Thursday, April 23, 2020

Ten Short Films About Wakko Warner / No Time For Love / The Boo Network - (Animaniacs Vol 4 Part 14) - 'Toon Reviews 39



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Episode 89
Ten Short Films About Wakko Warner
As arguably the Warner sibling with the most potential for screen time and physical comedy antics, a cartoon consisting of short skits of Wakko has a lot of potential.  It’s a result of a take on high class documentarians wanting to get major inside information on certain subjects of their films. Getting such information is what could make this cartoon a gold mine of fresh cartoonish antics.  The final results kind of lead to that, but a couple of them are also kind of lame and not all that funny, and certainly not up to Wakko’s comedic standards.  

Starting with the weak stuff, a portion of the short films is simply Wakko doing a thing without any sort of cartoonish edge.  One short film is him spending alone time by sleeping in his room, and another is literally him staring into a camera.  I suppose the latter is funny by being exactly what the title suggests, but it’s not really true to what Wakko is known for.  Others seem to only exist to showcase celebrity talents like Benny Hill, Margaret Graham, and Frank Sinatra.  In fact, the Margaret Graham short feels much more about her than Wakko.  She does all the overacting and pratfalls while he just stands around and watches.  I know Wakko can do a lot more than that.  

Thankfully, there’s a lot more appeal in the other shorts.  One of them still doesn’t showcase how Wakko works, but it does play to a believable outcome of a date with important movie people like Steven Spielberg.  Wakko’s having lunch with him, but Spielberg is only able to talk over the phone.  The rest of what’s present do exactly what the documentarian intends to do by showcasing how Wakko really works.  There’s a showing of his cute side as he performs community service by being a pet for elder women to stroke.  When having dinner with Dr. Scratchansniff, Wakko completely ignores his boring lecture as he gulps down a root beer, lets out a big burp, and innocently asks for another.  Even the celebrity shorts play to established traits as playing golf with Benny Hill comes with chasing Hello Nurse to his theme, and he burps to enhance Frank Sinatra’s performance. 

The best short to demonstrate Wakko’s comedic appeal is when he’s in a dollar store, and constantly asks how everything costs.  Because of his innocence, he never gets that everything costs a dollar.  This leads to an obvious but still very hilarious punchline where he buys out the entire store by paying with only one dollar.  I also give credit to the ending showcasing Wakko’s comedic appeal as he breaks the fourth wall mallet in hand.  He shows awareness and annoyance of cameras following him, gets out his mallet, and smashes the one following him at the moment.  

On the whole though, this collection of shorts isn’t as hilarious as Wakko’s character suggests it can be.  While some play to his comedic strengths, others are just random skits of random things or try to get mileage solely out of celebrity presences.  Maybe if one funny short branched out to different yet connected shorts from other characters, the results could be a lot better.  Still, it’s all a great concept that fluctuates from OK to great in execution.
A-
No Time for Love
Even this late in the run, this show is finding ideas for random one-off shorts.  This could be a welcome change of pace, but so far, very few of them have offered anything substantial, funny, or strong in composition.  Sadly, this one is more of the same in terms of quality as it works off of a potentially charming and creative concept, but makes it really dull and repetitive.  

It’s about a little bird in a cuckoo clock who falls in love with an actual female bird in an adjacent bird cage.  That’s innocent enough as is one thing standing in the way of getting together.  Every hour, the cuckoo bird comes out of the clock and is moved over to the real bird’s cage where they can be together.  The catch is that it’s only for a short time as the cuckoo bird is quickly pulled back into the clock.  That’s a good way of threatening the couple with the mechanics of the clock, but the potential is not matched by how the rest of the cartoon goes.  

While the story is staged to have the audience genuinely care about these birds getting together, the emotional tone is completely unmatched by the use of extreme gags.  Some of them are significantly out of line from the cuckoo bird’s true goal.  At certain hours when he’s moved towards the real bird’s cage, he spends way too much time flirting with her through means of flowers and chocolates, and serenading her.  However, I see no reason why he should be flirting with her when she returns his love immediately.  He should really be focusing on finding a way to stay with her and not get pulled back into the clock which happens between every flirt.  

Thankfully, that does become the cuckoo bird’s focus as he pulls off an elaborate stunt with a rocket to stay with the real bird.  Anything fun about the misfire is dashed due to how long the dang stunt goes on.  To add insult to injury, the cuckoo bird finds that he could have easily been moved off the clock’s mechanism to stay with the real bird.  If it was that easy and she already loved him, why didn’t she just do that earlier?  It would have saved a lot of time filled with failed gags that weren’t even that funny to begin with.  

