The 60's Road Runner cartoons by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises make my skin crawl. Thinking of the old Chuck Jones cartoons, I feel nauseous watching these compilations of humorless, unentertaining "gags". In "Boulder Wham!" (another one of those lame titles, nothing like the witty puns and jokes by Maltese), the Coyote is trying to capture the Road Runner, a calm spectator on the other side of a gorge.
The animation is worse than today's television-budget, mass-produced cartoons on Kids' WB, Cartoon Network and Nickelodean. Every time I sit through this cartoon and others like it, it's a painful ordeal to get to the classics that hopefully follow. The gags are absolutely dry and the characters hardly have detectable expressions. Coyote resorts to stuff that he would never have used in a Jones cartoon. Disney might have gone down the drain, but Warner Bros.? Once upon a time, I didn't even know these cartoons existed, only having seen the Golden Age cartoons. I was happy then.