Beep, Beep

I think I am some kind of Road Runner fan. I don't care how predictable it is, I laugh anyway. 'Beep, Beep' is predictable most of the time, although it is pretty ingenious at the same time as well. Of course the Road Runner is chased by the Coyote and of course the Coyote fails to catch the Road Runner with every new attempt. The plans the Coyote comes up with are very funny. You see exactly where it will go wrong and you will not disappointed. Well, one time you are sort of disappointed, what you think will happen does not, but it makes the joke even funnier.

If you like the Road Runner shorts you will love this one. The predictable gags work and the animation is great and pretty original at times.

OK, so in any Wile E. Coyote-Road Runner cartoons, we know that WEC is going to set up all sorts of traps for RR, but always maim himself in various ways. That certainly happens in "Beep, Beep". Predictable? I guess that it is, but when you think about it, these cartoons show how the more you try to harm someone else, the more you get harmed; sort of like how Daffy Duck always tries to undermine Bugs Bunny's integrity but Bugs sees around it.

Overall, this is another classic from the Termite Terrace crowd. Sometimes, I think that if we really had wanted to ease Cold War tensions, we could have just let the Soviet Union see Looney Tunes cartoons; I'm sure that they would have loved them. Another great one.

PS: I learned on "Jeopardy!" that Wile E. Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert.

One of the first truly great Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote shorts by the legendary Chuck Jones. There's no plot really, just Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner and failing over & over. Beautiful animation with well-drawn backgrounds. Love the colors. Energetic music from Carl Stalling. Many funny gags, including "free drink of water," ACME aspirin, and rocket-powered roller skates. The highlight of the short is the sequence that takes place in an underground mine. As with all of the Road Runner cartoons, there is an element of predictability to it but it works so well. Chuck Jones was a master at the sight gag and it shows in this series more than any other. It's not the best of the Road Runner and Coyote series but it is a great one.

This is more of the same thing that made this cartoon popular.....but who's complaining? It's always fun to see the poor coyote try various contraptions to get the Road Runner, and then get pulverized by every one of those inventions.

The underground cave chase was different from the normal fare and was clever. It gave us an aerial view of the chase in a maze-like structure. I didn't say it was hilarious; just different from the normal above-ground antics.

This one, along with some other Road Runner shorts, are featured on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 and the transfers of them are spectacular. The colors are magnificent.

Beep, Beep (1952)

*** (out of 4)

Second film in the Road Runner/Coyote series is a pretty good one as the dumb but always trying Coyote comes up with new tricks as he tries to catch his meal. The highlight of these new tricks is a long running sequence where the two are inside a dark mine and we can only see them from the lights on their helmets. I'm not a die-hard fan of the series but I am watching them again in the order that they appear on Warner's second disc in their second volume of Looney Tunes shorts. Seeing them in order might have me changing my mind but this one here is a pretty good short from start to finish as the action is always at a feverish pace and we get many good gags including the before mentioned mine sequence but there's also another good one dealing with water.