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Hungry
Larry
Halloween
episodes help exercise a show’s imagination through scaring the audience. Coming from a show with magic spells,
alternate dimensions, and strange creatures, you’d think this episode delivers
in that regard, and you’d be right. This
Halloween episode reminds the audience that real frights can come from the simplest
beings.
The main character is a
surprising one to be developed, Marco’s dad Rafael. He sets up a
haunted house every year to scare trick-or-treaters. However, with Marco only able to bring a few
kids, and Rafael not having the acting for true horror, no one finds his house
scary. After many years of this kind of failure, he’s depressed.
Star tries to help the haunted house be
scarier by summoning a creature called Hungry Larry. Even with a moody incantation introducing the
creature, Hungry Larry himself doesn’t seem threatening at all. He’s a really small creature with a sheet
over his body and sticklike arms and legs, and casually walks in to enhance the
haunted house. There’s nothing monstrous
about him and he feels more like a nerdy business client than anything else. You’re led to believe that he’s not the answer to the haunted house
problem. However, that’s when the idea
of fear coming from simple creatures comes into play.
When Janna, dressed as a monster
businesswoman, goes to fire Hungry Larry, she gives a loud scream and
mysteriously doesn’t return. Then a
crowd of little kids rush to the Diaz house, believing they’re in for a real
haunted house experience. They run up, give bloodcurdling screams, and
everything goes silent. The frightening
mystery is solved upon investigating a darkly lit room. Abandoned
candy and black saliva all over the floor suggests something is not quite
right and Hungry Larry is scarier than he first let on. The suggestion proves true when Star finds
herself all alone at the mercy of Hungry Larry now turned into a demonic blob,
dropping down to eat her. He brings quite a jump
scare that stands out more coming from a previously conceived waste of a fright.
Then when Rafael notices black saliva from
the ceiling, suspicious of what it means, he rushes up to the room and is the
only one to see Hungry Larry's true form.
After eating so many kids, he’s an overgrown blob with the sheet
covering his body as his full stomach. The screaming children inside his
mouth add to the horror factor. The
greatest thing about this final encounter is that after Rafael failed to be scary
many times, he saves the day with much love for his
family. He forces the now stuffed Hungry Larry into eating him, and Larry throws
up everyone he ate. This way, we end the episode with a strong
satisfaction that Rafael turned out to be scary and a good laugh as Hungry Larry leaves casually despite turning out to be so dangerous.
With a great buildup to genuine scares, and development from characters
you wouldn’t expect to see this episode is successful Halloween material.
A+
Spider
with a Top Hat
This
is an interesting episode that builds a story around a creative concept. We see what goes on inside Star’s wand, and
how the magical objects of her spells are created.
They intermingle in a big open area, and when Star saying the name of a
spell is heard, the respective object goes out into the real world to play a part. Their major
source of entertainment is the Spider with a Top Hat who provides them with
refreshments and jokes.
It’s a creative
way to show the inner workings of the wand and all, but the question is soon
begged why there’s a whole episode about this.
The concept is all right for a short scene in between action, but isn’t
enough to carry a whole episode. The story makes a huge deal of how Spider is
used for comedy while all the other spells are used for fighting. As a result, Spider keeps trying to prove
he’s as good at fighting. All his attempts fail
and everyone around him hammers in that he’s simply funny and nothing
more.
We’re expected to take this
seriously, but an idea this absurd and the fact that the character going through all this trouble is a little spider is hard to see as more than a joke. There’s little
sympathy when Spider laments about not being good for fighting and unable to do
intense exercises. Plus, everyone else’s
reactions to Spider’s feeble attempts feel very repetitive. They always amount to
how serious fighting is, how he could get hurt trying, and how he’s better off
being funny. It doesn’t make for the
most interesting or entertaining of plots.
Even so, when Spider pouts over not being serious
and doesn't wake everyone up with comedy, the thing
he’s supposed to do, it is nice that no one’s too hard on him. The payoff
is also decent when Star goes on a spree of firing many spells at once, even
ones that aren’t fighting-related, and Spider is the last one to be
called. There’s a random werewolf
creature attacking Star and Marco, which is very different from normal. When all the other
spells can’t beat it, Spider is the last resort. He takes an earlier malapropism of having a
“hat of a warrior” too seriously and brings out a machine gun that saves the
day. While it’s somewhat nice to see
Spider find his inner fighting power, it feels forced that his hat can become a
machine gun. It doesn’t tie into the
exercises he tried throughout the episode, and the earlier statement doesn’t
work because the phrase was supposed to be “heart of a warrior.”
As you can see, this episode has good
intensions through building itself around world-building, but is sloppy with
storytelling and shows that some ideas are best left as short
jokes.
However, it’s a harmless watch with a few goodhearted moments, so you can
enjoy it. There just really isn't any need to devote a whole episode to the
inside of Star’s wand, at least not until next episode...
C
The Ranking
- Ludo in the Wild
- Hungry Larry
- Game of Flags
- On the Job
- Sleepover
- Is Mystery
- Mr. Candle Cares
- Wand to Wand
- Starstruck
- Girls’ Day Out
- By the Book
- Friendenemies
- Gift of the Card
- Starsitting
- Star on Wheels
- Camping Trip
- My New Wand
- Red Belt
- Spider with a Top Hat
- Star vs Echo Creek
- Fetch
- Goblin Dogs
The next Star vs the Forces of Evil review covers a much more interesting look inside Star's wand, and another adventure featuring some of the worst of Pony Head.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is the OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode, "We're Captured."
If you would like to check out other Star vs the Forces of Evil reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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