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Showing posts with label disney afternoon marathon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disney afternoon marathon. Show all posts
While a large part of the delay has been real-world stuff, it's hard to think with a phone going off every few minutes, the other reason for the delay has been to try and include the opening of Season 3 into the review as well. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, so if you're wondering what my thoughts are on those episodes, you won't find them here. Around September 2017, I did a review of the opening few episodes of the reboot to Ducktales, something that I was really impressed with as it looked to encompass the feeling of the original show, while also modernizing it with some slice of life elements, a making some needed improvements to the cast (but to be fair, anything is an improvement over Scrooge, Launchpad, the red one, the blue one, the green one, the girl one, and the old lady). With the allure of the mystery of Della Duck, the promise of Magika DeSpell, and more including a third season that is taking as much of the Disney Afternoon as it can possibly fit (and didn't already use), this review is more of an addendum to the first. Did it keep up the momentum? Is it worth the watch now that more episodes are out and we're all killing time while we wait for the world to return to something resembling what it used to be?
Before getting started, I do have to make a quick announcement. Due to the state of the world right now, I've revived a Patreon account to try and ease the blow that is basically the world shutting down due to the Coronavirus. It has affected me pretty hard, due to my main work being Events Operations, so if you do enjoy the work that I do (which should be coming out more consistently due to all the extra free time I have), and you are in a position where you can help, please support me on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/mediaholics), and hopefully, the state of the world isn't like this for too long. If you start seeing an influx of older toys, older shows, movies, games, etc in the coming months from both sites, this is the reason why. Anyway...
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.
Honestly, that's the best way I can describe this show's pitch. Why? How else do you describe the logical thinking behind taking characters from The Jungle Book, and making a show all about the cargo delivery service? I know I haven't seen the animated Jungle Book in around 2 decades, but to my knowledge, Baloo wasn't a pilot.
I mean, in terms of execution, it's fine for a slice of life show, but aside from questioning how it came to be, that's unfortunatenly not the only issue the show has. With the exception of Shere Kahn and the new Sky Pirates, I wasn't a fan of the cast as a whole, especially Molly. Normally I base these reviews on early episodes, giving somewhere between 5 and 10 episodes to get a feel on how the show gets going. I won't lie, after the episode with Kit as Molly's babysitter, I started skipping over any episode that had Molly in the title. It's rare that I hate a character that much in that little time, but after that episode, she just constantly came off as "Ok, you're going to be the little, little kid stereotype. That's all you're going to be, moving on". What doesn't help at all is that after seeing Gossolin in Darkwing Duck, a kid character done right in my opinion, and the fact that the other kid character, Kit, doesn't really cancel out the problems I have with Molly, as he comes off more as someone who's just there for the ride.
Another issue I have is that it felt like a lot of the episode premises and gags rely on a lack of information, or just Baloo being a jerk to those around him. Though he has his moments when he's pulling off something clever, I don't get the same thrill from it compared to if I was watching something like Recess (better saved for another review as I don't recall reviewing it yet?). It makes the show hard to watch for me, because while the animation and score is nice (it's hard to find faults in the animation in a show made by a company founded on pushing animation as a cinematic art). It's just hard to find things in the show that I like, or feel like they're connected to the source. Everything feels like it was in a rush, to try and justify making a show about their (at the time, I'm not sure about nowadays) most financially successful movies. Hopefully fresh blood, and a new setting helps show the positives of the cast when the new season of Ducktales starts airing in April? This just makes me glad that I'm not coving some of the less favorable shows in this marathon. See you next week for Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers I guess....
Computer: Functional again. Wi-Fi: About as stable as my network currently gets (hopefully being fixed soon?). Country: Looks like it's still on fire but it's back to being manageable. Ankle's healed, writer's block is gone, I think it's finally time to review content again!... About bloody time...
With the Ducktales Reboot teasing at the cast expanding greatly for the upcoming season, drawing more inspiration from the cartoons that ran in the same programming block that the original show aired in, I thought it might be fitting to review some of those older cartoons, especially now that it's very easy to view them. Yeah my first review of actual Disney+ content is a bunch of cartoons from the '80s-'90s and not The Mandalorian (maybe May 4th). While I could start off with something like Gummy Bears, I figure it would be fitting to start with the show refferenced the most in the Reboot, even bringing in the newest incarnation of the terror that flaps in the night, Darkwing Duck.
In a general sense, Darkwing Duck is a villain of the week superhero parody. Imagine if Will Arnet's Batman was in his own TV show basically, and you have Darkwing Duck in a nutshell. It works for a general set up, but if you're expecting something deeper then that, you're better off looking somewhere else. Though the villains can be hit and miss at times, what works well in the show is the way the characters play off each other, something that helps bring out the best in Superhero parodies. The perfect example of this being DW and Gosalyn. Those two work off of each other perfectly, and are probably the best Parent/ Child relationship that I've seen when it comes to Disney... though considering most of my experience comes from their live-action tweenage girl shows that my sister was watching, that might not be saying much...
Due to Darkwing clearly drawing inspiration from Batman, I can't help but compare the show to Batman the Animated Series, and in terms of animation, I don't think DW matches it. Though it still looks nice, and actions have a clear weight to them in the animation and sound design, the darker colours of Batman TAS makes the action scenes look more exciting and interesting. Darkwing's animating gives off more of a Looney Toons vibe, which helps make it distinct, but again, I don't think it is a favourable comparison for DW, as the Loony Toons do it a lot better. Does this mean that I hate the animation in DW? No, I think it looks good and works for the show itself. But coming from someone who saw the show when he's 24? I can't help but compare it to works I've seen before it and works that I think do it better.
Is Darkwing Duck a bad show? No, not at all, I can see why it has it's fans, and it's something I'll probably revisit at some point. The biggest problem I have with it is my own personal baggage, the past experiences I have with shows like it. Is it a Disney+ seller? No, not a hope in hell mostly because the Darkwing Duck fans probably already have the DVD's of the show (if they even exist). But it's still a good show, one at least worth experiencing. Up next on the marathon, one of the more... out there pitches that got turned into a show, Tailspin.
