Fast and Furry-ous

Not knowing this until I came to this title page, I thought, "This would be a good introduction to anyone who hasn't seen "Roadrunner" cartoons." Now I see it WAS the first Road Runner cartoon.

Right off the bat, we see the road runner zipping down roads. Then they stop the action, freeze it and show the graphic "Road Runner (Accelleratii Inncredibus). Moments later, we see the coyote, who is watching our speedy hero from a pair of binoculars on cliff high above. He's licking his lips in anticipation and is described as "Coyote (Carnivorous Vulgaris).

Coyote puts on a bib, grabs and knife and fork, and speeds down the hill to catch the road runner. He immediately discovers he can't outrun the bird, so he hatches a number of inventive plans......and so goes this cartoon and many others to follow as coyote's meal plans are frustrated time and again.

Some of many coyote schemes to catch his prey are simple (falling boulders) to inventive (jet-propelled sneakers) to very elaborate. Almost all of them are funny. This animated short set the tone for all the good ones which followed. Good stuff!

Fast and Furry-ous is Chuck Jones' first cartoon starring the Road Runner and While E. Coyote. It was originally supposed to be a one-shot but there was so much demand that a sequel was made four years later which then became a series. Since this was the first one, I noticed a few differences. One, the backgrounds were more detailed than in subsequent ones. Also, when the bird sticks out his tongue a few times, you don't hear the sound effects that Treg Brown provided on later entries. And only once as the Coyote falls do you then see the ground from a sky-view before some smoke appears. Otherwise, there's the spot gags that are similar to other series entries like the scenery While E. paints over a rock formation that the Road Runner runs right through but the Coyote bumps into hard! And there's some Acme products, of course! Very funny first entry to a classic, if formulaic, series. By the way, Road Runner is described as Accellleratii Incredibus while the Coyote is Carnivorous Vulgaris.

This is the very first Road Runner cartoon. Fresh and funny it was at the time, but after a while many of these toons began to resemble each other and it was impossible to tell them apart especially when they started recycling footage in the non Looney Tunes Rudy Larriva shorts of the 60s and 70s. It lessens the quality of the real Roadrunner cartoons of the time and it's a real shame considering how intelligent they were.

The formula (before it got tired) is the same as ever. Wile E. Coyote, is a starving desert dog, there doesn't seem to be much food around other than a cheeky Roadrunner so he uses everything at his disposal (and endless shoddy products from the Acme corporation) to catch the bird only for his plans to backfire.

Roadrunner is kind of met with a lot of criticism now with many moans of 'They are all the same'. While this is true now, the characters were only good as long as Chuck Jones and Co were in control. This being the first of many great Roadrunner shorts before it went downhill.

And I just love the sticking out tongue thing Roadrunner does.

The first of the Roadrunner cartoons sets things up nicely. We get to see some of the precious moments that will appear throughout their "careers." There are refrigerators, rockets, painted tunnels, and on and on. We also get to see the coyote stunned by the speed of the roadrunner when he sees him run for the first time.

Fast and Furry-ous (1949)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

The first ever Coyote and Road Runner film turns out to be a very enjoyable one. As would become the norm, the Coyote is hungry and wanting to eat the Road Runner but he's simply not fast (or smart) enough to catch him. This first short has plenty of wonderful laughs as the violent action is constantly finding hilarious ways to injure the Coyote. One of my favorite gags in the film is when the Coyote pants the side of a mountain to appear like a road so that the Road Runner will kill himself by running into it but things don't work out as planned. Another funny jokes includes the Coyote making a ski machine to build up speed but of course this doesn't go as planned either. Director Jones was a fan of silent movies and that's easy to see with these shorts.