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Posted by  TheArtrix on 02/07/2006, 15:49 CET (@659 BMT) |
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/10
My first impression on the first promos and it's website was not all that great, the style looked a bit cheap and far too PPG-ish. I wasn't all that impressed by the character designs either. They seemed pretty generic to me. The visual style, although pretty PPG-ish, was kinda fresh, because of the lack of outlines ala Samurai Jack.
A few months later, I watched an actual episode, and later on the first episode, which turns out to be an hour TV-movie.
The very, very, very first thing I noticed was: motion tweening. It's everywhere. You don't need to be a animator to see all the motion tweens. Sheesh. I did not expect this from Craig McCracken. After a short search I discovered that the show is put together using Adobe After Effects (and Flash). Although I must say that they have a good grip on the possibilities of this program, they get overboard by all the tweening. Most effects I know are there, 3D-rendering, tweening, motion blurs, glowing, blurs in general. It's all there and utilized correctly. But the tweening is horrible while the frame-by-frame animation is decent and works really good on the power that is After Effects.
Okay, so let's focus on the plot. I saw episode 3 first, so I had a good chance to get to know the show without it's background. Basically, the enitre episode was about a rabbit-butler-like-person who is so annoying that it drives the house's inhabitants crazy. At one point, a buste get's broken and everybody is going to try to replace it. Everything's quite fast paced while it's general plot is not interesting at all. It's just the generic-annoying-person-is-gonna-flip-out-when-he's-gonna-find-out-what-you-did plot. Wow, like I haven't seen THAT before. The screenplay luckily makes the whole thing interesting enough, but it didn't really put a smile on my face.
Then I watched the pilot, a one hour movie that explained the following. Aparently, in this universe, imaginary friends are automatically being spawned to life, also, people seem to forget their imaginary friend when they get older. Nobody explains why, but they do, although a living creature spawned by my own brain seems like super awesome thing to me.
Anyway, it's a cartoon, and we enter the life of Mac, a small 8-year old boy who thought up a blue-ish blob of an imaginary friends. His brother is a dumb 13-year old, and damn, he is the epitome of stupid. But heck, maybe he's the funniest character of the entire show.
Unspite of that, the characters are pretty generic:
-Mac: The perfect, sensible, intelligent, calm and nice kid, the golden boy
-Bloo: The sensible but less intelligent hyperactive sidekick
-Frankie: The overly-extraverted redheaded service girl (and sheesh, she sounds too much like Vicky, better luck next time, Gray Delise)
-Wilt: The talkactive explainer of things
-Coco: The one who can't talk and supplier or handy stuff
-Edurado: Comic relief
-Herriman: Authority
-Mrs. Foster: Wisdom and the grandma
-Douchess: "Villain" with an high opinion of herself.
-Terrence: Dumbass brother/villain
I mean, come on, I thought that they would exploit all the characters in the house, but it's pretty much narrowed to a 4 of them. That's a shame, because the show could've been alot more dynamic if they used a diffrent set (except for Bloo of course) of imaginary friends for each episode. Now, it's besically the adventures of Bloo, Wilt, Coco and Edurado.
The music fits the style of the show, it's just not the highlight of the show. The same tune is used over and over again in several forms to give the show some sort of unification, which is also noticable in The Powerpuff Girls. The themesong is actually pretty addicting (not like the intro sequence is interesting: people running though a house: original... NOT!)
Funny note is that the show's full of references to The Powerpuff Girls. Heck, Frankie wears a PpG tank for crying out loud. In the first episode, they even show Mojo Jojo, yay for cameos.
My score: 6.2/10
This show is decent enought to be listed as a Cartoon Network feature, and it fits in their general style. But within this range, the show is pretty mediocre. It's fun to watch the first time, but no reruns please. I think the rerun value of this show is pretty low. Craig McCracken really missed the boad in my opinion, and it will probably not reach the same height as The Powerpuff Girls.
Conclusion: This show is perfect for hyperactive 8-year olds who like to see characters run though hallways. It's like Scooby Doo except everything isn't dark-brown.
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