Drive-In Saturday Tuesday Movie Review: Coyote vs. Acme (2026)

The Drive-in Saturday Tuesday movie review is a seasonal feature in which I review movies I see at drive-in theaters. The name of the segment is taken from the Bowie song, though often the movies have no direct Bowie connection. Part of the fun is finding indirect Bowie connections, and a perhaps surprising number of these movies actually use a Bowie song in the soundtrack or are otherwise related to Bowie. But at the end of the day, this segment is a movie review!

Movie: Coyote vs. Acme (2026)

Bowie Connection: Bowie was not involved with this movie, which contains no Bowie references and uses none of his songs. That said, it is a movie that combines live-action with animation, and Bowie did a song for another movie like that, Cool World (1992). Bowie’s song “Real Cool World,” produced by Nile Rodgers, was his first solo-release post-Tin Machine and was a precursor to Black Tie White Noise. The movie, which starred some heavy hitters—Brad Pitt, Kim Basinger, and Gabriel Byrne— was not very successful, and Bowie’s song wasn’t especially well received. I actually think it is pretty good, but it was released probably at the point that the “Bowie’s washed up” narrative was at its fullest force. Other than Bowie having done a song for another movie like Coyote vs. Acme, there’s really no other meaningful connection.

Experience: We were back at the Jericho, so I was able to get ice cream, which is great. The movies have begun to start earlier and the temperature has started to drop, which is largely bad news. That said, none of that detracted from this particular night, and the upside to earlier movies is that it will be easier to stay for the second feature without falling asleep. We didn’t do that this time, but we will soon enough…

Movie review: Coyote vs. Acme missed a huge opportunity. The basic premise is that Wile E. Coyote—the Looney Tune— hires a personal injury lawyer to sue Acme, the company that makes all the defective contraptions, like rocket boots, that he attempts to use to catch the Road Runner. That’s the movie’s one, big conceptual gag. The missed opportunity was for the legal aspect of the movie to be played absolutely straight. What would the real case look like? What would real lawyers argue? Leaving the facts to the cartoon world but the law to our world would (or at least could have) been genuinely hilarious. Instead, what we got was an amusing movie that relied on cartoon-style humor for laughs and a “the system is rigged” presupposition as its allegorical orientation. The result was likable, but it could have been much better.

None of this would have made any sense without any prior knowledge of Looney Tunes. The movie assumes you wouldn’t be watching it if you had no idea who the cartoon characters are. Do children still watch Looney Tunes? I have no idea. The ones I watched when I was a child in the 70s were largely repurposed shorts from the 40s and 50s featuring voice acting especially from Mel Blanc. I mention this because another of the film’s deficiencies is that the voices sounded off to me—of course, Blanc is no longer with us, but the voices of characters like Bugs Bunny, Foghorn Leghorn, and Elmer Fudd seemed a few steps too close to generic imitations than faithful recreations. Also, the animation seemed too clean, for lack of a better way of putting it. This sense was highlighted by a few very short clips from some older, classic cartoons. None of this would have been an issue if the cartoon elements were original, but they were clearly supposed to be evocative of the old Looney Tunes, and I just got the sense that these versions were a little too…new.

Oddly, one of the characters was a cartoon version of Peter Lorre, which was the kind of thing that the old Looney Tunes would occasionally do, but I was unclear as to why the one mid-20th-century actor imported into this movie was Lorre, and confused more as to why his easily imitated voice was, if anything, underplayed.

OK, here come some spoilers: The setup of the plot involves a lot of what we would basically get from a Road Runner cartoon— Wile E. uses bizarre devices to catch the Road Runner, and they blow up in his face. He recovers and tries again. Eventually, he sees an ad for a lawyer who specializes in personal injury cases for cartoon characters. Although he normally settles for small amounts, Wile E. intends to go all the way against Acme, the biggest company in the world. Eventually, the case makes its way to court, then, after the judge rules for Acme, Congress. A Senate committee, chaired by Fudd, holds a kind of second trial and also rules for Acme, which has paid off at least some of the senators. Nonetheless, the movie has a happy ending because Wile E. realizes that it is his purpose in life to chase the Road Runner on the eternal, unfulfilled hope of catching him, and the lawyer gets more clients from other cartoon characters who are happy that he seemed to believe in one of their own.

What a load of 2026 crap.

First, to be clear, the scenes in court and Congress bear no relationship to actual legal or congressional proceedings. The opportunity to juxtapose cartoon reality with actual legal and congressional procedure is bypassed in favor of gags that lean heavily into the cartoon reality, even when most of the figures that appear on screen are live action. But OK, while again, missing a big opportunity, this all plays out while maintaining a baseline of frivolity with enough genuine laughs to justify going to the drive-in.

What descends to crap-level is how the movie plays off our current cultural moment that assumes there are no rules, even rules of physics, let alone rules of law or government. The lawless system exists for big companies and their corporate overlords, justice won’t be found through courts, and politicians are corrupt. Meanwhile, the common man should find stoic fulfillment by simply accepting his lot. It is not for Wile E. to ever catch the Road Runner, he should be sustained by eternal hope and embrace his purpose in life, which is to chase. Meanwhile, the slovenly personal injury lawyer (who, by the way, is played by actor Will Forte), turns out to be noble and worth hiring because he sees his clients. They don’t need restitution, they need to be seen (insert excessive cartoonish retching sound). These are the kinds of presuppositions that should be the targets of satirical humor, not the moral of the story.

With all that said, the movie’s one big joke—the ridiculousness of cartoon scenarios—is funny enough. Coyote Vs. Acme works best if seen as a feature-length Looney Tune. Even then, it could have been better, but I’m not ready to call it a total failure.

Rating: Two defective rocket shoes
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