This is said with a very heavy heart, because it is not as if the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons are bad as a whole. In fact, they are far from bad, they are actually very enjoyable and the best of them brilliant even and among the funniest Looney Tunes cartoons made regardless of how formulaic they are story-wise. The mid-late-60s cartoons however were real let downs, and Shot and Bothered is for me down there with their worst.
As always, even with films, shows and cartoons that are not good it's worth trying to find things good about them, and while there are few redeeming qualities with Shot and Bothered. Almost all of the gags don't work, but one does crack a small smile and that's the tennis net gag, it is not very surprising but it is the most well-timed gag and is the only gag that didn't leave me stone-faced. Wile's facial expressions also amuse and endear in places, he is still easy to feel sympathy towards and they don't look too ugly visually either.
Wile unfortunately has been much funnier and much more interesting before, a shame because he is one of Looney Tunes' most entertaining and interesting characters. Here the material is not strong or clever enough for his personality or comic timing to shine properly, his cunning side is underplayed and he is flatly and scrappily drawn. Roadrunner looks awful, again looking like he was drawn very hastily and with little care, and not only does he have little personality but he just isn't funny, more irritating than anything else. Their chemistry is similarly very bland, as a result of the lacking material and that there isn't enough of them together.
One of the worst things about Shot and Bothered is the animation, the mid-late-60s Looney Tunes cartoons (especially the Daffy-Speedy cartoons the later Roadrunner cartoons) did look cheap, due to lower budgets, less people being involved and the deadlines being tighter, and Shot and Bothered with its sparse backgrounds, flat colours, stiff and scrappy character animation, use of recycled frames and incomplete visuals is the worst-looking of the lot. Bill Lava's stock music score is repetitive, completely lacks the energy of the music of Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn and it sounds completely at odds with the action of the cartoon, too discordant and like Lava had no idea what the humour was meant to be like.
Shot and Bothered's major failure is that it fails to entertain. The gags are tired (primarily because it has been done before and much better), poorly animated and very badly paced, some are drawn out (the beginning went on for too long) but mostly they feel incomplete and like they skip to the next one with no break, giving it a very different feel to when the series was in its prime, which severely hurts the humour, which is barely there as a result. One can forgive the story for being formulaic, so long as the timing was sharp and the material was funny and clever enough, seeing as Shot and Bothered is all over the map in timing and that the gags are not funny and are too over-familiar in this case it isn't forgivable. It both feels rushed, due to the skippy feel of the gags and the cheap feel of the cartoon as a whole, and dull, because the material is so lacking.
In conclusion, as an overall whole the Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote series is enjoyable but Shot and Bothered is one of the worst in the series and one of my least favourite Looney Tunes cartoons in fact. 3/10 Bethany Cox
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