Whoa, Be-Gone!

This wastes no time showing Wile E. Coyote (famishius vularis ingenious) chasing The Road Runner (birdius high-ballius). It begins in the opening credits, and only momentarily slows down after 100 seconds when the coyote comes up with this first plan.

Wile's idea - lets's catapult myself by throwing a boulder on the other end of this teeter- totter - winds up with our famished friend falling a thousand feet almost into the same imprint he left in the ground minutes earlier.

Before he falls a third time - he has a fatalistic approach by now -he puts a trampoline over that same spot.

I liked the names of the two Acme products he purchased for this one: the "Giant Rubberband For Tripping Road-Runners" kit and the "One Do-It-Yourself Tornado Kit" along with the gags of him getting out of a dynamite-rigged one nail at a time and the headgear for his ill-fated high-wire act.

It's the same old story but with some inventive ideas, new and funny schemes by the pathetic but never-say-die Wile.

Some people ask themselves where Wile E. Coyote gets the money to buy all those Acme products. Probably by not spending any money on food. He starts off "Whoa Be Gone" well prepared on top of a rocket with cutlery in hand. Too bad he did not take the nearby tunnel into account. Or the fact that the rocket was a heat seeking one. This installment features more inventive ideas than usual, and one of the funniest details in any Road Runner cartoon: every time Wile E. falls of a cliff, he lands in exactly the same spot, but in a different position, leaving a mark on the ground.

Credit is due to Wile E. for always being willing to learn new skills, such as upside down tightrope walking. Nor is he afraid to try out new products, like a box of one thousand Do-It-Yourself Tornado's (Acme water gun to make them grow sold separately). You would thing he should know better. Especially with an abandoned army mine field nearby....

8 out of 10

Excellent Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote short from Chuck Jones. Really vibrant, energetic animation in this one. The colors are bright and lush. The characters and backgrounds are well-drawn. The action scenes are just dynamite. The music is lively and upbeat. The best part of any Road Runner and Coyote cartoon are the wonderful gags, often featuring the products of the good people at ACME. Some of the better ones we have this time are a hilarious high wire stunt, ACME tornado seeds, and a recurring falling gag that never stops being funny. It's a great short and one of the best looking of the series. Chuck Jones fans will no doubt love it.

Yet again, Wile E. Coyote (insert scientific name involving eating) sets a series of traps to get Road Runner (insert scientific name involving speed), but always gets himself. Probably the coolest one here is a tornado seed. Sure enough, he gets sucked in...and then there's a mine field! And the guy still doesn't give up! True, even before "Whoa, Be-Gone!" starts, you know what sorts of things are going to happen, but it's still a hoot. After all, WEC always gets his just desserts for trying to harm RR (another one of the tricks involves a trampoline). It's truly a classic.

Available on Volume 2 Disc 2 of the Looney Tunes DVDs.

Chuck Jones's 'Whoa Be Gone', the twelfth Road Runner cartoon, is at its best when it's playing with new ways to hurl the Coyote off a cliff. Early on in the cartoon, this is established as a running gag with the Coyote landing next to previous splat marks from earlier plummets and finally erecting a trampoline over the spot to save him from further falls (needless to say, it doesn't work). Where 'Whoa Be Gone' goes wrong is in backing down from this potentially brilliant running gag. The potential for a cartoon based around nothing more than different ways to get the Coyote to plummet off the same cliff onto the same bit of ground is enormous. Instead, 'Whoa Be Gone' leaves behind this premise and opts for some more standard gags, some of which are funny and some of which aren't. At the very least, the cliff falling gag should have been revisited for the finale. Instead, we get a very abrupt, weak and frankly strange ending in which the Road Runner drops from the sky dragging the That's All Folks screen on a drawstring. It doesn't work and acts as a disappointing climax to a cartoon that could have been so much more than the run of the mill effort that it is.