The Final Episode #126: The Smoggies (1989 - 1991)

 

Oh hey, I'm back over here on blogger/blogspot/whatever they are calling themselves now. Two and a half years over on wordpress and not even 100 posts. I don't know why I forget about this blog so often when honest to death it's becoming the one fun thing on the internet. Twitter is a cesspool of idiocy. Facebook is mostly boring and Youtube is literally becoming the place for AI Slop. No post on this blog will ever be AI Slop, mostly because I don't know how to make them and because It's not the same if I don't put a PORTNOYD IS A POOPY BOY comment in there somewhere.  I don't think AI would do that which is a reason why it's no good. The fact everything it makes just has a weird unsettlingly vibe to it doesn't help.

I figure I should tell you all why I came back to blogspot. There's a few reasons. I kinda never used any of the stuff Wordpress had that blogspot didn't. I kinda missed the way blogspot looked. Portnoyd it seemed had an easier time to post here. I may give him some gruff and griff but (sometimes) I like talking to him. The biggest thing was, random people just liking my posts and never commenting. I don't write this for some random guy to like it. I want comments! I know they probably made it so they like everything with some bot they made so people would look at their work. I don't think I ever did. Sorry but a simple comment of WOW I REMEMBER THIS THING or WOW I WISH I COULD HAVE SEEN JASON DAVID FRANK AND AMY JO JOHNSON HAVE BUTT SEX TOGETHER. Like a comment makes me at least sometimes believe there is a person behind it all. That and the blog was looking like more of a website and less of a blog. I dunno. I came back here just because I wanted to. I also wrote this long meandering paragraph about it because I also wanted to.

One of my favorite things to do with this blog is to pick out some weird obscure, forgotten thing that was barely even a thing when it came out. It hit and then went. I'm talking about the kinda obscure, forgotten things that were shoved into production just to end up on tv at 5 o clock in the morning. The kinda stuff that you weren't sure was ever really a thing because you were rarely up at 5 o clock in the morning. The stuff that you screamed "HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS WASN'T A FEVER DREAM I HAD IN 1993" when you find an image of it on the internet. The kinda thing that made syndicated television so wonderful. That and it being a wild insane hodge podge of like all previous decades. I dedicated my knowledge of a lot of goofy stuff made prior to the 1990s because of syndicated television. I miss it because while it's still around it's really not the same as it was.

Our weird obscurity for today is, The Smoggies a cartoon made in Canada by the company Cinar Films. Cinar Films was created in 1976 by Micheline Charest and Ronald A. Weinberg. They started dubbing animes and making cartoons and kid shows sometime during the 1980s. The most famous show they did was Are You Afraid of the Dark? a co-production by them and Nickelodeon. Cinar faced some problems in 2000 when it was found out that their founders had put 167 million into a Bahamian bank account, which forced the company to rename itself and be sold. The renamed Cookie Jar Entertainment is now a part of Wild Brain which is a company that literally bought up every other Canadian kids show/cartoon makers up AND DiC entertainment.  I probably mentioned all of this when I did Are You Afraid of the Dark cartoon but I forgot that I had so just shut up and read it again. READ IT AND ENJOY IT.

Anyway, the creators of this show are pretty interesting. I mean mostly just one of them but still. Colin Thibert (a swiss writer of French tv shows and cartoons!) and Gerald Potterton. Gerald Potterton worked on Yellow Submarine, something made in the 1960s that is still relatively popular because of the Beatles. I have never seen it. He also directed Heavy Metal. It's pretty wild. Colin Thibert worked on Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, a weird, WEIRD French cartoon that I do want to talk about in more depth but I have to find all of the episodes and watch it. It's not a show you can just review the Final Episode of just for shits and giggles. You gotta watch the entire, weird ass thing. The theme song was written by Joe Raposo, who wrote the themes for Three's Company, Shining Time Station and a bunch of Sesame Street songs. I like that this obscure little cartoon is connected to a lot of things that are more well known. It's kinda fun.

The overall theme to this cartoon is a group of bad guys called the Smoggies who pollute (yes this is an anti-pollution cartoon ala Captain Planet, if you couldn't kinda tell by the name) and destroy the earth around an Island of little guys and gals called the Suntots. The Suntots also have coral that can make you young again which two of the bad guys want. It's your simple overall setting for fifty two episodes. I did not re-watch this episode before now so this might be one of those top heavy The Final Episode posts where I get seventy five paragraphs about the creation of the show and like three about the actual episode. Anyway, let's do this!

