When things weren't all about dark, edgy, moody, and all the depressing tropes of the '90s, they were about "Kewl" (I cannot believe Grammarly didn't want to autocorrect that to Cool) kids and their dorky parents, with all the companies trying to stay relevant by catering to the kids wanting to be hip and radical. Disney, was no exception to this, and while there are other examples of the Disney Afternoon trying to do that (Quack Pack), there is only so much '90's I can take in one shot, so we're looking at Goof Troop.
Compared to the other shows reviewed for this marathon, Goof Troop is more of a slice of life comedy. No big villains, no saving the world, heck the first episode is just about Goofy and his son Max moving to a new house. The thing is though that taking Goofy and Pete, and giving them a supporting cast that is designed to play off of their personalities, it's going to lead to many comedic, borderline chaotic situations. Even something as mundane as studying for a test has a comedic edge to it, albeit in a cruel way, as Pete's aggressive parenting that takes all the tropes of what a child thinks of an overbearing parent and drastically amplifies it, combined with Max's drastic tutoring technique traumatizes Pete's oldest child P.J and makes him afraid of chocolate bars and eggs. It's just a delight to see and watch, similar to the Loony Toons when WB tried to put them into a more domesticated setting.
A part of what makes this work so well is the writing and the comedic timing. As much as a groan at the Slice of life shows made by Disney, focusing on the child while the parents are either embarrassing and overbearing, the jokes help sell this for me. One of the ones that sold the show for me was when Goofy was telling Max that he doesn't need to fish in the sink anymore, something I was confused about as their caravan looked to be near a lake. Turns out that was a fake background hung between two buildings. That's just amazing in terms of stupidity.
Visually, I'm not a fan of this. The backgrounds and character designs look really ugly when compared to almost every other cartoon I've seen (not Flash animation bad, but certainly bad by a lot of). But that being said, the character movements are great, and fun to watch, like all the budget, went into them, which I'm not against, but it's a shame that the backgrounds were this badly hit, at least early on in the season. Compared to the other Disney Afternoon shows I've watched though, the lack of quality in the backgrounds is really jarring, even if it's only a minor thing in the grand scheme of things in order to make the character animations better.
I guess my expectations were low for this one, due to previous experience with Disney's (or rather Disney Channel's) Slice of Life shows, but I really enjoyed this one. It's a SoL that still remembers it's a cartoon and mixes the comedy that comes with it into the stories. While we're all stuck inside anyway, it's worth a watch, and is a nice way to cap off the Disney Afternoon Marathon for the site... well, at least the shows that aired in the Disney Afternoon, because I have one more show to review.
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