Stop! Look! And Hasten! (1954) User Reviews

A Couple Of Original Ideas Make This Fun

[ccthemovieman-1 · 8/10 · 17 April 2007]

Wile E. Coyote (Eatibus Anythingus) has a bad reaction after eating some flying insect but he's so hungry he'll eat anything, even an empty tin can on the road. The road runner (Hot- roddicus Supersonicus) races by and runs over the poor, starving coyote. Wile gives chase, showing amazing speed, but who can catch the ultra-fast road runner? So, it's back to Wile to try to use his brains, once again, and figure a way to get this delicious-looking bird-meal.

Outside of some of the normal unsuccessful ploys such as falling boulders and TNT, there are several funny original thoughts, such as "The Burmese Tiger Trap," the automated steel- plated shield and the leg-muscles vitamins!

This was fun, and part of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Two DVD.

Wile E. gets faster

[movieman_kev · 8/10 · 30 October 2005]

The fifth pairing of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner is still good and features many gags that work, including a tiger trap, a pop-up steel wall, a motorcycle, a unfateful encounter with a train (Stop in the name of humanity), and a box of Acme-brand leg-building vitamins. I love the little gag of the coyote eating a fly in the beginning as well. All these cartoons make me so very happy for some unknown reason. This animated short can be seen on Disc 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2. It also features an optional commentary by Greg Ford.

My Grade: A

Decent Roadrunner short.

[Tweekums · 7/10 · 21 July 2009]

As with most Roadrunner cartoons there is not much of a plot just lots of failed attempts by Wile E Coyote to catch the Roadrunner for his dinner. His methods are amusing though; the best being the the pop-up barrier he installs in the road, of course it doesn't work when the Roadrunner goes past but a few minutes when Coyote is using "Acme Triple-Strength Fortified Leg Muscle Vitamins" which enable him to run so fast he literally sets the road on fire this barrier springs up just in time for him to run into it.

If you like other Warner Brothers' cartoons I'm sure you'll like this although if I wanted to watch a few Roadrunner shorts I'd mix them in with other character's cartoons or they might seem rather repetitive.

Stop in the name of humanity!

[Chip_douglas · 6 February 2004]

Some Road Runner cartoons don't start with the chase already in progress. In these cases: A) we get to see that cooky Coyote try out some hot cuisine (flies, tin cans, he'll try anything once) and B) when that tasty bird runs by, While E. acts as if he sees it for the very first time (starvation has been known to induce short term memory loss).

The gags in `Stop! Look! And Hasten!' may not be as elaborate as in later R.R. shorts, but the character animation is incredibly rich. Wile E. shows more emotion here than in all of his Sixties' outings combined. Other examples are the realistic body movement of a surprise guest animal and the effects ‘Acme Triple-Strength Fortified Leg Muscle Vitamins' (family size) have on the Coyote (kids, don't do drugs).

The backgrounds and settings are above average too, especially the chase through some Esher inspired train tunnels. We also learn that venturing into human invested parts of the desert can prove quite hazardous when you only communicate by holding up signs (Road Runners avoid problems like this by forming letters in the dust they leave behind).

7 out of 10

One of the greatest of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons

[TheLittleSongbird · 10/10 · 6 August 2015]

While there are some duds in the later years, the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons are mostly an enjoyable watch. There are also some great ones, and Stop! Look! And Hasten! is one of them, up there with the best of them.

Stop! Look! And Hasten! is very well-animated. It's vibrant in colour, smooth in how it's all drawn, simple but attractively detailed backgrounds and the character animation is some of the richest of the series, Coyote's facial expressions and reactions make the cartoon worth watching all on their own (especially in the gag on the train tracks). 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 music for Stop! Look! And Hasten!, the orchestration is lush and clever, it's lively and characterful rhythmically and it matches with everything seamlessly and even adds to the enjoyment.

