Episode 20
Hitchcock
Parody
It’s been a while since an episode started with a short
parody of an old TV show. This time it’s
on the opening to Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
At first, it goes through
the motions you’d expect from the actual intro by opening with outlines shaped
like the profiles of the Warners followed by silhouettes of the siblings
themselves walking up to the outlines while standing firm and serious. The music to go along with this sequence is
even identical to the one in the real intro.
However, before it can be considered a flat-out carbon copy of the
actual into, the parody surprises you at the last second when the Warners break
from their serious stance to shout something silly. It’s a sudden shift from stoic to comedic that
would be hard to expect going in, but that’s what makes this opening as great
as it is. T
he stylistic construction of
the original opening is well-replicated, the final outburst is fitting for the
Warners, and it makes good use of its incredibly short runtime. Overall, it’s a pretty unique way to start
the episode. 9.5/10
Hearts of
Twilight
A major strength in entertainment is how little things in
life can be given many unique approaches.
That’s where the appeal of this cartoon lies with a simple task to stop
a director of a failing movie from going over budget treated like a top-secret
war mission, and it’s only fitting that the Warners are crazy enough to do this
mission.
They mine everything that goes
on for potential comedy. There’s a particular dramatic narration
from Yakko who recounts the adventure as if it already happened and was as
serious as something like infiltrating enemy lines in a war zone. Even with the drama, comedy shines through,
for even with a seemingly serious setup, they don’t take things too
seriously. This is good because the characters thinking too seriously could take you out of an entertaining adventure. When the Warners are introduced with their
strengths, we’re hit with the catch that they’re not all that relevant to the
task at hand, especially Yakko’s talent for using “two paddleballs at
once.”
The actual trek to the bad
movie’s soundstage also has strong hilarity amidst the dramatic narration. There’s a visual literal interpretation of
the “heart” of the studio lot, the Warners travelling in a simple golf cart,
and “the horror” being characterized by fight scenes and monster scenes being
filmed for other movies and overpriced studio tours. What makes these moments especially humorous
is just how overly dramatic the tone is to these little events, even when they
amount to a comedic interpretation. It
sells the unique approach, is appropriate coming from the characters at the
forefront, and invests you in the whole experience.
The approach even continues when the Warners
reach their destination with Dot using her cuteness on one of the guards who
imprison them, and the director of the bad movie turning out to be Mr.
Director, the Jerry Lewis-inspired egomaniac from “Hello Nice Warners” now
hairless. The latter humorous moment is
the most effective. His reveal makes it
seem like he’s going to be the most serious and darkest character to come
across with him covered in shadows and talking dementedly as the ending to his
movie is filmed. Then once a fly is
caught in his throat, he breaks his stiffness going into the shrill
nonsense-spouting figure we now associate with Mr. Director.
From there, he’s full on the loud,
full-of-himself character he was introduced as, and the Warners proceed to mess
with him by freaking him out by never leaving no matter how much he asks,
making it clear that they’ll never let him finish his movie. There may not be much to this encounter with
Mr. Director as last time, but it’s clear that when the Warners run into him,
they’re retaliations are sure to be a great clash of comic giants. Also, just when you think this will be
another instance where the Warners will leave or have someone else put their enemy in his place, when they end up letting him get his ending, they bring on the
last laugh with a big mallet to a head followed by a pathetic reaction only Mr.
Director can give.
In the end, the
cartoon amounts to a strong example of drama approached humorously with great
gags, uses of character, and all-around sense of fun. 10/10
The Boids
It’s one thing for a cartoon of this show to be uninteresting
for focusing on one style of humor, but it’s another thing for it to be that as
well as overly mean and painful. When
the latter is the case, the cartoon will most likely be weak, and this cartoon
truly is one of the show’s weakest.
It
features the Goodfeathers try out for a new movie called The Boids, and Bobby is especially excited for the opportunity for
them to become somebodies. That’s not a
bad premise, but the quality worsens through an overreliance on a style of
humor that hurts it figuratively and literally.
