Cartoon Chaos & Unexpected Heart

This week on After the Frame , we’re diving into two movies that take familiar childhood imagery, twist it into something stranger, and somehow find more heart than expected along the way. We start with Coyote vs.

Acme , a long-awaited Looney Tunes adventure that understands exactly why these characters still work. The live-action/animation hybrid looks great, the slapstick hits, and the courtroom premise gives Wile E.

Coyote’s endless string of failures a surprisingly sincere payoff about effort, perseverance, and continuing to try when absolutely nothing goes your way. Then we move into Buddy , a much darker spin on childhood television that imagines what happens when the cheerful world of an old-school kids’ show turns deeply sinister.

We talk about the killer opening act, the very specific surreal comedy, Cristin Milioti’s ability to ground the insanity, and why the movie never quite reaches the heights of its initial setup. One resurrects classic cartoon chaos.

The other turns childhood nostalgia into a nightmare. Both prove there’s still plenty of mileage in taking something familiar and making it very, very weird.