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It’s been a while since I’ve done an MC Toon Reviews Shorty, but with
another holiday around the corner, it’s a good time to look into an animated
special I’ve never seen before. The
interesting thing about this shorty is that the works I’ll be looking into are
on the holiday that lends itself well to animation, Halloween. The scare factor, wild imagery, and
imagination in things like parties and costume feel right at home in something
as versatile as a cartoon. Most
Halloween specials I’ve seen are tie-ins to established TV shows and special
franchises. I’m largely unfamiliar with
standalone Halloween special, but this year I have a good idea of what to look
into. For the next 2 days, I’m going to
cover two computer animated specials based on a children’s book series by Jill
Orson:
Scary Godmother
It should be known that I’ve never read the books these
specials were based on and I’m probably too old for them now. However, I do know that the two specials
featuring the titular character used to air on Cartoon Network every Halloween season, even if they haven't aired in recent years. I never actually watched them, but over the
years, I’ve noticed a lot of animation fans show interest in them.
Being an animation fan myself
and an enjoyer of Halloween specials, I’m all set to look into them myself to
draw my own opinions. I can’t explain
why I haven’t pushed myself to watch them before. Maybe because I was too attached to what I
knew or they just didn’t seem that interesting.
As a person trying to keep an open mind, I have high hopes for a fun
time with plenty of Halloween spirit. So
let’s enter the Fright Side for two big Halloween parties.
Halloween Spooktacular
(October 31, 2003)
With this special making first impressions on Scary
Godmother’s transition into animation, the best hope is that it embraces its
imaginative environment. It may not be the best story ever, but there
are plenty of elements to this special to leave a very fun mark.
The special follows a little girl named Hannah who’s going
trick-or-treating with her cousin Jimmy and his friends. Despite hitting it off well with the gang,
any possible bonding doesn’t seem possible with Jimmy’s authority over
everyone. He pushes everyone to treat
their costume to that of a creature of the night despite most of them not being
very monstrous by design. In addition to
painting Jimmy in a jerky one-dimensional light, this scenario makes things
difficult to Hannah. Her main trait for
the special is that she’s terrified of monsters as evidenced through dressing
up as a cute harmless fairy princess, and using a flashlight to scare any away.
This fear of Hannah’s sets her up as a target for bullying
when Jimmy plans for the gang to ditch her so they can get more candy. Showing that his friends have little to their
personalities even after seeming friendly with Hannah, they choose better
trick-or-treating over a child’s well-being.
They trick her into going into a strange-looking house called the Spook
House to prove her worth as a big kid.
It’s here where their bullying reaches a whole new low when Jimmy leads
everyone to scare Hannah just as she enters.
This move messes with her already huge fear with fabrications of
monsters.
From the first couple minutes,
the special seems fine albeit very basic and characterizations. This tends to make Jimmy and his friends seem
too out of line with their jerkiness and Hannah hard to get behind for easily
falling for shallow scare attempts.
However, it’s from these characterizations that allow what follows to
greatly benefit the special.
The moment Scary Godmother appears and puts a humorous spin
on a lonely Hannah’s “boohooing,” the fun of the special really builds. She’s an eccentric witch with charm and
likability in everything she does.
Through her friendly demeanor, she takes Hannah on a trip to her home in
the Fright Side to meet her monster friends so Hannah can see what Halloween
frights are really like. A lively flight
to the Fright Side with interesting aerial shots of what I assume are the illustrations
from the original books and use of wormholes adds more appeal to this
character. They arrive at Scary
Godmother’s home, a haunted house at the end of a pumpkin patch where her
annual Halloween party is taking place.
While she continues to delight by herself, she’s just as fun working off
the many residents in her home.
From here, the special remains in that one place with barely
a plot to follow and focus solely on the party and everyone in the Fright Side
enjoying it. Technically, this has the
special meander a lot fueled solely by random escapades. However, one thing I’ve discovered from my
reviewing hobby is that great animation doesn’t always need to follow a
plot. Well-defined characters and
entertaining moments seem to be what benefits the medium the most. For the most part, these elements keep the
special so enjoyable.
