Saturday, June 22, 2019

Drive Insane / Girlfeathers / I'm Cute (Animaniacs Vol 3 Part 3) - 'Toon Reviews 32

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Episode 53


Drive Insane


When the Warners use their antics to annoy people, it’s usually their form of retaliation to people who are mean or rude by nature, or anyone who wronged them personally.  To say the least, their nuisance measures are used to an interesting degree with this cartoon where they end up making something a little better. 
Indicated by the play on words in the title, this cartoon takes place at a drive-in movie theater, something you’d be hard-pressed to find these days.  It’s got the atmosphere of the place down too with lines of cars parked in front of a big outdoor screen and most moviegoers being teen couples smooching it up.  Not to mention, the background film is a fun parody of French films where it’s nothing but actors riding a train and speaking the lines of French folk songs. 
Now as for the main plot, we follow Dr. Scratchansniff on a date which is really not going well.  He’s all dressed up complete with a scrappy toupee to use as hair and paying for everything. For his troubles, all his date cares about is eating a wild assortment of food and won’t let Dr. Scratchansniff kiss her.  You could argue that he’s kind of rushing things for just the first date, but this is still a sorry sight for Dr. Scratchansniff.  His fantasies of him and his date frolicking in a German meadow as a happy couple greatly reflect the disappointing reality. 
Then in one of his kissing attempts, the Warners finally make their appearance and set to work with their antics.  Although they give Dr. Scratchansniff a hard time and scare his date while joking about her weight, they honestly don’t seem to mean harm.  They’re just here to watch the movie with them, and their antics just feel like their way of interacting in a simple environment which has been the case for the whole series.  Dr. Scratchansniff argues that they’re ruining the date, but Yakko makes the good point that it was ruined before they arrived.  Even so, Dr. Scratchansniff responds by kicking the Warners out of his car despite still not getting any more intimate with his date than before. 
For denying the kids’ innocent desire, the Warners are in the clear to start retaliating. They act as sad unloved kids crying for their fathers’ love which gets the other patrons mad at Dr. Scratchansniff and allows them to get into the car and lock him out.  As he then keeps trying to get back in the car and gets frustrated with everyone bothered by the scene he’s making, the Warners seem to make the date a little better.  They actually bond with the date they scared earlier through playing to her love of snacks and making small talk about the movie they’re watching. 
Speaking of the snacks, that subject brings on another memorable funny moment. They ask Dr. Scratchansniff to get more popcorn and he has to deal with a concession stand teen who doesn’t know what he’s doing and everyone keeps asking if he got fries with that. 
By the end, even if the night was really hard on Dr. Scratchansniff, the Warners messing around seems to have worked for love’s sake.  The date claims to have had a wonderful time and they’re all set for even more movie dates to come.  It’s not the most effective happy ending since Dr. Scratchansniff is freaked out about that thanks to this ordeal, but I’d say it would have been worse if the Warners didn’t show up.  Not to mention, it leaves us with a hilarious date story where cartoonish antics don’t always mess with others, but also offer legit benefits.
A

