User reviews

The first Road Runner and Coyote cartoon ever made (and their only one made in the 1940s). It's directed by Chuck Jones with a story by Michael Maltese. This team would be responsible for most of the great Road Runner and Coyote shorts. This first one sets the template for the rest of the series. The concept was always the same in that Wile E. Coyote tries various devices and traps to catch the Road Runner but constantly fails, typically in hilarious fashion. Here we have the basics already on display: boomerangs, dynamite, a roadblock, disguises and costumes, rockets and jets, running off a cliff, and classic ACME gadgetry. Chuck Jones would use a variation of every gag in this first short over and over throughout the series. The animation is beautiful with great colors and well-drawn backgrounds. The Road Runner and Coyote look slightly different than they would look later, but that's true of pretty much all the Looney Tunes characters in their first appearances. It's a fun, fast-paced short that begins one of the best and most consistently creative and funny series in the Looney Tunes library. It's one every fan should see at least once. A classic by every definition.

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!

Most of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons are great fun to watch, although the series generally ran out of gas in the 60s. Fast and Furry-ous is their debut and to this day is still one of their best and funniest cartoons.

The animation is great, some of the best of the series in fact. The colours are beautiful and vibrant, the backgrounds are simple but still very detailed and attractive, the physical comedy is all tightly edited and the character designs, while more elaborate for Coyote here than with his later and more famous look, are very nicely done and smooth. Music is courtesy of the consistently brilliant Carl Stalling, it doesn't disappoint here and I prefer his livelier and more richly orchestrated scoring to that of Bill Lava's in the later cartoons.

Fast and Furry-ous is also incredibly funny, one of the funniest of the entire Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons and this is all with no dialogue at all. The physical comedy is impressively animated and is never less than amusing, at its best hilarious, while the sight gags are equally terrific, the highlight being the refrigerator gag, one of the most original, elaborate and ingenious gags of any of the Roadrunner and Coyote series. The painting-the-tunnel-on-the-stone-wall gag works well too, even if it was repeated numerous other times throughout the series, and the razor sharp pacing helps. Who can't help love the Oliver Hardy-esque looks into the camera too? The story avoids being too repetitive or formulaic and the fresh material, as well as that it's their first cartoon, helps give a sense of originality.

Both characters work great together. Roadrunner is one-dimensional, but amusing and never annoying, but it is Coyote who is the funnier and more interesting character. Cunning yet very easy to sympathise for and with priceless facial expressions, he's one of Chuck Jones' best creations. Overall, a wonderful cartoon in all regards, and one of the best of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons. 10/10 Bethany Cox

This short marks the first appearance by either Wile E. Coyote or The Road Runner on-screen. Wile E. is really the star here and a more interesting character, to be sure, but their relationship is really a symbiotic one. Without each other, neither would have had success in films. This short more or less sets the tone for the series: lots of sight gags and a probable increase in Wile E. insurance premiums, while his insurance agent lives on antacids and his agent checks on his remaining hit points with each accident. Most certainly a gem and worth watching. Recommended.

The Road Runner films form one of the most famous theatrical cartoon series ever. They are also some of the most hilarious in terms of visual comedy, and never get old. Though there is just a simple formula that is exploited throughout, and it is repetitive, it never goes bland. This also means no cartoon stands out, nothing particularly memorable. But this cartoon does shine brighter, not only because of its greatness as entertainment but because it was the debut of both stars, and the makers were not short of ideas. The usual facial expressions and high-quality - though slightly outlandish due to the early date - animation is combined with fresh and new gags, which were at the time not dated and only the cream of the crop of ideas were used. Highly recommended.

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.

Some people love Bugs Bunny. Some people love Daffy Duck. Some Porky Pig and others Pepe LePew (I NEVER understood the love for the last one), I'm not saying those are not great characters, as they ARE (well accept Pepe), but give me a Wile E. Coyote/ Roadrunner short to watch and I'm on cloud 9. This very first ever amazing pairing of the two is nothing short of greatness. The gags are all rapid-fire and they all work. I was laughing throughout the whole short. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! This insanely great cartoon is on Disk 3 of the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1" It also has an optional commentary as well as a featurette

My Grade: A+

You might think that 'Fast And Furry-ous (1949)' is all about family, but it's actually the first Looney Tunes cartoon to focus on Wile E. Coyote's never-ending pursuit of the Road Runner. The short is structured as a series of vignettes in which the predator tries to catch his prey, all of which inevitably backfire to varying degrees of hilarity. Though the somewhat repetitive plotting does dampen the piece's overall effect, there's no denying that some of its individual set-pieces are absolutely iconic (the painted-on tunnel is undeniably one of the all-time greats). Thanks to the success of most of its gags, this remains an entertaining and inventive affair from start to finish.

Chuck Jones's 'Fast and Furry-ous' was the first installment in what went on to be one of the most popular Warner Bros. cartoon series; the Road Runner shorts. Despite being universally referred to as the Road Runner cartoons, the undisputed star of the series is Wile E. Coyote, the scrawny obsessive with a continual misplaced trust in the Acme corporation. It was the Coyote's hysterical facial expressions and reaction shots that would ultimately upstage the gags. At this early stage in his career however, the Coyote is not quite as handsome as he would become and his reactions are less captivatingly observed. Also, this being the first Road Runner cartoon, the novelty of the gag-after-gag-after-gag premise is seen as enough and therefore the gags themselves are largely weak or predictable. There are also early appearances of gags that would go on to be used time and again throughout the series; the logic defying painted landscape joke and the climactic hit and run of the Coyote by a vehicle with the Road Runner on board. These gags were strong the first time round but have become so well established that they fail to raise a smile after they are witnessed for the umpteenth time. There are a couple of nice sequences towards the end of 'Fast and Furry-ous' involving a refrigerator and some skis and a pair of Acme jet powered tennis shoes. These aside, however, 'Fast and Furry-ous' is an historically important but fairly underwhelming cartoon. The series it spawned threw up some vastly superior episodes once the look of the Coyote was refined and his relationship with the audience cemented.

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' is the cartoon that started the chases between Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. The cartoons with those two characters belong to my favorites. From the opening where Road Runner is introduced with his kind of Latin name Accelerati Incredibulis and Coyote with his kind of Latin name Carnivarious Vulgaris the shorts are always funny.

Funny I say, but also very predictable. With this first cartoon that is a fact as well. May it is the charm of a cartoon like this. You expect something, exactly that will happen, and still it is funny. There is one surprise in this one and that is the ending. I laughed numerous times. If it was really the first one I saw I would have laughed even more. This is a great cartoon.

So this is where it all started. From here on, Wile E. Coyote (cue scientific name implying gluttony) would come up with an infinite number of ways to get the Road Runner (cue scientific name implying speed), but would always end up maiming himself. OK, so maybe it gets a little repetitive to always have him do this, but how can you not like it? "Fast and Furry-ous" is everything that one can expect in one of these cartoons. If nothing else, they remind us that the more you try to harm others, the more you get harmed. And they have a great way of showing it. These guys are the original road warriors. Definitely a cartoon classic.

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.