This episode is called "Deep Sleep" and it starts with the lady bad guy, Emma is complaining about how she has lost her glow. Clarence who I am guessing is her husband, is a total simp and wife guy. Like he loves this crabby old bitch like there is no tomorrow. She wants her glow back so she decides to go to the mountains to get fresh mountain air. Clarence is like a hike and she's like 'fuck no" so he creates this machine that brings the Smoggies to the top of the mountain. Then we go to see the Suntots. Speed and uh I dunno Orange Suntot guy are working on some kind of invention. Another Suntot comes in. The Cool Suntot..............named Cool. Yeah, the Suntots are not creative with the names they have for each other. Cool is a mix of a hippy and a surfer. Why were surfers considered so cool between 1988 and 1994? Like I don't get it. PORTNOYD EXPLAIN IT TO ME. 

The gas that runs the machine car thing that brings the Smoggies up the mountain, also starts making everyone go to sleep. The get to the mountain and put the smog into one of the floaty things you have in pools. Emma then falls into the water and her crabby ass wants to go home. I find the duo of crabby bitch and simp to be really funny. Their henchman Pulloto is your usual big dumb guy. I love his voice and the little bird that lives on his head. Very entertaining design.  Anyway the suntot princess, Cool, and Old Bob all leave Speed and Orange to go to the mountain. Old Bob ends up getting the floaty caught on something it causes a small hole causing the Sleep Gas to put Old Bob to sleep. He's also getting close to a waterfall!!

However Speed and Orange come by and save him in their cool car/ship/plane called the Wonder Doohickey. Actually I don't know it's real name I just wanted to say Doohickey. Anyway they have to turn into a plane at the last second before they hit the bottom of the waterfall. They survive of course, this cartoon was created by gentle people and not Bratwurst who would have killed every single character in the show two or three times. He is a sadistic lunatic but I still like him. Anyway they save Old Bob and then go to get Ms Doctor to find out whats wrong with him! The Smoggies are still going up the mountain without realizing they are fucking everything up. A tree full of Fogbogs or whatever the hell they are gonna fall into the water! The Suntots have to save them!

Now we go back to the Smoggies who are still driving the Smoggies Shitty Car and spraying the Sleeping gas everywhere. They spray it all over a field of berries (that the Princess was going to get) and then get stuck. The Princess (named Leela, Matt Groening was a big fan of The Smoggies.) gets some of the Berries and then goes to another Suntot named Gardener. I like when the characters name explains easily what they do. Crabby Bitch Emma sees her and gets out of the Shitty Car when it's stopped by some rocks. Clarence getting it unstuck causes an avalanche and traps Emma and Princess Leela in the Shitty Cave. Everyone ends up falling asleep except Speed, who I assume got his name becuase he uses a lot of Drugs. He gets into the Airplane that becomes a boat and also a car. It's got a name but I don't care enough to remember it. He gets back to Cool who's drumming a beat which apparently wakes Old Bob up. I know Old Bob has a different name but I like the name Old Bob better.

Of course Cool now gets to drum. Something I should probably have mentioned is that everyone was annoyed by his drumming all through the beginning of this episode but it saves everyone. They get Emma and Princess Leela and a random bear all out of a cave. They then talk about not polluting the air, remmeber this is a hippy cartoon about loving the earth. Then a giant rock falls on the Shitty Car and Emma and Clarence have to drag Polutto's giant ass down' the mountain because he's sleeping (and they think it's cause of the gas for some reason, he winks at the camera and the dumb guy actually did something smart!) 

FINAL THOUGHTS: Not a bad way to end a cartoon. Sure it's one of the "random adventures of the week that you'd have to be told was the Final Episode" kinda Final Episodes but those actually end up still being some of the better ones. I had a good time revisiting this goofy little obscurity and would probably watch more. I hope Bratwurst is happy I called him a sadistic lunatic. He's a weird man.

