Hook, Line and Stinker

My previous comment inadvertently attributed a running dynamite gag to this film, whereas that actually appears in the (superior) "Lickety Splat". Without that gag, I have to grade this film even lower, because the heavy-handed non-Starling score still does diminish the overall effect of the film.

Lesser Chuck Jones Road Runner & Coyote short that's still better than all of the stuff that came after Jones left the series. The animation is solid, if not particularly exceptional. The colors are kind of dull, which is odd for the time. I thought maybe it was just the print I saw off TV but I checked out the DVD version and it appears to be the same there. As other reviewers have mentioned, the one notable gag involves a piano. The rest are pretty forgettable gags involving hammers, dynamite, and bird seed. What hurts the cartoon most of all is the canned music score, which is annoying and below the superior quality of the usual composers who worked in WB animation.

No matter how many times Wile Ethelbert "Famishius Famishius" Coyote tries to get Road "Burnius Roadibus" Runner, we always know what's going to happen, though our sympathy always remains with WEC. The highlight in "Hook, Line and Stinker" is a Rube Goldberg-style scheme that WEC hopes will finally finish off RR; but of course you know what happens.

So, Wile E. continues hilarious engaging in fanaticism (defined by George Santayana as redoubling your effort after you've forgotten your aim) while Road Runner pretty much never becomes aware of the potential danger - or lack thereof - in which he could find himself. A real classic.

And yes, the coyote's middle name is Ethelbert. I learned that from "Jeopardy!".

...but Hook, Line and Stinker is not what I consider a favourite. The animation is not too bad, it is solid enough, some of the gags are decent namely the piano gag and the overall quality when watching it on TV or DVD is nice. Also Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote's antics are reasonably funny. However, the running time is disappointingly scant, and I found the pacing rather hectic. But the most disappointing asset was the music. These Looney Tunes usually have great music, with quirky motifs and rousing rhythms, but here I(a musician myself) found the music, as others have pointed out, annoying and repetitive.

Overall, not bad, but not great either. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Not a bad Roadrunner effort, the film is hindered substantially by a score that will not let up, hammering away at the comedy when silence usually works best when Wile E.'s plans start to fail. Especially unfortunate since this is one where an early Coyote mishap provides an ongoing thread throughout the rest of the short--a nice Jones touch.