Girlfeathers



The subject of romance continues with this cartoon featuring the Goodfeathers where we’re introduced to their girlfriends billed as the Girlfeathers.  Well actually, Bobby’s girlfriend Lana was seen before, but this is the first time we see Sasha, Pesto’s equally temperamental sister, and Kiki the ditz.  They seem like an interesting group of characters and one that would make for decent characters to follow in a cartoon.  However, they’re disappointingly not really the main focus here. 
Even though this is the first time we see these female pigeons together as a group, the cartoon is way more about the Goodfeathers pursuing them for love’s sake.  In the process, it makes them feel very shallow and frustratingly oblivious to what how they really feel.  The Girlfeathers just want some alone time to chat about matters and keep telling their boyfriends not to follow them.  The ever-innocent Squit understands exactly what they mean while Bobby and Pesto constantly insist otherwise.  They legitimately believe that the girls are just begging for them to follow them wherever they go because they can’t get enough of them.  This is the kind of denseness in couples that really devalues any potential for charm by making one side look smart and well-rounded and the other side look just plain dumb. 
If that’s not enough, this setup continues all throughout the cartoon with very repetitive events.  The girlfeathers say they’re flying somewhere and tell the Goodfeathers not to follow, the boys do so anyway and get involved in extreme pain gags as a result.  Repetition is a sure way to make a cartoon feel much less interesting or funny than it could be, and that’s definitely the case here.  Some of them even highlight the frustrating stupidity of the Goodfeathers.  There’s literally one point where they fall down a waterfall, and instead of flying away because they’re birds, they just stay falling.  To be fair, there are some pain gags that are creatively executed.  The best one is when they get caught by a thrasher in a cornfield and Bobby and Pesto’s beaks get switched with the other character’s usual dialog coming from the other body.  This right here is the kind of imagination that would probably make the pain gags more tolerable if it was used more often.  Even a gag where they’re caught in a gasoline truck, the driver jumps out, and the Goodfeathers are blown away by an explosion is humorously executed. 
Gags aside, there are a few things that make the cartoon more tolerable than average.  While cuts to the Girlfeathers’ conversations aren’t too interesting, they do show decent chemistry from the featured characters.  If only more of their personalities were fleshed out from their talks apart from Kiki’s ditziness.  It’s also nice to get a break from the usual city setting for a vaster variety of places like a river, a cornfield, and finally the Grand Canyon.  At the last location the Godpigeon appears to tell the Goodfeathers to just be upfront with their girlfriends instead of chasing them.  Their efforts are good even though they ultimately fall off the canyon during another one of Pesto’s hilarious rants at Squit’s attempts at a compliment.  The Girlfeathers end up flying away belittling the boys for only having chasing them to keep them going. This is true, but it’s frustrating that they never grow past this mindset despite everything. 
As it stands, this is a decent attempt to introduce the Girlfeathers majorly held back by perpetual denseness from men.

C




I’m Cute


The songs in this show are either fun ways of teaching random topics that would be otherwise quite dull or here for the sake of fun.  This song fits the latter category while also serving as a great upbeat character for Dot and the biggest thing she has going for her.  That would be her natural cuteness, and it’s an understatement to say that she really lives it up. 
Set to a swinging tune and smoothly changing sceneries, Dot brings a lot of fun and passion to describing the extent of her cuteness.  She may seem vain and opinionated, but with a song like this, she’s no doubt enjoyable.  A lot of thought goes into the descriptions of her face to her clothes as they fit the beats of the verses to a tee.  Also, while bringing up random topics for the sake of a rhyme is usually a cheap move to make a song work, the practice is well done here.  We get obscure references to pop culture elements like Dudley Moore and Trivial Pursuit, and random as they are, they fit the rhyme schemes and highlight the main topic.  They don’t show up for the sake of it; they enhance how cute Dot claims she is. 
Another point of consideration to this song is how Dot’s brothers, Yakko and Wakko, go along with the whole thing.  They start off happy to back up the song in the chorus, but show believable annoyance to their sister talking about herself constantly.  They get visibly tired from appeasing her and sneak in lines about disgust and Dot becoming a pain later into the song before finally overtly insulting her.  However, there’s also nice sibling love to finish things off when Dot blows up at her brothers for ruining her song, but they make her feel better by saying she’s cute when she’s angry.  This song does a lot by describing cuteness to an exhausting extent and reminding that despite everything, the Warners do love each other. 
This may just be a song about Dot talking about herself for several minutes, but a fun, catchy, and well-rounded one regardless.
A

Cartoon Ranking
  1. Frontier Slappy
  2. The Warners and the Beanstalk
  3. Yes, Always
  4. Drive Insane
  5. Ups and Downs
  6. The Brave Little Trailer
  7. Girlfeathers

Song Ranking
  1. I’m Cute
Miscellaneous Ranking
  1. Branimaniacs
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode featuring Pinky and the Brain's take on Jeckyll and Hyde, and the introduction cartoon for Minerva Mink airing after a previous starring role.

If you would like to check out other Animaniacs reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

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