Thursday, April 19, 2018

'Toon Reviews 14: Animaniacs Vol 1 Part 16: Chalkboard Bungle/Hurray for Slappy/The Great Wakkorotti: The Master and His Music


Episode 16
Chalkboard Bungle






We all got to get our education somehow, and most of us do so by going to school.  However, it can be a chore should you end up with a less-than-ideal teacher or professor who expects so much from you and make the learning experience harder and more grueling than it already is.  You wish you can retaliate, but you know that you could get in serious trouble if you do.  It’s only in the realm of cartoons where it’s safe to watch what you’d like to say to an overly strict teacher which can be pretty comforting, and this cartoon features just that with the cartooniest characters in the cast, the Warners, as the students. 
They’re assigned to Ms. Flamiel who’s so strict that she not only gives Fs for the pettiest of missteps, but does so to everyone, even those she’s not teaching.  Also, when she finally is set up to teach the Warners, she makes the classroom setting an overly-serious environment restricted of anything remotely fun with rules of everything her students can’t do and a demanding tone to everything she says.  If you know anything about the Warners though, they don’t adhere to strictness no matter what, so when they’re pitted against an unfriendly teacher like Ms. Flamiel, they don’t hold back with witty comebacks to everything she says. 
When she tells them to repeat after her while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, they do so starting with the first thing she says before the Pledge resulting in her growing frustration.  Their answers to Ms. Flamiel’s questions are sharp enough to work as jokes, but also make sense as logical responses like when Dot is asked to talk about the scientists of the 1800s, she says they’re all dead, or Wakko saying he’ll define “procrastinate” tomorrow while lounging in his seat.  Other clever jokes include Yakko interpreting being assigned to “conjugate” as suggestive, and when the kids are assigned a pop quiz, they utilize a double meaning for pop by tasting sodas blindfolded and playing a pop number. Jokes like these not only further sell the masterful hilarity of these characters, but also make possible the many ways we wish we could fight back against some of our least favorite teaching authorities. 
What’s more, they’re all capped off when Ms. Flamiel crosses the line and violates the Warners personal space by writing Fs on their foreheads as she did before, or on Wakko’s hat in his case.  Wakko is moved into an absolute frenzy of fury when his hat is vandalized and explodes which apparently gets Ms. Flamiel locked in a crate at the cartoon’s end.  This does make for a rare instance of cartoon humor I can’t suspend disbelief towards because I find it hard to think of a way Wakko exploding gets Ms. Flamiel in a crate, but that’s just me.  We really do get a great collection of bull's-eye-hitting gags with this cartoon. 
It’s just too bad that it isn’t very nice to look at most of the time being sent to the least visually compelling animation studio working for the series, Freelance.  Characters’ faces are often off-putting especially at the eyes, there’s an overall blobby look to the motion, and there’s overall not a lot of charm to the visualization.  I know I mostly focus on story, characters, and comedy in my reviews, but that’s because I feel they matter the most in determining how good a cartoon is while the animation is hardly worth talking about to me.  However, since all those things are so strong and the animation is kind of creepy here, the strengths would've stood out more if the cartoon was animated by one of the show’s more profound studios. 
If you can get past the animation quality, you’re sure to enjoy the top-notch comedy, dynamic characterizations, and the relatability of certain times in school. 9.5/10

Hurray for Slappy









To me, Slappy Squirrel cartoons are at their best whenever the old squirrel demonstrates the greatness of cartoon violence and shares knowledge of cartoon nature to a younger generation.  Since the focus of this cartoon isn’t really on any of these things, this is one of the duller cartoons starring this character.  It’s still good as it is, but it's not as interesting as the best cartoons starring this character. 
Slappy is invited to a ceremony where she is to get the Lifetime Achievement Award as a former toon great, while the enemies of her old cartoons from back in the day plot to ruin the ceremony by clobbering her before she gets her award.  That there is one way the cartoon stands out since it gives us a formal introduction to Walter Wolf, Sid the Squid, and Beanie Bison, cartoon enemies we’ve only heard about or seen in short clips of Slappy’s old cartoons prior to this.  We even get a taste of their distinct personalities at play like Walter as the disgruntled leader, Beanie as cerebrally challenged guy who can never think straight, and Sid…who really doesn’t stand out all that much apart from his fun design.  These guys are who we mainly focus on throughout the cartoon as they each try and fail to get the better of their sworn enemy. 
Truth be told, we do get some great and humorous ways for Slappy to work her cartoon violence on any one of her rivals’ pitiful attacks. They include how she works in three ways to blow up Beanie posing as an autograph hound, despite the comedic impact getting ruined with him realistically being in an all-body cast for the rest of the cartoon, and pointing out Sid’s clichéd dynamite in the cake gag and using her suggestions to improve it to get him blown up.  The problem is that so much time is devoted to these villains, but they’re just not engaging enough to take up starring roles.  Also, while the ways Slappy blows them up are funny as always that also show off her appeal as a character, all they’re attempts lose their interest because of how clear it is that the enemies are too dumb to pull off an attack, making them such easy targets for Slappy to fire at.  Heck, they even say they’re not surprised that one of them messed up at one point.  Maybe their roles would be interesting if they tried to take her out together and Slappy would find a unique way to beat them in that scenario. 
Fortunately, the last attempted blow at Slappy where Walter gives her the award rigged as a bomb, just before Slappy blows him and the others up again, there is a nice moment where she praises her villains for helping to enhance her comedy, and honestly, it makes perfect sense for her to do so.  Any antagonist, regardless if they’re in a comedy series like this, are the driving force of any conflict a protagonist is up against, and the way the protagonist finds a way to beat them helps bring out their admirable qualities.  It’s also a good payoff for Walter and company’s earlier laments about not being appreciated.  They may not ever win, but it’s great that their true purpose is made clear.
Even with this interesting perspective on villains and the great comedy in general, this is one of Slappy’s weaker cartoons for focusing on some of the least interesting characters on the show who are simply too dumb to do what they set out to do.  It’s worth watching, but trust me when I say there are better Slappy cartoons out there. 8/10

