good back-story, and good acting

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

"Coyote Falls" is an American 3-minute cartoon from 2010 made by Matthew O'Callaghan and Tom Sheppard and both of them are fairly experienced in animation filmmaking, so maybe I should not be surprised that this very brief movie turned out nicely. No filler material, just one joke following the next as Coyote still has it for Road Runner. I must even say that I am not the very biggest fan of the old cartoons starring these two as gadget based animation is not exactly my favorite kind of comedy, but this new one here worked out pretty well. The scenes with the truck were about as funny as the bungee rope not being long enough and the ending is a nice tribute to the old days. It may not ooze greatness, but I thought this was quite a funny watch and the whimpering sound by Coyote near the end was almost heartbreaking. I always liked him more than Road Runner. No surprise at all this one got nominated for two prestigious awards (Annies, Visual Effects Society). It deserves the attention. Go see it and hopefully you will like it as much as I did.

. . . at least could be counted upon to last six minutes, be constructed by fewer than ten credited people, and feature Mel Blanc's two cents worth. COYOTE FALLS is copyrighted 2010. It's shorter than three minutes, but has three slides listing hundreds of mostly indecipherable (even on freeze-frame and zoom) names with corresponding job titles, and there's not a peep out of Mr. Blanc. (It's as if the animators of a Golden Age Looney Tunes decided to tack on a credits list of every person EACH ONE OF THEM had met in their lives, on the theory that if any of that horde had rubbed out an animator, the cartoon may have gone unfinished.) COYOTE FALLS begins with a slide listing the number "345180." Is this supposed to be its "Vitaphone Listing?" If so, who has the time to watch hundreds of thousands of shorts, even IF half of them are as brief as COYOTE FALLS?! There's little to note of the substance of these 179 seconds. It's said that some films, such as light bulb inventor Thomas Alva Edison's ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT (1904, available at the U.S. Library of Congress web site) are "short but sweet." COYOTE FALLS can be best described as "short but sour."

It was nice to see this short. And it is short. Less than three minutes as opposed to the normal seven that shorts were from about 1929 onward. Fine direction and animation for the most part. However, there is a fatal flaw. With the Road Runner in the past there was always a gray line concerning his participation in the Coyoyte's mishaps. Unfortunately during this short the Roadrunner directs sticking out his tongue at the Coyote, which he never did in the past. This is a conscious misstep by the director and a shame. Innocence is lost in the Roadrunner's character when he becomes a willing participant. Poor choice in an otherwise delightful short.

It may be arguable that a 3 minute film does not merit a review: Coyote Falls puts the lie to this.The Road Runner cartoons are misnamed - the Road Runner itself is merely a maguffin, because the cartoons are about the Coyote, and his indefatigable pursuit of an unachievable goal, and his unshakable resolution never to give up in the sure and certain knowledge that, even if he came up with the perfect plan, his personal universe would change reality so as to foil him. This was the very highest of high concept and, coupled with Chuck Jones' sublime visual sensibilities, created a series of traditional hand-drawn animation single reelers which offered a seemingly endless series of sight gags, without dialogue, all of which were variations on a theme. When Jones packed them in, Warner Bros turned out a few more in widescreen and with a drastically different design sense and approach to music. They didn't work. And so things remained.Now we have this new 3 minute Road Runner / Coyote short, in which Jones' design models have been translated into 3D CGI. The film is essentially a number of variations on, and consequences of, a single "plan" by the coyote, lovingly rendered into a beautiful CGI version of Jones' Road Runner universe, and delivered with the Jones panache accompanied by musical cues in the Carl Stalling style.And it makes full use of cinematic 3D.Now, if only it wasn't just 3 minutes! Somewhere in heaven, Chuck Jones is smiling.