The Goodfeathers are casted as
stunt birds for many of the film’s scenes of attacks on a young woman. It’s easy to forget that the cartoon is all
about the pigeons trying to make it big in the movies, and see it as a
collection of ways they can get hurt. They’re
wacked by the woman, flung into a phone booth several times, thrown to the
floor, or crushed by random objects. Now,
cartoon characters getting hurt can be funny, but if the runtime is going to
feature nothing but pain, any enjoyment is sucked out and you feel too much
sympathy for the victims. Since the
Goodfeathers get hurt so much in the span of this cartoon, it gets old and
sadistic fast.
Plus, this cartoon
features some of the most realistic-looking pain this show has turned out, and
it doesn’t feel right that a series specializing in the potentials of comedic
animation would want to try and make pain feel real. An example of this is when the already
bandaged Goodfeathers get even really mauled as they’re launched into that
phone booth, and by the third take, they give dazed looks of pain that wouldn’t
feel out of place if it a person in real life went through this.
This makes it concerning that no one on the film crew feels
uncomfortable with being this painful to their stunt birds. It’s not like they’re getting in their way while on the street, which would be a much more believable cause for pain towards
pigeons. They’re vital parts to their
movie. You’d think they’d be more
respectable to members of the cast. Not
only that, but the Goodfeathers are constantly mistreated and berated by the
birds who are the actual stars of the film which makes what they’re unfairly
put through even more painful.
That’s
not to say everything about the cartoon is bad.
There are times when the pain is tolerable like when the Goodfeathers
bring it on themselves when they enter a scene they’re not needed for, and when
they walk away from a blow to them looking silly. If all the scenes of them getting hurt were
like this, the cartoon would still be monotonous, but have some enjoyable
comedic edge to it. There are also a few
times where the Goodfeathers fight back against the birds who bully them which
make their pain better than it could’ve been.
It’s also nice that they frequently show that they’re willing to put up
with the pain that comes from show business, even if they’re just stunt birds,
and that they walk away from the set content at the end. That’s not even mentioning the great
personality clashes of Bobby, Squit, and Pesto that are usually the most
enjoyable parts of cartoons they star in.
Even if the pain of what the main characters are put through is lessened
in parts, it’s still overbearing, and the overreliance on this type of humor
does not make this cartoon stand out as the most entertaining. 6/10
Cartoon Ranking
- King Yakko
- Hello Nice Warners
- Meatballs or Consequences
- Slappy Goes Walnuts
- H.M.S. Yakko
- Hooked on a Ceiling
- Temporary Insanity
- Bumbie’s Mom
- Les Miseranimals
- Hearts of Twilight
- Space Probed
- West Side Pigeons
- Battle for the Planet
- When Rita Met Runt
- De-zanitized
- Win Big
- Taming of the Screwy
- Chalkboard Bungle
- La La Law
- Nothing but the Tooth
- Piano Rag
- Pavlov’s Mice
- Cookies for Einstein
- The Big Candy Store
- Garage Sale of the Century
- Wally Llama
- Where Rodents Dare
- Roll Over Beethoven
- Hurray for Slappy
- Cat on a Hot Steel Beam
- Operation: Lollipop
- No Pain No Painting
- Chicken Boo-Ryshnikov
- Goodfeathers: The Beginning
- The Cat and the Fiddle
- La Behemoth
- A Moving Experience
- The Boids
Song Ranking
- Yakko’s Universe
- Yakko’s World
- The Monkey Song
- What Are We?
- Little Old Slappy from Pasadena
Miscellaneous Ranking
- The Great Wakkorotti: The Master and His Music
- Hitchcock Parody
- Gilligan’s Island Parody
- Nighty-Night Toon
- Flipper Parody
The fourth
disc is now completely covered. Next time, we'll start on reviews of the episodes of the fifth and final disc of the Vol 1 set. The first episode on the disc is American-themed featuring the introduction of a flame who lights the way during the writing of historic documents, one of the show's most popular songs, "Wakko's America," Chicken Boo posing as a Davy Crockett parody, and the Warners helping Abraham Lincoln open the Gettysburg Address.
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