The Great Wakkorotti: The Master and His Music


Closing the episode is one of the most bizarre yet most hilarious things to come from the show.  It doesn’t tell a story at all nor does it amount to a song, but rather a representation of an off-the-wall idea. 
We open on a high-class setting of a sophisticated concert about to begin, then the main performer of the concert appears, and that is Wakko all dressed up for the event.  The concert begins with the classical piece, “The Blue Danube Waltz” playing on piano. That doesn’t sound too out of the norm for the setting, but that’s when we see the catch to the whole setup which is to be expected from a physical comedy-driven character like Wakko. 
At certain given notes during the piece, Wakko lets out a big belch to go along with them.  That’s all there is to it.  It’s a low-class action set against a high-class setting mixing the vulgar with the sophisticated.  I would usually be put off by something like this, but surprisingly, the burps and the classical music mesh together very well and leave a lot of admirable qualities.  The burps themselves are well performed and are in line with the note they go with.  Plus, each burp makes for a hilarious drawing of Wakko to go along with it.  They’re easily some of the best composed for the character.  You could just pause during burps and find a lot of character in just a still drawing. 
It’s also pretty amusing that while Wakko is doing something against the nature of a classical music concert, they still treat what he’s doing very seriously like when Dot appears mid-piece to freshen Wakko up by feeding him a lot of soda so he’ll burp more, and at the end of the piece while everyone applauds, Wakko formally bows while saying “Excuse me!”  In the end, everything that goes into this segment results in a one-of-a-kind experience that takes something rude yet funny and brings it into the fine art foray without making it feel out of place. 
They’d do this thing a few more times throughout the series, but it would mostly be exactly the same as the first showing, right down to the same animation on the phases of the concert except for different music pieces and slightly different belching poses, so that does cost the segment of specialness.  At least those would still be enjoyable in their own right, but we’ll get into them in future review sets of the DVD volumes to this show.  For now, I give a big goofy belch to the first of these bizarre yet highly appealing Great Wakkorotti concerts.  9.5/10
Cartoon Ranking
  1. King Yakko
  2. Hello Nice Warners
  3. Slappy Goes Walnuts
  4. H.M.S. Yakko
  5. Hooked on a Ceiling
  6. Temporary Insanity
  7. Bumbie’s Mom
  8. Les Miseranimals
  9. Space Probed
  10. West Side Pigeons
  11. Battle for the Planet
  12. When Rita Met Runt
  13. De-zanitized
  14. Win Big
  15. Taming of the Screwy
  16. Chalkboard Bungle
  17. La La Law
  18. Piano Rag
  19. Cookies for Einstein
  20. The Big Candy Store
  21. Garage Sale of the Century
  22. Wally Llama
  23. Where Rodents Dare
  24. Hurray for Slappy
  25. Cat on a Hot Steel Beam
  26. Operation: Lollipop
  27. No Pain No Painting
  28. Goodfeathers: The Beginning
  29. La Behemoth
Song Ranking
  1. Yakko’s Universe
  2. Yakko’s World
  3. The Monkey Song
  4. What Are We?
  5. Little Old Slappy from Pasadena
Miscellaneous Ranking
  1. The Great Wakkorotti: The Master and His Music
  2. Gilligan’s Island Parody
  3. Nighty-Night Toon
  4. Flipper Parody
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where the Warners annoy another historical figure into coming up with a big accomplishment, this one being Beethoven who's writing his 5th Symphony, and Rita and Runt find themselves in the home of an incredibly unsettling interpretation of famous violinmaker, Antonio Stradivarius.
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