The gags are some of the funniest and most brilliant of the series, even reasonably familiar ones like with the TNT and the starting gag feel fresh and Coyote's reaction in the train track gag elevates what could have been an ordinary gag to something memorable. Of the gags, the Burmese tiger, the bridge and ending gags are the ones that stand-out, they are hilarious and perfectly executed in terms of timing. Premise-wise, the story is formulaic and more of the same but with the material being so funny, the pacing so thrillingly breathless and everything feeling so fresh that doesn't matter, there have been instances where it does with the series but mostly in the later cartoons when the material wasn't anywhere near as strong.

Roadrunner is an amusing and quite visually cute character, but Coyote is generally far funnier and more interesting, one that is cunning and hilarious but easy to empathise with when his schemes go wrong. In conclusion, a fabulous Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon and one of the greatest of the series. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Brings together all the lessons learned in the first four Road Runner shorts and uses them to create one of the greatest installments in the whole series

[phantom_tollbooth · 10/10 · 1 October 2008]

Chuck Jones's 'Stop, Look and Hasten' is one of the greatest installments in the whole Road Runner series. The fifth cartoon in the series, 'Stop, Look and Hasten' brings together all the lessons learned in the first four Road Runner shorts and uses them to create a perfect marriage between the ingredients that make these characters and their antics so popular. It combines the breathless pace of 'Going! Going! Gosh!', the wonderful reaction shots of 'Zipping Along' and the experimental extended chase scenes of 'Beep Beep' to hilarious effect. Even the oft-used gags are executed with such perfection that they breathe new life into the joke. Look to the falling bridge gag for proof. But 'Stop, Look and Hasten' isn't just a classic combination of elements from earlier cartoons. It brings to the Road Runner series a very valuable element; the extended set-up. Previous cartoons had just opened with the Coyote in pursuit of or awaiting the Road Runner. 'Stop, Look and Hasten' adds a slower paced opening in which we see the Coyote wandering slowly through the desert, attempting to eat anything from insects to tin cans. It's a great sequence which gives us a glimpse at the sad existence of the character outside of his pursuit of the Road Runner. These steady opening set-ups would go on to become an important part of later cartoons in the series. 'Stop, Look and Hasten' is simply a cut above most Road Runner cartoons. It has everything down perfectly. There's not a wasted second, a rarity in spot-gag cartoons such as this.

Good Road Runner cartoon

[rbverhoef · 7/10 · 1 May 2004]

Chuck Jones as director, and that means it will be at least entertaining. The Coyote, or Eatibus Anythingus, chases a fly because he is very hungry. When he wants to eat an empty can the Road Runner, or Hot-Roddicus Supersonicus, runs by. Of course the Coyote prefers a Road Runner over an empty can, so the chase can start once again. This time he uses a steel wall that has to pop up, a motorcycle, birdseed on a bridge, vitamins for the muscles in the legs and a Burmese tiger trap.

Most of the gags work very good. The one on the bridge with the birdseed is terrific, the timing and use of the pop-up steel wall is perfect and the gag that involves the Burmese tiger trap, and the freeze frame directly after that (you will recognize the moment) are hilarious. A very good cartoon.

Haste doesn't make waste here. And how many cartoons mention Burma?

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 26 November 2006]

For some reason, Wile E. Coyote - aka Eatibus anythingus) never figures out that he just can't catch Road Runner - aka Hot rodicus supersonicus). In "Stop! Look! and Hasten!", he uses a Burmese tiger trap (guess what he catches!), a spring-up metal wall, and muscle-building pills, but absolutely nothing does what he wants. Is this cartoon mostly stuff that we've seen before? Maybe so, but how can you not like seeing him get hung by his own petard? All in all, the combination of director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese, plus Mel Blanc as Road Runner, makes for another classic.

How many cartoons would think to mention anything relating to Burma (or is it called Myanmar)?

There are no on-screen quotation marks around the title of . . .

