There They Go-Go-Go!

We come to the ninth pairing of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, starts a bit like Stop! Look! and Hasten!, in that it shows that Wile E. will eat pretty much anything, in that short it was the little gag of the coyote eating a fly, in this one it's a chicken that he made out of mud. He uses a rope, a sling-shot, a gun on a spring, a rotating circle of spiked balls, a booby-trapped ladder, and a load of rocks that refuse to fall down at the right time. Very funny stuff. as always ANY short with Wile E. in it is so VERY much worth watching, as he's 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

The Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons are generally very enjoyable, and Coyote is one of Chuck Jones' best overall characters. Sure, some of the later cartoons are duds, where the series got tired and repetitive as well as somewhat cheap. There They Go-Go-Go! is towards the better half of the series, a touch formulaic in terms of how the samey premise is structured but there is very little problematic here.

With the animation, the backgrounds are more stylised and abstract than usual but not to an ugly or over-sparse extent, and the rest of the animation is simply but smoothly drawn and colourful, with the fourth wall use of camera and expressions as ever inspired. It may not be the best-looking Roadrunner/Coyote cartoon, but it is a long way from looking as cheap as some of the later cartoons of theirs. With Carl Stalling and the music, this viewer has always associated Stalling with writing consistently good to outstanding music scores for the Looney Tunes cartoons and they are nearly always one of the highlights. That is precisely the case with his scoring for There They Go-Go-Go! (particularly in the spiked balls gag, which was a great marriage of visuals, action, humour and music), the orchestration is lush and clever, it's lively and characterful rhythmically and it matches with everything seamlessly and even adds to the enjoyment.

It doesn't forget to entertain either, the loaded gun and ending gags (elevated by Coyote's hysterical and very truthful laugh out loud moment) are absolutely hilarious and it was nice to see much more of Coyote's own inventions. There They Go-Go-Go! is not completely formulaic either, sure it's the same premise as the rest of the series, but especially with the beginning and the inventions it does do things differently as well which stops it from getting repetitive and tired. It's nicely and efficiently paced too, and the conflict between Roadrunner and Coyote is done well. Roadrunner is one-dimensional but still memorable and amusing, but, ever the much funnier and more interesting character, Coyote steals the show. Not only is he a cunning and often funny to hilarious character but one that one does feel sorry for (very like Sylvester), and not in a way that feels forced (one of the easiest Looney Tunes characters to root for in fact).

All in all, great fun and tries to do different too. While not one of the absolute best of the Roadrunner/Coyote cartoons it's in the top half. 9/10 Bethany Cox

. . . would be self-defeating. It would be tantamount to having a "hotfoot" ALL the time! It also would increase local road repair budgets astronomically. Every time a fully-loaded tanker truck with a flammable cargo smashes into a freeway overpass near where I live, it seems to result in years of detours, road closures, bridge-rebuilding and untold millions in repair costs generally passed along to motorists such as myself. If the Road Runner was wreaking as much highway mayhem as depicted during THERE THEY GO-GO-GO!, I'm pretty certain that some citizen would take him out if the proper authorities could not eradicate such a public nuisance first.

There They Go-Go-Go! (1956)

*** (out of 4)

Poor ol' Wile E. Coyote is so hungry the film starts off with him cooking mud to eat but he even messes that up. Then the Road Runner goes pass him and an all new hunt begins. This time out we see Wile try using a sling, a gun, spiked balls and even a rope on a tree but, of course, we know what's going to happen. I'm watching these shorts in order and I must say that I've love to see Wile take one big chunk out of the Road Runner. Considering this is the ninth attempt of Wile you can't help but wish he could just eat one time. If not the Road Runner I wish he could eat anything the right way. The series was certainly starting to repeat itself but there's enough action and explosions here to make it worth watching.

Chuck Jones's 'There They Go-Go-Go', the ninth Road Runner cartoon, is the inevitable moment when this excellent series finally hits a snag. Having managed to sustain genuine brilliance across the last four cartoons, 'There They Go-Go-Go' feels like a very tired entry into the series. Even the title seems to indicate a dearth of ideas. Many people, when they think of the Road Runner shorts imagine a repetitive and not especially funny set of predictable gags. If they wanted proof to back up this argument then 'There They Go-Go-Go' would be the ideal candidate. Set against the more stylised backgrounds introduced in the previous cartoon, 'Gee Whiz-z-z', 'There They Go-Go-Go' fails to offer enough funny gags to distract attention away from the less sumptuous scenery and the impression I am left with is that of an unattractive and unamusing cartoon. There's a couple of chuckles but that can be said of practically any Road Runner cartoon (bar the dire later ones). All in all, 'There They Go-Go-Go' is a disappointment but is easily excused as an inevitable hiccup in a series that managed to sustain the same premise for an astonishing amount of time.