Cartoon animated clip, kinda funny. Includes road runner *meep meep*. Coyote is learning magic to help him catch road runner. Eventualy, road runner uses the magic against him and comes walking out without a scratch. Typical. The only time i've seen this is on a bonus pack with "Loony tunes back in action!".

The first time I saw this was when I went to see the film Back in Action, I didn’t laugh, but I think I appreciated the film that followed a little more. Nowhere here is anything as strong as the roadrunner’s good old days, in fact the best joke here is Wile E.’s attempt to phone the ACME company and getting a call centre.

This was one of a series of commissioned shorts that are truly terrible and the only one slotted for a theatrical release by Warner’s. Animation is sub par, the color are too saturated, the sound as well is barely passable; but the inherent lack of sharply written gags ultimately kill any interest off.

It not all abysmal, there is the glimmer of something that could have come from this, if it had been given a better budget, better crew, or something. One of the things that this doesn’t suffer from is the sped up voices that the others did, since neither Road Runner or Wile E. Coyote talk. It also gets a few things right, like the general Road Runner formula, although it does rest too heavily on clichés.

SPOILER

Yet it breaks the standard rule that the Road Runner never get involved in the coyote’s plans, by letting the bird get hold of the magic book and letting rip on the hapless predator.

END SPOILER

The biggest fault here though isn’t anything to do with the short itself, it’s the fact that during the opening credits, some clips of old classic shorts can be seen in the centre circle and the result is that you wish that you were watching one of them rather than this pale imitation.

I'm so close to giving this one star, but for the fact that I've seen much worse shorts. It barely gets 1.5 from me, and that's me being very generous.