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It's strange how your perspective shifts as you get older. When I was a young devotee of ROADRUNNER, it was the titular hero I identified with, his speed, obviously, his unassailability, his grace, his freedom, his cheek. Watching him again, nearly two decades on, I find that the real hero of the cartoon is not this miraculous popinjay, but his hapless nemesis, Wil E. Coyote.

There is something monstrous and inhuman about Roadrunner's indestructability, but nothing heroic. He is a creature of instinct, he is what he is, a road runner. We should no more applaud his skill than we should marvel at rain falling. Even his mockery seems mechanical, unwilled. He is something abstract, ungraspable, a hurtling metaphor for all we fail to achieve in life.

Wil E. we can love, identify with. He has a name. Like all self-willed names, it is preposterously inappropriate. Although part of his failure can be attributed to his enemy's fleet feet, it is his ineptitude that is mostly to blame. His wily schemes are incompetently conceived in the heat of the moment - the eternal chase allows no room for pause.

These cartoons are a further elaboration of Buster Keaton's Beckettian agonies - here plot is completely abandoned, for a daring, perpetual repetition, where closure is forever denied. Because the only closure could be death - Road Runner's, Wil E.'s, or ours. We will never pin down that which we can sense, but cannot hold. And yet we must continued to try, because stillness can only lead to thoughts of mortality and despair.

Chuck Jones' imagination only improves with age. The Cezanne-like geometrics are a marvel to behold. The saturated colours still dazzle, and the backgrounds, part simplistic children's book illustration, part bleak dreamscape, are as piercingly evocative as ever. The insane and complex variations on what is essentially a simple, inexorable plot are breathtaking, and puts almost everything that was stumbling lamely out of Hollywood at the time to shame. Jones, horribly underrated, was at least as great a director as Keaton, Hawks or Sirk, and it is about time we said so. So I did.

The story is somewhat unexceptional, and the pacing is a little uneven here, but there is much to enjoy. The Roadrunner is a good character, but I have always found Coyote the better of the two, he makes all these traps but he never gets that bird.

The animation is very nicely done with good backgrounds and character features, the music is also good, not generic or annoying and the gags all work from the giant kite with the bomb, the magnet, various mousetraps and falling telephone poles. Predictable maybe, funny absolutely!

Overall, for the Roadrunner and Coyote's fourth pairing, it works very well. It isn't a classic, but I enjoyed it, and I do think it is worth watching. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Chuck Jones's 'Zipping Along', the fourth cartoon in the Road Runner series, is notable for how it increases the relationship between the Coyote and the audience. The gags are hit and miss, ranging from hilarious (the mouse trap gag is still among my favourites) to dull (the bomb and the kite) or genuinely weak (the double "meep meep" from the Road Runner and the dust he leaves behind). However, the reaction shots of the Coyote are all priceless and there are many more of them than in the opening trio of cartoons. His endearingly defeated glances to the audience are capable of turning a weak gag into a hilarious one. For example, the nonsensical joke with the giant magnet and the TNT is improved 100% by the extremely brief look of horror the Coyote shoots our way a millisecond before the explosion. It's the tiniest piece of animation but it's monumentally effective. There are numerous little moments like that all the way through 'Zipping Along', considerably heightening its enjoyment factor. It's also notable for the fact that it is the first Road Runner cartoon not to close with the Coyote being hit by a vehicle which the Road Runner is on board. He is hit by a vehicle at the finale and we do hear a "meep meep" afterwards but it doesn't come from the Road Runner!

I like these opening graphics which give us various "scientific names" of the two main characters. This time, the roadrunner - who is shown outracing a fast train - is labeled "velocitus tremenjus." Wile E. Coyote, watching from above, is now labeled "Road Runnerus Digestus."

Wile E.'s slapstick attempts at getting the bird include a hand grenade, mousetraps, a giant kite with a big bomb, falling telephone poles, bird seed with steel shot and a giant magnet, hypnotism, a giant boulder, shotguns and more! It's unbelievable how many attempts the coyote makes in each cartoon with the predictable results.

This wasn't one of the funnier episodes, I didn't think, although it was entertaining as always.

Zipping Along (1953)

*** (out of 4)

The fourth Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner series has four way roads, guns, bombs, bird seed, cutting the strings on a bridge and more TNT as the dumb one keeps trying to catch his dinner. Even early on in the series we're starting to get quite a few repeat jokes and this would certainly continue throughout the series but you can help but be entertained by Wile's effort to get something to eat. The joy of watching him try and try harder only to fail is the real key to this series since the Road Runner offers very little outside his classic "Beep Beep". The highlight of the film has to be the free bird seed offer.

The life of a predator isn't what it's cracked up to be! He must be up to his eyeballs in debt to Acme (or has a sizable source of funds), his medical bills equally large and for what? A singular lack of success in catching one bird! I say give up, get a pizza and take up stamp collecting. Great fun and worth watching. Recommended.

The forth pairing of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner is still good and features many gags that work, including grenades, mousetraps, a giant kite, a bigger magnet, and even hypnosis. Of course none of these work, but they make for a hilarious cartoon. Man I love that coyote's work ethic. This animated short can be seen on Disc 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2. It also has a little 11 minute featurette "Behind the Tunes - Crash! Bang! Boom!: The Wild Sounds of Treg Brown" that I'll get more into in the listing for that on this site.

My Grade:A+

Another great Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote short from Chuck Jones. Once again, Coyote is trying his darnedest to catch the bird with no luck. Some hilarious gags, including grenades, mouse traps, hypnosis, and a wonderful telephone pole bit. Excellent animation in this one. Beautiful colors with well-drawn characters and backgrounds. I really love some of these early Road Runner shorts when the gags were so fresh and the animation so crisp. There were certainly some amazing ones later, too, but there's just something dynamic about some of the earlier ones. If you're a fan of the series, you'll no doubt love this one. It doesn't reinvent the wheel or anything but it does give you lots of laughs crammed into six minutes.

'Zipping Along' introduces the Road Runner as Velocitus Tremendus and the Coyote as Road-Runnerus Digestus before the chase starts. In this cartoon the Coyote uses, or tries using, mousetraps, cannons, a lot of guns and even hypnosis that he tests on a bug. Of course things do not work as planned and every single time the joke is on him.

Like with all other Road Runner vs. Coyote cartoons you will not be bored. I smiled almost the entire time. The simple but quite funny animation works for most moments and this is one of those cartoons where the music helps with the gags. There are better ones from the series but it is most definitely entertaining and enjoyable enough.

OK. I don't know about you - But, I, for one, have often found myself totally wishing that the cunning coyote would (for at least one time) actually get his hands on the elusive roadrunner and, yes, give that beeping bird a damn good throttling before he managed to break free from the coyote's grip.

Yep. That's my wish.

But - Hey! - Don't get me wrong here. I mean, I would never expect that the coyote would ever actually get around to really eating up the roadrunner. No way.

But, all the same - I seriously think that the roadrunner needed to get his smug, little ass royally kicked every once in a while just to let him know that the wily coyote wasn't a complete pushover.

More of Wile E. Coyote - aka Road-Runnerus Digestus - trying to get Road Runner - aka Velocitus Tremendus - and always ending up getting himself. Probably the best gag here is the hypnotism trick; it's almost hypnotic to watch (of course, in this sense it won't lead you to do what Wile E. ends up doing!).

So, maybe "Zipping Along" doesn't really add anything new to the cinematic landscape, but it's always great to see what happens to WEC. It just goes to show that the more you try to harm others, the more you get harmed.

And what was with that train at the beginning?