I actually really wanted to like The Wild Chase. I love Looney Tunes and Sylvester, there are a fair few Roadrunner-Wile E Coyote cartoons that I do enjoy(though their overall series is not what I call consistent). Speedy Gonzales I don't dislike, but he has never been one of my favourites either. Plus it did have a very interesting idea. Sadly this was never lived up to due to very mediocre execution. It does have its moments, the line ups of people betting on Speedy and the Roadrunner, the TNT pump gag and the ending were at least amusing, Mel Blanc does a good job providing the vocals- though he has done much better work- and Bill Lava's music does have a certain jauntiness to it. I do much prefer Carl Stalling's scoring though. However, I didn't care for the animation, the backgrounds looked very sparse and lacking in colour and Sylvester and Wile E were very poorly drawn. I think also that a lot of the animation looked recycled further cheapened The Wild Chase. The story was also rather limp, I kind of knew that it was going to be predictable as a lot of the Roadrunner-Wile E cartoons are, but when under Chuck Jones' involvement they at least do have energy and a sense of fun. I do think The Wild Chase suffers from the lack of Chuck Jones, don't get me wrong I love Fritz Freleng but because the material wasn't anywhere near as inspired as some of his other work it doesn't allow him to put enough of his own style to it. The humour offers little new or exciting, apart from a couple of moments a lot of it feels like a tired rehash of some of their previous efforts. The four main characters had so much potential but all of them seemed bland. Sylvester and Wile E have such great personalities but as a consequence of the humour being so lacking those personalities just didn't come through. And Speedy just ended up being annoying, there were times when I did question what the point of him was other than being a foil for Sylvester. All in all, a disappointing cartoon considering its potential. 4/10 Bethany Cox