Scary Godmother remains a highly energized witch of a party
host, but each of the guests are very memorable too. There’s a literal skeleton in the closet,
Skully Pettibone who livens up his scenes with great showmanship, breathing
believable life into a pile of bones.
Harry the werewolf is the main comic relief through random monologues,
mistaking Hannah for a character in his favorite series, and especially eating
everything. He’s mostly a riot and makes
the party particularly fun, but he can get pretty overbearing a couple of times
up to the point where I feel like siding with the guests to shut him up. Those moments are even enjoyable in their own
right, especially Scary Godmother turning the special into a cook show for
peanut butter and jelly crackers for a few seconds. Anyway, there’s also a vampire family in
which the son, Orson, doesn’t fit in through appearing more humanlike. One of the more creative monsters is
Bug-A-Boo, a big round multi-eyed monster, at least in design and through a
hilarious chase scene. As a character,
he mostly gets Hannah to realize everything she’s heard or what she believes
about monsters are false and aid in her character development (more on that
later). There’s certainly a lot of fun
to be had with these characters. From
their designs and personalities, they’re interesting images to think of when it
comes to Halloween. They work well on
their own, but also work off splendidly in group scenes. They include dancing
creatively, having small conversations, and even ordering pizza after Harry
eats all the snacks. It’s one fun
character and one fun moment after another that greatly captures the feel of
being at a Halloween party.
The party aspect of the special is so well-done, it makes
frequent cuts to the real world seem noticeably lacking. It’s just Jimmy and his friends waiting
outside the Spook House for Hannah to come running scared and that’s it. These scenes are very slow-paced and boring,
mostly consist of awkward and unfunny banter, and even get annoying through
repeating lines a couple times. Plus,
they further come off as unlikable and frustratingly stupid for saying they
should go in to get Hannah, but never do for weak reasons. These scenes are really not that good, and
getting a lot of them in between the more interesting Halloween party does not
do any favors. They don’t just disrupt the
special’s flow, but they leave a relatively negative impact by themselves.
The biggest thing to leave a positive impact however is what
both the party and Jimmy and the gang waiting around do for Hannah’s
character. She enters the special as a
basic little girl archetype, loving all things pink and being scared of
monsters. It was already discussed how
she showed these qualities when she was first bullied by Jimmy and the others,
but it follows into the Fright Side too.
She greets every monster she meets with a scream and has to be pushed by
Scary Godmother to warm up to them. Her freaking out at every new monster is slightly frustrating since she doesn’t apply what she learned to a
potential friend. At least her fear
can lead to some funny moments such as the aforementioned chase from
Bug-A-Boo. In fact, after meeting him,
Hannah truly develops through forming legitimate bonds, mostly with Orson and
Bug-A-Boo. To prove her
development is genuine, Hannah works up her own Halloween spirit in the end. When the big kids
finally go into the Spook House for her, Hannah rigs it by having her new
monster friends scare them. There’s a lot of
memorable moments from this scene. They
include the vampires casually commenting on what they see before scaring, Skully
giving a song and dance routine and falling apart, and one of Harry's overdramatic monologs. It’s a thrilling
and fitting end for Hannah’s arc and is enhanced by the big kids being scared
enough to follow her home after the fright and getting a key to visit the
Fright Side any time. The growth from
fearing monsters to seeing their friendly side makes for an interesting center
for the special. Developing Hannah’s
character and showing what benefits from it makes it especially meaningful.
Ultimately, this special isn’t anything amazing through many
basic characters and several unappealing scenes that drag things out too
much. That said, it succeeds through
plenty of Halloween spirit from the characters, party setting, and even
solid developments. As far as
first impressions go for this special, this series seems like appealing
Halloween viewing.
Recommended
|
Tommorow will be the review of the second Scary Godmother special, The Revenge of Jimmy a surprisingly faithful follow-up to the first special.
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