Chaser on the Rocks

Another stinking Rudy Larriva Road Runner & Coyote cartoon. Just look at that opening shot and tell me something isn't off with this right from the start. Wile E. Coyote is a giant compared to Road Runner. He's easily twice the bird's size. He also appears to be running at half-speed, yet two seconds into it he's winded! A typical lazy effort from Larriva, with no good gags and crappy animation. Not to mention the obtrusively loud sound effects, some of which don't even fit the actions on screen. At one point the Coyote paints a stick of TNT to look like a glass of lemonade. The sound effect used for the strokes of the paintbrush is a very loud slurping sound. Just terrible. I'm not even going to tell you what that dripping fire hose sound effect reminded me of! The worst part of the short is the maddeningly awful canned score, courtesy of Bill Lava. I would advise muting your TV immediately before it has a chance to settle in your brain, where it will lay eggs like a cockroach and you'll never be free of it. I cannot stress enough how much these Rudy Larriva shorts suck compared to the great Chuck Jones Road Runner cartoons.

Coyote suffers from hunger and thirst in this cartoon. I write this review to address the elephant in the room. No Coyote doesn't unleash an elephant as a road block to stop the Road Runner. What needs addressing is the need for these 1965 Road Runner cartoons. These were the only good cartoons Warner Brothers released by '65. This movie isn't vintage Warner Brothers. Still the short is funny. Best part involves a water hose. There's a mini running gag with Coyote counting. These creators will try about anything to get some laughs. And the effort is always appreciated. The final gag is the type of thing done better by Barnyard and Foghorn Leghorn. Still the joke works here, too.

The idea of the Road Runner and Coyote dying of thirst certainly could have been used effectively, but in `Chaser on the rocks' it only leads to continuity problems and repetitiveness. Wile E. is so thirsty he starts seeing mirages in all the wrong places and when one of them turns out to be real he almost drowns in it, but remains thirsty all the same.

After building a whole bird bath, using an emergency fire hose (sticking out of a rocky mountain wall) and almost drowning for the second time, Wile E. is still dying of thirst. Perhaps there are great lapses of time between the various gags? They certainly take forever to set up and then most of them fail to deliver. Sometimes W.E. even falls down the (same) cliff for no apparent reason than just to end the scene.

On the whole a lackluster effort in the Road Runner series. Probably the most original thing is when Coyote transforms a stick of dynamite into a glass of soda using only a lick of green paint, a straw and a slice of lemon. Not even Bob Ross could do that.

3 out of 10

'Chaser on the Rocks' is definitely not one of the best Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote cartoons, but I was entertained enough, I think. Coyote keeps seeing mirages of oases, with Road Runner swimming in the water, but of course every time when he arrives at the fake oases something goes wrong. Especially falling down from a cliff is very popular.

This cartoon is very predictable. The charm of most Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote cartoons is the fact that the predictability makes it funny. Most of the time there is also at least one gag you don't expect. Here the predictable moments are not funny at all, although they gave me a smile sometimes, and the surprise gag doesn't really work. Like 'Boulder Wham!' from the same year, it is a little too much of the same formula.

Now there is some decent animation, some nice music and there manages to be a worthwhile gag when Coyote transforms dynamite into a glass soda using...green paint, a straw and a slice of lemon. Sadly that is the most original the cartoon is, all the other gags are very hit and miss either taking a while to set up or misfiring on impact. The pacing is off as well, some of Chaser on the Rocks is very slow, while the story is very routine and predictable not the first Looney Tunes to suffer from this problem but it is significantly a problem here. The characters aren't engaging either, Wile E.Coyote is alright but the Roadrunner feels as though he is there because he is just there. Overall, lacklustre, predictable and disappointing, for me it is actually one of the weaker Looney Tunes cartoons. 4/10 Bethany Cox