Sunday, July 14, 2019

Karaoke Doke / Cranial Crusader / The Chicken Who Loved Me (Animaniacs Vol 3 Part 10) - 'Toon Reviews 32

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Episode 60
Karaoke Dokie


On the surface this is a simple cartoon of the Warners going off and doing a thing, but another really cleverly utilized reference makes it stand out from normal standards.  They hear music coming from the Warner Bros. Studio commissary, and find out that there’s a karaoke event where people perform simple children’s songs.  They take an immediate interest in joining which isn’t too far from the norm of how most people would approach a special activity. 
That’s when the catch comes in as the Warners discover that before they can take part, someone else has beaten them to the spotlight.  The main thing about this person is who he’s meant to be a caricature of.  It’s William Shatner, here called William Slakmer, whose gimmick is taking long dramatic pauses whenever he’s saying one single sentence.  This is a kind of pronunciation that’s begging to be imitated, and while it’s fun enough to do it yourself, the way the Warners mock the way Slakmer talks is a particular highlight.  If that’s not enough, he’s booked way more than one song to sing, which hardly seems fair. He’s allowed to make the audience endure his entirely emotionless singing for a long time. 
Now, Slakmer being the featured singer is in line with a real life instance of William Shatner giving a musical performance.  He has an infamous cover of the Elton John song “Rocket Man” that’s quite unenthused and hardly even sung.  Since he can’t pull off a well-known pop song, it’s not surprising that he probably wouldn’t be able to pull off simple verses and nursey rhymes.  That idea is humorously brought to life as he gives such tunes a dry emotionless cover.  Given that the performance is intentionally bad though, you can easily forget the idea of a truly top notch performance and laugh at what’s given. 
Plus, the inherent soullessness of the singing is greatly counteracted by the Warners who spend the cartoon riffing on how talentless and sickening the whole thing is.  They don’t just sit in the audience as they go on to state their opinions vocally.  They show no fear in going up on stage to say that Slakmer really needs to stop singing, mocking his verbal patterns all the way.  It’s a light-hearted measure to show frustration with the show as they try to get their way and a good way to build up to real strategy. 
Turning to the music handler, a more competent than average Ralph the Guard, the Warners eventually get to the machine and speed up the rest of Slakmer’s songs.  The resulting performance is a funny combination of unenthused singing with fast lively tempos he has to keep up with.  Even when Slakmer is finally beaten, the typical outcome is shaken a bit when the Warners still don’t get what they want.  Ralph finds them out and informs the kids that another former Star Trek actor, a parody of Leonard Nimoy, is up next with another big serving of karaoke songs.  He teleports in like Mr. Spock and everything.  This is tolerable enough since it was wrong for the Warners to hijack a performance despite how bad it is, and there’s a good suggestion that they’ll get to sing anyway. 
On an even better note, the strong mining of humor out of a not-often talked about pop culture event brings another genius work of comedy.

A

Cranial Crusader


We’ve already had a cartoon of Brain trying to take over the world by running for president, so it only figures that this time he’d try by acting as a superhero.  With Pinky and himself posing as pet mice to resident hero, the Caped Opossum, Brain notices how great affection superheroes have it. 
Going off of the Caped Opossum, all he has to do is take out a bad guy and leave a mark to let the public know of the heroic deed.  At the same time, I have to question how Brain could possibly think that being a hero means being able to take over the world.  The whole point of heroes is to make sure that rightful rulers don’t lose their positions of power from outside forces.  Plus, the Caped Opossum has captured all his enemies except for one foe named Johnny Badnote, and he still has no access to rule over the world.  Brain plans on catching that evasive bad guy before the Caped Opossum does, but how would one victory compare to the other guys many?  I know Brain usually overlooks certain things in his plans, but this is just ridiculous. 
At least his chemistry with Pinky through their attempt to reach Johnny Badnote before the Caped Opossum is solidly entertaining.  We have Brain relishing in his position of power as usual while Pinky just goes along with the fun.  He has a nice side goal along the ride by writing up a comic book for the Brain, and it’s amusing to see him focus on that while Brain’s all set on his mission.  Given how out of line and logic the mission is, Pinky’s comic book actually has more weight to it.  Even when unrelated to the main mission, there are a few solid laughs from the mice’s compatibility.  It mostly comes from Pinky not understanding what the buttons do since Brain doesn’t bother to properly explain them resulting in humorous car crashes. 
Then, we come to Johnny Badnote himself, who seems like a comedic take on villains, but doesn’t do anything terribly funny or interesting.  His motivation to want to blow up the world is because the public didn’t like his songs, which as you can tell, is very weak and petty.  This wouldn’t be such a big deal if he was actually funny or a parody of serious villains.  However, unlike other villains with an overdramatic flare, quirky catchphrases, and funny reactions to physical gags, Johnny doesn’t have any of those things.  He acts all sinister and threatening, expecting to be taken seriously which doesn’t work given his shallow motives.  It also doesn’t make for a compelling reason why the caped opossum had such a hard time beating him.  Pinky and Brain easily get out of the trap Johnny puts them in from Pinky reaching for his comic underneath their grenade and blow up his lair. 
This impressively means the plan was truly all thought out, and what makes it fail is completely unprecedented on both characters’ accounts.  During the explosion, ink falls out of a bottle and onto Brain’s hero mark, making it look like the Caped Opossum caught Johnny Badnote.  It could be argued that Pinky is to blame given his drive for his comic, but it still feels quite contrived that the ink would fall and mess up the mark that intricately.  Also, the Caped Opossum getting credit for someone else’s work is honestly just as shallow an outcome as Johnny Badnote’s motivation. 
This still isn’t a bad cartoon thanks to Pinky and the Brain’s compatibility you can never go wrong with, but many directions make this one of their most problematic cartoon.