The Comic Review #94: Web of Spider-Man #113-116

            

The post on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers got me to thinking about the early comic reviews on this site. Most of them were a paragraph long. I do not plan to re-review most of them because really what I could say about those comics WERE said in those small paragraph reviews, however I really feel that most things deserve more than a paragraph in a review. It’s just that the one story that deserved more attention is quite possibly one of the worst fucking Spider-Man stories I’ve ever read. And I’ve read a god damn lot of Spider-Man. So I figure it’s finally time to rip this gross, smelly bandage off and get into this story. It has many, many problems.

So let’s talk about the comic series Web of Spider-Man. It first came out in 1985 as a replacement for the Spider Man teams up with another random Marvel Comics superhero for an issue (or two) and they go on some wild adventure. By 1985 that comic was not selling very well so they decided to make a new Spider-Man title. Just Spider-Man. It was the third Spider-Man title and it was okay. The highlight of the entire ten year run was when it was connected to Spectacular Spider Man, as in like it was another place to keep telling that comics story. So yeah it was at it’s best when it was literally piggybacking on that series. It ended in 1995 without much fanfare to be replaced by Sensational Spider Man (at that time was the fourth Spider-Man comic. I think Comic companies need to realize that popular characters can only really take on one or two books but what the hell do I know anyway?)

Anyway, this story came out in 1994. One year before they decided to say goodbye to Web of Spider-Man. It involves a MYSTERY of who became F.A.C.A.D.E.. Now I know what you are thinking “Who in the fucking fuck is F.A.C.A.D.E. Well, think Iron Man and some of the guys he fights (Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man), He is a guy in a suit of armour. If say, Iron Man, Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man are the top tier because they (at least I think so) have memorable designs and some very enjoyable stories to their name then F.A.C.A.D.E is at the bottom because his design kinda sucks and the only story he ever got was this one.

The mystery element is also not very good. The suspects are: A boring reporter guy named Cole, a rich asshole, the rich assholes butler, J. Jonah Jameson and his son John Jameson. I think you can see two reasons already why this is a failure. The first is most of the suspects are dreadfully uninteresting. Seriously they appear in this story only! The second is J. Jonah Jameson at this point in time despite doing some wild shit in the 1960s and 1970s was now portrayed as a man who felt bad about that stuff and tried to be the best person he could. He was a giant grumpy fucker but they weren’t about to make him a crazy murder man, AND if they were to make that awful mistake it would not happen in Web of Spider-Man. They would put that stuff in the main book. I also think his son was too important of a character to waste on being F.A.C.A.D.E.

The second problem I have with this story is probably a minor one but It still bothers me. This story kills off the character of Lance Bannon, a character that wasn’t that amazing (he was literally a rival photographer at the Daily Bugle and was literally upstaged by a more entertaining version named Nick Katzenberg) but he did exist in the comics for 14 years (and over 50 appearances) so I honestly do believe he deserved better than to be the cannon fodder for F.A.C.A.D.E. I don’t think any character should be the cannon fodder for F.A.C.A.D.E.

Also can I say that random team up appearances were done better in the 1980s and 1990s. It at least felt like the writer and artist wanted to use the other character to have them bounce off Spider-Man. The first part (yes he doesn’t stay around for the entire four issues) has Gambit just show up because Gambit was popular as hell in the 1990s. I’m not trying to say every time prior to the 1990s did a team up work but it just feels like he’s shoehorned into this story. Might have worked better if he helped Spider-Man do something with F.A.C.A.D.E in another part of this book. I like when the heroes work together after having a goofy fight.

Anyway, you could easily recap all four issues in one paragraph. Some group of losers try to steal a fancy armour suit called F.A.C.A.D.E. and get stopped by Black Cat, Spider Man and Gambit. However someone else steals the suit. Lance Bannon takes a picture of them and then they kill him in the second part. Betty Brant tries to find out what Lance Bannon knew and in the process really makes it look like it was either the rich douchebag or his boring butler. They have Lance’s funeral and Spider-Man beats up F.A.C.A.D.E. but he escapes from said armour before he’s found out. The F.A.C.A.D.E armour is now in government custody so no one can ever touch it again.

