Here’s the second entry in the Coyote/Roadrunner series (though it came some time after the first one). They’re doing flipbooks after the Latin nomenclature freeze frame. The backgrounds are Utah (Monument Valley) realistic. The coyote’s anvil blueprint, together with that TNT plan brings to mind the nine-to-fiver planning out his day. The geometrical, satellite view sectionals of the Old Cactus Mine are quite stunning. Already this scenario, with all of its variations, is really rich, and really roomy. The characters’ conflict become almost an abstraction, trivialized—Absurdity, as so often—to the point of dehumanization. Or, it’s a delightfully unexpected and imaginative rendering that gladdens the heart.
The TNT joke is nicely compounded, the which compound is then nicely balanced by an exceedingly simple payoff. They really mine Wile E.’s rocket skates! He’s got velocity, but that doesn’t help him around the corners. The conclusion, in which a train appears on that short track that he laid and then runs him over, is cartoons. Physics-impossible, aeronautically scrupulous, with cruelty devotedly underpinning it all.