Don't listen to the negative reviews

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

. . . 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 is nice to see the Coyote and Roadrunner return to the screen with this 3-D CGI film. However, there are two serious problems with this worthwhile project. First, it was shown before a horrible full-length film which few would endure in order to see "Coyote Falls"! Currently, "Cats & Dogs 2" is in the IMDb's Bottom 100 list--hardly an auspicious place to display this film! Second, at only about three minutes, it's just too short--especially as the average non-CGI version of the duo was usually about 7-8 minutes. Still, it's a nice START and I sure hope to see more in the future--more Looney Tunes shorts and hopefully a lot longer than 3 minutes! What I did see, however, was very good--much like the 1950s-60s version updated with state of the art modern animation.

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.