Whoa, Be-Gone!

We come to the twelfth pairing of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (and the last on the Golden Collect Volume 2 sadly). And the overt familiarity doesn't detract at all with the humor. It's like watching the Stooges you KNOW all three will have some sort of hideous pain inflicted upon them. as always I found it highly enjoyable, but perhaps I'm a bit biased as Wile E. Coyote is one of my absolute favorite cartoon personalities of all time. This animated short can be seen on Disc 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2. This cartoon also has an optional music only track.

My Grade: A

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.

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.

Whoa, Be-Gone! (1958)

*** (out of 4)

Twelfth film for Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner turns out to be one of their best. This time out the hungry coyote uses all sorts of tricks including bombs, large rocks, a nailed barrel with dynamite and perhaps best of all, a grow your own tornado kit. This is an extremely fast-paced entry in the series and I might even call it the best as it does a very good job at matching the freshness of the first film. We've seen a few of the jokes before but even so they come off very fresh here. The best joke is a reworked one of something we saw earlier with the "dehidrated boulder" routine. This time out it's a tornado that you add water to and all heck will break loose, which naturally happens but this time it's just more pain for poor old Wile E..

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.