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 can find on YouTube. Dolly does not perform this song in front of an audience, which might seem a little ah. She performs it. And we're adults. We could admit this. She lip singing. thinks 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 tope and chrome and gold. And you're going to 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 texiest. the tackiest, the cheapest, the gaudiest decorations with 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, like, 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. Dali Parton prided herself on looking. Glitzy, shiny, tacky. In her words, cheap. 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 moralized. 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 trends folks, her work with child literacy.

It all comes from 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. Yes. I love this pick. It's going to be hard to hear this, this Christmas. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, as we've already noted, all of these songs that we picked were not

Dalai 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 going to 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? This is maybe my favorite Dolly Parton song. And one of the reasons for that is,

It works on multiple levels. On one level, Code 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, you know, 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 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. 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. That's right. It's totally her. And I told them all the story. Mama told me why she sold and how my coat of many colors was worth more than all their clothes.

Well, I couldn't have said it any better than you, too. So that brings us to the end of our show. Stephen Thompson, Glenn Weldon. Thanks so much for being here. And helping us all just celebrate Dolly a little bit. That's right. Thank you so much. Thank you.

And this episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Lenin Sherburn, and Mike Katzv, 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.