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 19 May 2016]

. . . the Warner Bros. animated short, STOP! LOOK! AND HASTEN! (sic), which causes a logical person to assume that writer Michael Maltese based what happens to Wile E. ("Eatibus Anythingus") Coyote during HASTEN! on things that ACTUALLY happened to his relatives in Real Life (whom most likely were omnivorous, like you, me, and Wile E.). I mean, who among us hasn't licked out (or spatula-fingered) the last few calories from a tin can, peanut butter jar, or frosting bowl? So it seems that Mike's closest cousin died in a motorcycle crash, and one of his uncles was eaten by a Burmese Tiger before another was dragged to death behind a delivery truck. Pops Maltese was run down by a train, while Gramps M. perished on a collapsing bridge. Rock slides did in a couple of nephews, with dynamite blowing up the rest. What about that out-of-wedlock Black Sheep skeleton-in-the-Maltese-closet? That chump was getting along just fine, setting the world on fire, until he read that "Life is a marathon, NOT a sprint," and hit the Wall at the 20-mile mark.

One of the best of a great series!

[DaniGirl1969 · 10/10 · 26 October 2010]

The fifth episode of Chuck Jones' "Road Runner" series, and also one of the very funniest, with the Coyote employing his typically creative but doomed ideas to try to outwit the fastest bird in the west. Unlike the previous four episodes, where the pursuit is already in progress, this short begins by drawing in our sympathies for the Coyote, as he trudges miserably across the desert, reduced to eating insects and empty cans -- when he is literally bowled over by the feast of his dreams -- the Road Runner. He soon learns his speed is no match for "Hot-roddicus Supersonicus", and thus he begins setting a series of ingenious traps that leave you wondering how he set them in the first place. Just how DID he get that giant boulder to balance up there on the side of the cliff face, held up only by a tiny stick attached to a rope? But no matter how he got it up there, or that he's supposedly safe on the other side of the road, you just know where that huge rock will land once he yanks that rope... to the delight of the taunting Road Runner. This cartoon is loaded with hilarious moments, including a Burmese tiger traps that actually works (Surprisibus! Surprisibus!), and a very funny sequence through a series of train tunnels which finally ends with our poor anti-hero quivering on the tracks, right in the path of an oncoming locomotive, plaintively (and fruitlessly) imploring it to "Stop in the name of HUMANITY!!" In his typically brilliant style, Jones doesn't actually show us the train, just the light in the tunnel, followed by Wile E's terrified reaction and a lot of stars, leaving us to imagine the result. And the ending is priceless -- one of the best of the whole series. A wonderful cartoon from beginning to end!

Ouch!

[slymusic · 26 May 2009]

"Stop! Look! and Hasten!" is another great Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon directed by - who else? - Charles M. "Chuck" Jones.

Highlights: The Coyote sets up a Burmese tiger trap and captures.....a Burmese tiger! The Coyote carries several sticks of dynamite into a culvert, accidentally dragging along the detonator, which gets caught on a huge rock. AND, in probably the most celebrated gag in the whole picture, the Coyote consumes an entire bottle of vitamins to expand his leg muscles, leaving fire trails behind as he pursues the Road Runner at breakneck speed; he then slams into a steel wall he had set up earlier, and the Road Runner ends the short by writing "That's all Folks!" in a smoke trail he leaves behind.

"Stop! Look! and Hasten!" can be found on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 Disc 2, with an optional audio commentary by filmmaker Greg Ford.

Nice Short

[Michael_Elliott · 2 May 2009]

Stop! Look! and Hasten! (1954)

*** (out of 4)

Another good entry in the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner series has our favorite dumb but hard working friend still trying to catch his dinner. A motorcycle, a tiger, leg building vitamins and even a pop up steel wall are just some of the devices used by Wile. This is another fun, if routine, entry that manages to offer up some good twists as well as some nice laughs. The best sequence in my opinion is the one where Wile digs a trap to catch his dinner and thinks it has worked until he jumps into the hole. Another nice gag deals with him taking some vitamins to grow stronger legs, which makes him run faster but there is naturally a downfall.