In the last thirty one years, F.A.C.A.D.E. showed up twice. Both times as a joke. There’s been about seventy five trillion Spider-Man stories since 1994 and not a single solitary one had them go “wow let’s actually find out who F.A.C.A.D.E. was” You’d think they would have tried during one of those “oh shit we have no idea what to do but they want a four part story!” but nope. Dropped like a lead potato. I don’t know what a lead potato is but I don’t think I’d eat it. I’ve also been reading Spider-Man fans thoughts on things on the internet for way too long now and I’ve never seen a single person say they want to see how this story ends. That’s insane because you know statistically someone had to have this story as their first comic book and also have some kind of nostalgic attatchment to it but even they don’t care enough to want a conclusion. They must have been one of those weirdos who grew up and started to enjoy adult things. Loser.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I really could have just said that F.A.C.A.D.E. stood for Full Acclimation Combat And Defense Explo-skeleton and left it at that but no I had to go and re-read this story and blather on about it for way too long. Anyway have fun trying to find out what a Explo-skeleton is. Exploding Skeleton? God, this story sucked.

The Final Episode #125: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1993 – 1996) (Take Two)

       

I have been writing things on the internet for other peoples enjoyment for twenty two years now. The first time was when I was eighteen years old. It was a website I created with another person who now hates me called K.R.A.P. I don’t know what it stands for and I am personally glad it was wiped off the face of the internet. My idea of a good funny post was just to yell obscenities and call the characters gay and say everything sucked. It was cringy and terrible and I hope never to see any of it again. I still have problems looking at stuff I wrote for this blog when I started in 2020 (wow who knew I would do it for that long) and that’s where this comes in. This is me trying to re-do awful awful blog posts from the past. I will not remove the original Power Rangers final episode but I will talk about the ACTUAL final Episode. You see they changed it to Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers for like ten episodes for some reason. I guess I had planned on reviewing that one too but never got around to it, until now!

So this is my favorite part. I don’t know why but I’ve kinda grown to love writing the history of the thing I’m talking about. It’s just nice. I dunno. Anyway Mighty Morphin Power Rangers like most amazing things comes from the LAND OF THE RISING SUN, Japan. They started a series of shows under the banner of Super Sentai. It’s like any superhero team show is under this banner. It started in 1975. that’s right. Power Rangers techinally goes back half a century now. That makes a man feel old. I’m going to take a nap. Uh, okay. Here’s wheres things get interesting. Apparenly some time in the 1980s Stan Lee found out about this stuff and wanted to bring it over but no one would listen to him. Weird ain’t it. Anyway some time again in the 1980s someone took seven episodes of the seventh Super Sentai series, Dynaman and turned it into……..Dynaman! It was a parody that aired on Night Flight and once on Nickoledon’s Special Delivery. I bet portnoyd remembers Special Delivery and making a soap box derby car with his dad. Portnoyd is older than I am and will turn to dust soon enough. I will miss him even if he is a jerk.

Dynaman was a failure. I have not seen any of it but apparently most of the jokes were HOHOHO THE JAPANESE CAN’T SAY L WORDS CORRECTLY HOHOHO not to say that I am a perfect angel who has never made that joke but I think it being every single joke is a bit much. Who knows, maybe this person was just wrong about it and I might enjoy Dynaman. I might end up watching it but I want to watch like 893410391059104 other thigns too. Yet none of those things are prestige tv like Mad Men or Breaking Bad. WEIRD HUH.

Anyway in the early 1990s, a man named Haim Saban who with his partner Shuki Levy wrote the theme songs to just about every cartoon ever made by DiC and about 90% of the rest of them created Saban Entertainment (who knows it might have been made earlier I dunno I’m too lazy to check this shit) and started to dub some animes (like Samurai Pizza Cats) and then saw Super Sentai and Saved by the Bell on a raging bender and was like WOAH IF I MASH THESE TWO THIGNS TOGETHER I’LL BECOME A JILLIONAIRE. and thats how Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was born! I can remember the first time I ever saw this show because for some reason people were trying to sell drugs behind my house! You see you could get into the fence behind our house and do things like that. I remember my mom talking to them. It was weird. I do remember being into the show for quite some time but honestly according to the internet, shitty parents who want to raise everyones children and cause a stink about the shows “violence” and wanting all children to watch fucking Davey and Goliath shit. I don’t want claymation dogs at this moment! I wanted giant fucking dinosaur robots FUCKING SHIT UP. Jesus. Raise your own stupid kids and stop being jerks. It was removed from YTV and I guess I just didn’t see all that much of Power Rangers. I swear I saw some Power Rangers Zeo on YTV but the YTV Schedule Wiki says no and I’m not going to argue with them. That’s almost as pointless as arguing with politics with anyone on twitter. If you don’t agree with them 100% you are the enemy and also evil. The old internet was not perfect but my god the worst parts of it are still better than this.