Then the real bird is pulled into the clock and there’s a play on drama that doesn’t work at all.  The cuckoo bird alone in the cage holds a funeral service for the real bird, but it should be known that she’s not even dead.  He can totally just wait another hour for her to come out of the clock.  That’s just what happens at the end as she comes out and they agree to live in the clock together.  The cuckoo bird even takes off the clock hands to ensure that they’ll stay together.  Unlike the business with the mechanism, I can buy that he didn’t do this earlier because he was stuck on the mechanism and no one thought to pull him off.  

Still, the cartoon is mostly overlong with unfunny gags, ignored obvious solutions, and nonexistent drama.  It has its nice moments, but it’s purely disposable.
C-
The Boo Network
Of all the Chicken Boo cartoons out there, this is one to defy a lot of the norms of the series formula mainly through where it’s set and how long Chicken Boo holds onto his fame.  

For one thing, the action is very close to the heart of the series proper in many ways.  It’s about a TV network with Warner Bros Studio CEO Thaddeus Plotz at the forefront.  His concerns can also reflect the state of the WB network this entire series was airing on at the time.  Like how the ratings for Animaniacs had been going down majorly at the time, so have those for the shows on Plotz’s network.  That said, the real life example was more of a scheduling problem as opposed to whatever the cause for decline in the cartoon is.  

Pinning the blame on his top executive, Johnson, Plotz calls in a new executive to help with the programming who Chicken Boo is posing as.  This turn of events can also work as a full circle kind of moment with Plotz having worked with an employee who was clearly a chicken before.  Speaking of which, there’s actual weight to the one person suggesting Chicken Boo’s true identity.  As Johnson explores the ideas for programming the new executive has, he notices that they’re all chicken-themed.  That’s a smart move to get him to call out Chicken Boo for his true species, though in typical fashion, no one believes him.  Still, it means a lot that there’s legit reasons to come to this conclusion.  

A montage then goes to great lengths to not just have fun with the versatility of TV programming, but also bring to mind how helpful Chicken Boo’s control of the network is.  Parodies of well-known shows abound with chicken versions of news shows like 60 Minutes, talk shows, sci-fi horror shows, and even The Wonderful World of Disney.  It’s a lot of fun takes on the very atmosphere of TV shows and Plotz’s reactions to success are reflective of how deserving for the spot Chicken Boo is.  

This is why it’s a really big sting when the cartoon just has to stick to the formula’s roots.  When the costume comes off and Chicken Boo is exposed, Plotz does what every other human does in Chicken Boo cartoons and rejects him and tosses him out.  I could complain how this is unfair, but the real issue is how it doesn’t make sense for Plotz’s character.  His network is still more successful than ever because of Chicken Boo, and since he’s greedy by nature, he should just keep things the way they are.  Why would it even matter that his top executive’s a chicken if he’s still getting great results?  Also, giving control back to Johnson will just lead to failure again and he doesn’t seem to care about that.  I don’t even know if this figure can even be considered Plotz.  

Still, there’s a lot to admire from how well this cartoon plays with the Chicken Boo formula.  It just also has the misfortune of showing the downsides of sticking to a formula.
A-
Cartoon Ranking
1.      This Pun for Hire
2.      Wakko’s 2-Note Song
3.      Go Fish
4.      From Burbank with Love
5.      A Very, Very, Very, Very Special Show
6.      Valuable Lesson
7.      The Sound of Warners
8.      Night of the Living Buttons
9.      Dot’s Entertainment
10.  Boo Happens
11.  Buttons in Ows
12.  Cutie and the Beast
13.  Star Truck
14.  Boids on the Hood
15.  Our Final Space Cartoon We Promise
16.  Yabba Dabba Boo
17.  The Boo Network
18.  The Party
19.  The Girl with the Googily Goop
20.  Jokahontas
21.  Gimme the Works
22.  Ten Short Films About Wakko
23.  Papers for Papa
24.  My Mother the Squirrel
25.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock
26.  Amazing Gladiators
27.  Soda Jerk
28.  Hercules Unwound
29.  Belly Button Blues
30.  No Time For Love
31.  Oh Say Can You See
32.  Soccer Coach Slappy
33.  Anchors A-Warners
Song Ranking
1.      The Ballad of Magellan
2.      Hello Nurse
3.      Noel
4.      The Big Wrap Party Tonight
5.      When You’re Traveling from Nantucket
6.      Panama Canal
7.      Multiplication
Miscellaneous Ranking
1.      Gunga Dot
2.      Mighty Wakko at the Bat
3.      End Credits
4.      Rugrats Parody
5.      The 12 Days of Christmas
6.      Flavio Commercials
7.      The Return of the Great Wakkorotti
8.      Pinky and the Ralph
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Brain becomes the Hip Hippos' baby, the final Mindy and Buttons cartoon is an Alice in Wonderland parody, and Ralph's wedding occurs.

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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