Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Magic Time / The Brain's Apprentice -(Animaniacs Vol 4 Part 19) - 'Toon Reviews 39

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Episode 94
Magic Time

After a lot of fluctuating material starring the Warners, I’m pleased to report that they star in a cartoon that really plays to their great strengths as characters.  Their targets deserve their brand of annoyance, the gags they utilize are creatively hilarious, and there’s a lot of energy gone into the fun of the experience.  Even where everything unfolds brings an interesting direction.  It all takes place in Las Vegas, big on gambling, casinos, and floor shows.  
Such a floor show is hosted by parodies of Siegfried and Roy, Schnitzel and Floyd.  Right away, it’s clear that they’re heartlessly cruel to their animal co-stars, willing to seriously maim, burn, and torture them for the sake of entertainment.  It says a lot when the only thing enjoyable about them is their accents.  However, this portrayal is just what’s needed to allow the Warners to come in and use their antics on them.  Sure enough, they’re in the audience, and are keen to go up as volunteers for Schnitzel and Floyd’s act.  From there, the Warners really steal the show, so to speak, with an onslaught of hilarity that makes up the entire cartoon.  Some of them are humorous one-liners about Schnitzel and Floyd’s act or in Dot’s case, aggressively flirting with these men in tights.  They also put humorous spins on their standard magic acts.  The most notable one is when they try to transport their animals to a box the Warners are in and vice versa.  The final result features a long time no seen example of the show’s brand of unpredictability. Not only do the animals stay where they are, but when the Warners’ box is opened, it’s like they’re exposed while taking a shower.  
This is all great, but the Warners really go all out with their antics after Schnitzel and Floyd over aggressively shout at them. They go overdramatic with crying to get the audience to sympathize with them, and come back with some of their most elaborate gags.  When Schnitzel and Floyd transform their animals into a ‘pretty girl,’ Yakko and Wakko show up as more self-appointed pretty girls.  By that, they’re less than attractive cheerleaders with overly masculine voices.  Schnitzel and Floyd then change their animals into a men’s chorus, but that only results in another smart-aleck verse from no one other than the Dover Boys.  The most inventive gag of all is Dot screeching a solo, and Schnitzel and Floyd getting transformed into sound waves.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but a gag like this really makes this cartoon stand out.  I have not seen anything like it in cartoons before or after this one in any other series.  The Warners’ antics literally reduce Schnitzel and Floyd to dust, leaving the animals they tortured open to finish the job.  Since they’re the ones who were truly wronged by these guys, that’s the best route to take, and it’s also fitting that the animals do so by stranding them both in the wild.  As for the Warners, you can bet they have more hilarity in store when they end the cartoon preparing to upstage another jerk performer, Don Rickles and his insult comedy.  
This cartoon is filled with the hilarity that the Warners have mostly been lacking lately coming in full force.  It’s practically up there with their best cartoons of the earlier days.  With fitting targets, well-constructed comeback lines, and even creative gags, it’s a highlight of this particular episode batch.
A+



