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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
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