Zipping Along

The life of a predator isn't what it's cracked up to be! He must be up to his eyeballs in debt to Acme (or has a sizable source of funds), his medical bills equally large and for what? A singular lack of success in catching one bird! I say give up, get a pizza and take up stamp collecting. Great fun and worth watching. Recommended.

Another great Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote short from Chuck Jones. Once again, Coyote is trying his darnedest to catch the bird with no luck. Some hilarious gags, including grenades, mouse traps, hypnosis, and a wonderful telephone pole bit. Excellent animation in this one. Beautiful colors with well-drawn characters and backgrounds. I really love some of these early Road Runner shorts when the gags were so fresh and the animation so crisp. There were certainly some amazing ones later, too, but there's just something dynamic about some of the earlier ones. If you're a fan of the series, you'll no doubt love this one. It doesn't reinvent the wheel or anything but it does give you lots of laughs crammed into six minutes.

More of Wile E. Coyote - aka Road-Runnerus Digestus - trying to get Road Runner - aka Velocitus Tremendus - and always ending up getting himself. Probably the best gag here is the hypnotism trick; it's almost hypnotic to watch (of course, in this sense it won't lead you to do what Wile E. ends up doing!).

So, maybe "Zipping Along" doesn't really add anything new to the cinematic landscape, but it's always great to see what happens to WEC. It just goes to show that the more you try to harm others, the more you get harmed.

And what was with that train at the beginning?

The story is somewhat unexceptional, and the pacing is a little uneven here, but there is much to enjoy. The Roadrunner is a good character, but I have always found Coyote the better of the two, he makes all these traps but he never gets that bird.

The animation is very nicely done with good backgrounds and character features, the music is also good, not generic or annoying and the gags all work from the giant kite with the bomb, the magnet, various mousetraps and falling telephone poles. Predictable maybe, funny absolutely!

Overall, for the Roadrunner and Coyote's fourth pairing, it works very well. It isn't a classic, but I enjoyed it, and I do think it is worth watching. 8/10 Bethany Cox

I like these opening graphics which give us various "scientific names" of the two main characters. This time, the roadrunner - who is shown outracing a fast train - is labeled "velocitus tremenjus." Wile E. Coyote, watching from above, is now labeled "Road Runnerus Digestus."

Wile E.'s slapstick attempts at getting the bird include a hand grenade, mousetraps, a giant kite with a big bomb, falling telephone poles, bird seed with steel shot and a giant magnet, hypnotism, a giant boulder, shotguns and more! It's unbelievable how many attempts the coyote makes in each cartoon with the predictable results.

This wasn't one of the funnier episodes, I didn't think, although it was entertaining as always.