Now we finally get to my first post on this. I do not know how the hell I wrote something so saucy and angry about this. I don’t know why I was so grumpy. I’m guessing portnoyd or NES bounty related things. I miss the NES Bounty but I know that I am not allowed to do things like that. It messes up my mind and makes me a jerk. Uh, so here we are now. Finally ready to talk about the last two episodes (yep a Two PARTER!) of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers known as “Hogday Afternoon, Part I and II”

So uh, First off, I’m sure I mentioned it in the other post on Power Rangers but uh, I did not realize that they changed the cast this early. I thought it was the original cast until Zeo. I don’t know when I got out of Power Rangers but I guess it was before this episode. Anyway, the Power Rangers are all uh children now and not TEENAGERS WITH ATTITUDE, except for Tommy and Billy. Tommy was the best Power Ranger and I don’t want to argue. If you disagree you can shove that argument right up your butt. ALL THE WAY UP THERE. They are also working with another group of Rangers called the Alien Rangers who sound weird and annoying. I already do not like them. I am grumpy and old.

Another Power Ranger named Aisha is out in the Desert in Africa or some place with Lions. She needs to find something to fix the Zeo Crystal. Rita and Lord Zedd (best part of the episode) send the Hydro Hog to steal all the water on earth. The Hydro Hog kinda reminds me of a blue Grimace from McDonalds. I like the Hydro Hog. The Hydro Hog removes all the water from the Alien Rangers. Aisha is stuck in the desert AFTER DARK with CRAZY ANIMALS GONE NUTS FROM A RANDOM SICKNESS. Goldar and Johnny Skeleton (I don’t know this characters actual name) get ready to blow up the entire Command Center! Of course all of this is easily rectified in the next episode. The Alien Rangers get water, Aisha finds the final Zeo Crystal!!!! and then they do the best part of most Power Ranger episodes is when they grow to giant size and start FUCKING SHIT UP. The Alien Rangers zord looks really dumb. It has a giant origami goose on its head. The flaming sword is fucking awesome though.

They have to get some help from the FALCON ZORD to beat up the Hydro Hog, but they do. Aisha gives the Zeo Crystal to her friend and joins the people in the Desert, she becomes the next Power Ranger. However the bomb that Goldar and Johnny Skeleton (who apparently is Rita Repulsa’s brother!) steal the Zeo Crystal and escape. The Power Rangers escape barely and then look and see the Command Center HAS EXPLODED and we don’t know what has happened to Zordon or Alpha Five! Thankfully unlike every other cliffhanger ending this one did get resolved in Power Rangers Zeo.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I liked Power Rangers a lot as a kid. I was the perfect age for it. 8 years old. It was one part Saved by the Bell and one part goofy monster crap. I ate it up like there was no tomorrow and I did have fun with this. I mean it’s kinda hard not to have a least a little bit of fun with it. However, I just wish that the entire team of original Power Rangers were there and not just some randos I never watched as a kid. Still it makes me want to watch some more Power Rangers and that’s something. Anyway, have yourself a good day and let’s get outta here.

The Final Episode #124: Bonkers (1993 – 1994)

 

I really, really hate the post I wrote on City Guys. It’s like most of my early posts. I just do not like looking at it. I mean I’m the guy who somehow writes more words than fucking Leo Tolstoy about shit like Brand Spanking New Doug. That’s not even Nickoldeon Doug. That’s Disney’s Doug! I mean that actually gave me a plot that I could work with. It was clearly someone at least wanting to make a Final story involving those characters. City Guys was just “Christ they want this thing by Friday and It’s Thursday oh shit. fuck it they join the band and one of the other kids goes to work for an Ad company because he made a good ad for a radio show the students do” I know I did a poor job with City Guys but really when you give anyone a pile of shit there’s not much they can do with it.