B

The Chicken Who Loved Me

Of all the Chicken Boo cartoons we’ve gotten so far, this is easily the most grand-scale performance.  It’s the same basic formula, but from a spy angle bringing to mind the likes of James Bond, what he gets up to is at its freshest. 
The usual convention of Chicken Boo being praised by two people except for one who calls him out for being the giant chicken he is gets out of the way quickly at the start.  This makes for some solid fun to be had as a spy parody.  For one thing, there’s a light-hearted approach to the spy gadgets.  The biggest one is what looks like a pen seeming like it could be a disguise for a much bigger and more creative purpose, but is really just a pen.  The most effective thing that pen does is squirt ink in the face of the main villain’s face, like an actual one would do.  It’s an instance of so much bravado built up, only for it to turn out to be very simple and rather ineffective in terms of combat.  Other gadgets are much more creative as they play to Chicken Boo’s status as a chicken.  There’s an egg-beater that turns into a gyro helicopter, and eggs functioning as grenades although some of them are just actual eggs. 
However, even though Chicken Boo seems to put up a decent fight at first, the status he’s built up ends up not entirely deserved.  The moment he knocks into the villain’s rocket, he’s immediately taken out and open to be attacked by pet sharks.  I will say that it’s a welcome move that when the sharks take off his disguise and reveal that he’s actually a chicken, his typical betrayal makes more sense.  It starts in a manner that would have been the case if the disguise didn’t come off with Chicken Boo being launched into space by that villains.  The rocket flight through space is an unusual change of pace from just being kicked out or pelted with things, making for an exciting flight from people you’d expect to make it happen.  It just doesn’t feel right that nothing is said of the villains’ fate afterwards.  They’re still off to conquer the world, so shouldn’t they still be stopped?  The cartoon can still be satisfying that way.  Also, do we really know for sure if Chicken Boo is just going to be able to fly back to Earth from the moon? I know I shouldn’t think much of continuity with this show, but these measures still feel kind of extreme.  At least one other good thing makes this cartoon stand out.  One of Chicken Boo’s former fans, a woman who showed affection to him, shows some sympathy to him instead of just outright scorn.  That shows here is some appreciation for the chicken’s efforts.  It really accompanies the fun take on spy tropes and the grand scale some of the usual beats take. 
Just accept nothing being done with the bad guys, and this is sure to be a Chicken Boo cartoon more exciting than most through a big action angle.

A

Cartoon Ranking
1.      Ragamuffins
2.      Frontier Slappy
3.      Woodstock Slappy
4.      Wakko’s Gizmo
5.      The Warners and the Beanstalk
6.      Brain Meets Brawn
7.      Meet John Brain
8.      Yes, Always
9.      Drive Insane
10.  Karaoke Dokie
11.  Of Course, You Know This Means Warners
12.  Meet Minerva
13.  The Chicken Who Loved Me
14.  Smell Ya Later
15.  A Gift of Gold
16.  Ups and Downs
17.  The Helpinki Formula
18.  Les Boutons et le Ballon
19.  Gold Rush
20.  Up a Tree
21.  The Cranial Crusader
22.  Kung Boo
23.  The Brave Little Trailer
24.  Girlfeathers
Song Ranking
1.      Schnitzelbank
2.      I’m Cute
3.      Dot’s Quiet Time
Miscellaneous Ranking
1.      Branimaniacs
2.      Oh, Oh, Ethel
3.      Spike

Disc 2 of this Vol 3 DVD is officially clear. Disc 3 now kicks off with this episode of Barney parodies, more superheroes, and the return of Katie Ka-Boom. The latter element isn’t really something to be excited about.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews meet "Sadie Killer" from Steven Universe.
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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