Whoa, Be-Gone!

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..

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

This is another fine cartoon in the Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote series. In this one the Coyote tries to catch the bird with an elastic string between two rocks, a big rocket, seeds that can create tornadoes, a barrel with dynamite and something you normally use in a circus. Of course every attempt ends with hurting himself instead of catching or killing the Road Runner.

This is a terrific cartoon. It is directed by Chuck Jones and that is enough to make a cartoon work. His timing is perfect with every gag. The sequence with the barrel and dynamite is the best example, especially the Coyote's eyes in the final moments are a nice detail. The gag with the thing normally used in the circus is perfect as well. Another fine cartoon.

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.