The Brain’s Apprentice

If you were to ask me what the greatest animated feature film is, I’d say Fantasia.  Through bringing together the forces of great animation and great music, it’s a showcase of stunning sequences based on what one can get out of listening to a classical piece.  It’s an approach to animation that I feel should be utilized more as an ultimate exercise to go all out with what one’s imagination.  In a show like this that frequently does what it wants to do without allowing anyone to hold it back, an homage to the Fantasia style of storytelling is a welcome setup.  Granted, it feels a lot more like a parody of the film’s most famous segment, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” but it’s still immensely entertaining and well-constructed.  
As a bonus, it allows Pinky and the Brain to take the spotlight when they’ve been so deep into their spinoff show at this point.  With them involved, the standard “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” plotline is given a fitting twist with these characters by working in a world domination angle.  Unlike most of the Brain’s schemes, this one is fairly simple through simply putting making an army of small robots to take over the nations.  This is fine though because in following the Fantasia formula, no dialog or intricate details are needed as the music drives everything.  The classical piece as we know it along with several strains of the Pinky and the Brain theme set the mood for the cartoon and gives the audience a good idea of what’s to come.  
The music continues as Pinky, who’s left all alone, finds a way to activate the robot machine when Brain is unable to.  It matches the power of the single robot’s creation as well as the moves of a little dance Pinky does with it.  Following a few nice scenes of them goofing around together, the next intense phase of the music highlights far more robots than necessary filling the lab.  As Pinky ends up flicking a ‘world domination’ switch on the machine, the robots do what they were designed to do as they set off for the nation’s capital.  From the music, it wouldn’t be surprising if you related this army of robots to marching brooms flooding an entire chamber.  Truthfully, the music at that point in the piece matches the power of these little machines overtaking a tank, bursting into the White House, and overpowering the president.  By the way, it’s slightly disappointing that the president does not represent who was in office at the time, but that is nitpicking and can arguably help make the cartoon timeless.  
Like the sorcerer from Fantasia, Brain comes in at the piece’s powerful strains to beat back the robots at the lab and proceed to turn off the machine.  In a twist to the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” formula though, Pinky notices from the TV that the robots are about to take over the world for Brain.  In other words, his messing around was actually helpful.  As this is part of the Pinky and the Brain formula, Brain doesn’t listen and totally deactivates the robots. Only after this does he realize he sabotaged his own plan, making his sorcerer role the problem instead of the solution.  It probably helps that he lets his frustrations out by clobbering Pinky on the head to the last four notes of the classical piece as well as his own theme.  
The tribute to Fantasia is welcome to see in how this cartoon brings a simple yet effective Pinky and the Brain cartoon to life through music.  The scoring is great, the character moments are strong, and it overall showcases how powerful the versatility of animation and music really is.
A+
Cartoon Ranking
1.      This Pun for Hire
2.      The Brain’s Apprentice
3.      Magic Time
4.      Bully for Skippy
5.      Wakko’s 2-Note Song
6.      Go Fish
7.      From Burbank with Love
8.      A Very, Very, Very, Very Special Show
9.      Valuable Lesson
10.  The Sound of Warners
11.  Night of the Living Buttons
12.  Dot’s Entertainment
13.  Pitter Patter of Little Feet
14.  Boo Happens
15.  Buttons in Ows
16.  Cutie and the Beast
17.  Boo Wonder
18.  Star Truck
19.  Boids on the Hood
20.  Back in Style
21.  Our Final Space Cartoon We Promise
22.  Yabba Dabba Boo
23.  The Boo Network
24.  The Party
25.  The Girl with the Googily Goop
26.  Mindy in Wonderland
27.  Jokahontas
28.  Gimme the Works
29.  Ten Short Films About Wakko
30.  Papers for Papa
31.  My Mother the Squirrel
32.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock
33.  Amazing Gladiators
34.  Cute First (Ask Questions Later)
35.  Soda Jerk
36.  Hercules Unwound
37.  Belly Button Blues
38.  No Time For Love
39.  Acquaintances
40.  Oh Say Can You See
41.  Soccer Coach Slappy
42.  Anchors A-Warners
Song Ranking
1.      Dot – The Macadamia Nut
2.      The Ballad of Magellan
3.      Hello Nurse
4.      Bones in the Body
5.      Noel
6.      The Big Wrap Party Tonight
7.      When You’re Traveling from Nantucket
8.      Panama Canal
9.      Multiplication
10.  Here Comes Attila
Miscellaneous Ranking
1.      It
2.      Gunga Dot
3.      Mighty Wakko at the Bat
4.      Ralph’s Wedding
5.      End Credits
6.      Moosege in a Bottle
7.      Rugrats Parody
8.      The 12 Days of Christmas
9.      Flavio Commercials
10.  The Return of the Great Wakkorotti
11.  Pinky and the Ralph

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode, the first part of a thrilling saga of the Warners exploring Hollywood movie making deals.
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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