Wile E, Will. Will, Wile E.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Nearly three years ago I wrote about the plight of Coyote vs. Acme, the latest Looney Tunes feature film that was in post-production when Warner Brothers announced they’d changed their mind and they’d rather throw the whole thing off a cliff, toss a boulder on it, and declare it a loss on their tax forms. And yet it lives! A groundswell of omnipartisan internet wrath erupted in protest of this craven act of corporate greed and/or executive senselessness and/or misunderstanding by inattentive cartoon watchers who thought Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd were the good guys.

The kindly third-party folks at Ketchup Entertainment stepped up and overpaid to save the day and distribute the finished work. WB overlord David Zaslav and his starchy-suited lackeys underestimated how many of us are old enough to remember all those classic shorts in their prime, back when broadcast networks and local syndicated channels could proudly display their innovative slapstick zaniness uncut and uncensored before the devil invented the helicopter-parenting lobbying cults that demanded they be ruined for the sake of undiscerning latchkey kids who might see Bugs Bunny’s antics, get sinister ideas about ordering anvils from Amazon and going on squashing sprees.

The Looney Tunes legacy lives on in the hands of director Dave Green (Earth to Echo) and screenwriter Samy Burch (May December), who shares “Story By” credit with James Gunn (!!) and Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight, Mortal Kombat II), all of whom adapt a 1990 New Yorker article that I’m surprised isn’t paywalled as of this writing. Their efforts weren’t in vain thanks to You, The Viewers at Home, who would’ve looked collectively stupid if this had sucked as much as the Space Jam series did. I’m excited and relieved to report it doesn’t, so rest assured y’all didn’t waste your time. And now you can follow through on your alleged passion and actually go see it in the theater! I mean, you already did and I don’t need to bother writing about it, right?

…right?

…

…oh, internet. *sigh*

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