Runter kommt er immer

When I heard that Warner Bros. Animation were producing a trio of 3-minute Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote theatrical shorts in CGI, I pondered how many Looney Tunes fans would prefer the classic Chuck Jones versions over the Friz Freleng and Robert McKimsversion and the lackluster 2003 short film, "Whizzard of Ow". But when I watched "Coyote Falls" in front of "Cats and Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore", I became totally astounded in a positive fashion as I noticed its qualitative merits.

Chuck Jones' classic feel of the Road Runner and Coyote animation has been successfully translated into the CG realm, thanks to a Chuck Jones-dedicated film director Matthew O' Callaghan bent on bringing any cartoony style into CGI. Also, there are musical cues of Carl Stalling, in which everyone can recognize them right when they grow up with the Looney Tunes. Even stereoscopic 3-D is used effectively on gags, timing and pacing, aside from depth of field.

When it comes to Friz Freleng or Robert McKimson on directing the Road Runner and Coyote shorts from the mid-1960s, he ignored the original RR&C template by Jones and chose to go onto a different take: A central idea of the cartoon as an gag instead of the other way round and Coyote's occasional successes on capturing his feathered nemesis. The result: those shorts turned out to be unfavorable and forgettable. But when it comes to Matt O' Callaghan, he did a tremendous job on not only centering a gag without breaking the true and original RR&C premise, but more importantly bringing a 3-minute RR&C cartoon (not 6 or 7 minutes as usual!) to the rank of Jones' RR&C cartoons as we all know. (If you don't believe me, just check out "Daffy Duck for President" and "Porky and Daffy: the William Tell Overture" and see the differences.)

There are still more Road Runner and Coyote shorts, coming to theaters and the 2010 revamp of "the Looney Tunes Show", so let's hope they can be good as or better than "Coyote Falls"!

It was nice to see this short. And it is short. Less than three minutes as opposed to the normal seven that shorts were from about 1929 onward. Fine direction and animation for the most part. However, there is a fatal flaw. With the Road Runner in the past there was always a gray line concerning his participation in the Coyoyte's mishaps. Unfortunately during this short the Roadrunner directs sticking out his tongue at the Coyote, which he never did in the past. This is a conscious misstep by the director and a shame. Innocence is lost in the Roadrunner's character when he becomes a willing participant. Poor choice in an otherwise delightful short.

What makes a classic Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon funny is the inventiveness of the Coyote, and the lengths he'll go to get some bird meat in his stomach. He's "wily", somewhat flamboyant, overly confident and eager for his schemes to work. This short has none of this.

We laugh when Wile E. Coyote's elaborate schemes fail and backfire. Some times the backfire is painful, but we laugh at his far reaching creativeness to combine several inventions into a giant ridiculous plot or contraption, and then winds up harming him instead of the Road Runner. But there's none of that here.

What we get in this short is Wile E. Coyote being smacked around and walloped without rhyme or reason, other than he tried to get the road runner (yet again) but it's more or less just a failure for the sake of being a failure. And so we see him get hit, smacked, walloped, and so forth without the wily coyote's inventiveness. Without his "super genius".

In short it's just violence for the sake of it, and it's really not funny in the least. You don't see Mister Super Genius overly confidant only to suffer some comeuppance due to bad planning or the laws of physics not cooperating. You see an animal getting smacked around for the sake of it.

It's not funny. The Coyote is not creative. He's not inventive. He's used as a ragdoll as he goes from one painful episode of getting hit to another.

Mister Matthew O'Callaghan, you're no Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin, Chuck Jones nor Friz Freling. How you got handed this assignment, much less become a director, is beyond me. I think Jones said it took three years to get a short done, from concept to being put up on the screen. These look like they were thrown together on a weekend. There about as painful to watch as the Wile E Coyote actually getting hit. They're dull, not thematic in the least (the coyote wants to live in previous EPs, and so does the road runner), regardless of how dynamic they look.

Please pass the torch.

Imagine everything that could go wrong with Wile E. Coyote trying to use a bungee cord and a high bridge to capture the Road Runner. As is always the case, what can go wrong, goes wrong. The problem with this is that three minutes is way too little time. We needed a few other Acme products come from UPS and allow our boy to further destroy himself.

While much of the Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote series was so enjoyable, the best of them some of the best and funniest Chuck Jones and Looney Tunes ever made once deadlines became tighter and budgets smaller there was a significant nosedive in quality which made the 1965-1968 output largely disappointing.

More were made after, but while better than the 1965-1968 cartoons the glory days for the two characters were sadly long gone. 'Coyote Falls' is along with 'Chariots of Fur' and 'Little Bo Beep' one of the better "modern" Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons, and while it's nowhere near classic Chuck Jones level it is closer to that than to Rudy Larriva dud territory.

There is not much wrong here with 'Coyote Falls'. It's not quite wild or looney enough perhaps, and at a meagre 3 minutes it's far too short when the cartoons in the series on average is between 6 and 7 minutes. It is proof though that the latter Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons shouldn't be completely dismissed, and yes it is infinitely superior to the feature film that succeeds it (didn't completely hate 'Cats and Dogs 2' but really cannot lie and say it was good either).

In 'Coyote Falls', the CGI animation comes off surprisingly well and looks great. There was the worry as to whether the CGI would have depth and whether because of the different animation style that the cartoon will once again feel too different to the series' classic era. The animation however is vibrant and colourful, with very richly detailed backgrounds and nothing looking cheap or stiff (even the character designs). Refreshingly, the music is closer in spirit and in how it fits with the action to the lively and lusciously characterful work of Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn than the cheap canned, repetitive and discordant sounds of Bill Lava, really appreciated that it adhered to a more classical cartoon style rather than infuse it with modern popular music which can be repetitive and generic and would have made the feel far too different.

'Coyote Falls' could have been more wild and looney, but it is still a highly entertaining cartoon and executes its humour very well. The gags and traps are not the most original or visually imaginative, but they are beautifully timed and very funny, plus they look good in the animation. Nothing tired or repetitive here. The story has its charm and moves quickly without feeling too rushed, it's formulaic (as was most of the series) but not painfully so. Roadrunner thankfully is closer to the amusing and reasonably cute character of the Jones cartoons rather than the badly drawn and incredibly annoying one seen in the Rudy Larriva shorts. Coyote, as has been said many times already, is the funnier and more interesting of the two, and he remains cunning, incredibly funny yet sympathetic for the audience which is what has always made him so appealing as a character.

All in all, for a late/modern/contemporary Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon 'Coyote Falls' was surprisingly really good. 8/10 Bethany Cox