The main point I am making is that I am not throwing The Final Episode back into the corner to bring back in two years time. No, I’m making another one because heaven forbid City Guys somehow be the last show I talk about for this thing. I just can’t leave it at that. I dislike it that much. The only reason I don’t delete it is Portnoyd would be like WHERES THE CITY GUYS REVIEW and make me re-do it or something and man I can’t do that either. I’m sorry but I doubt the greatest writer of our time could turn out a funny, informative review of the television series City Guys. There’s only so much any human being can give.

So, I’ve decided to write about something that I really can blather on and on about to a scarily autistic degree and that’s old Disney Afternoon cartoons. I mean I really only have one left that I can do. I can’t talk about Shnookums and Meat’s Funny Cartoon Show because everyone agreed to forget about that. I might be disappeared for even bringing it up. If that happens tell my mother I love her. I can’t discuss any of the other shows because I’ve uh, already done them. I think. Have I done Adventures of the Gummi Bears? The fact I have to ask that makes you know that I am finally talking about Bonkers. A show that I feel does not hold up.

Yes, the man who’s glued a pair of Rose tinted glasses to his face. A man who refuses to believe in the passage of time changing just about everything. A man who still believes that A Nightmare on Elm Street, Teddy Ruxpin and The Adventures of Tintin are just as amazing as they were when he was eight, found something, a single thing that really, really, really did not hold up. As a child, I loved the Disney Afternoon shows. Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Chip N Dale, all wonderful creations. Shit, I fucking remember Shnookums and Meat’s Funny Cartoon Show. Disney’s attempt at ripping off Ren and Stimpy. You know how many people can claim that? Not many! It lasted for thirteen fucking episodes! I was there though! I WAS THERE. Anyway Bonkers was something I enjoyed immensely as a child and as an adult I wonder what kind of fucking drugs was I on because this character and show are god damn annoying as hell.

So I’m sure you remember the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? right. Well this cartoon is pretty much that, to the point that people believe that it was supposed to be a Roger Rabbit cartoon. According to fandom wikia weirdos who have the most powerful autism of all, it wasn’t. I trust those people because frankly they scare me. They know everything about a subject. These people can tell you what Walt Disney ate on October 14, 1959. If they wanted to take over the world they could. Anyway, I assume the reason we never saw anything beyond the first Roger Rabbit movie was because of rights reasons. Thankfully those rights reasons I’m sure are keeping some terrible streaming show that would come and go from actually coming and going. So at least one thing from the past shall remain unmolested by today. It’s nice to know that.

Anyway, Bonkers was about Bonkers D. Bobcat, voiced by Jim Cummings, doing his uh, worst cartoon voice ever. He was a cartoon superstar making comedy shorts for some company or another. He ends up getting fired and then having to become a police man or something. He ends up joining a man named Lucky Piquel to solve crimes. Oh and then later on he joins a different police officer named Miranda. Greg Wiseman from Gargoyles worked on those episodes and said their relationship was similar to the relationship between Goliath and Eliza Maza in Gargoyles. Meaning they were fuckin’. Greg you rascal!

Anyway the reason for two police officers was well, they originally wanted 65 episodes of Bonkers with Miranda. The reason that we didn’t get it was that only nineteen of them were of any usable quality from the overseas company Disney was using. I guess that wasn’t the people they usually used for their other shows. It really shows how much Disney cared about this show. So yeah, they then went a different route with a different cop type character. I can’t believe I watched so much of this cartoon as a child. Also I thought it would be fun to talk about the Final Episodes of each cop. You know see which one was better. People online would say the Miranda episodes were better back in the day when the Internet was used to discuss things like Bonkers and not used for conspiracy theories or to yell about jews and transgender people. It was a better use of peoples time. Personally, I remember the Lucky episodes much more. Anyway, let’s talk about Bonkers. I’ve put it off long enough.

I had one hell of a time looking for the actual right Final Episodes for this show. Everywhere seems to have a different list of what aired when. I then found the Disney Fandom Wikia, and if it’s anyone who knows every thing there is to know about something it’s wikia nerds. So I went with what they said aired at what times and found the Final Episode starring Lucky Piquel was something called Stressed to Kill. It’s weird to see the word Kill in a Disney cartoon title I must say. So the first like 7 minutes of this cartoon is the theme song, which is still a banger. All Disney theme songs are bangers. I listen to a lot of old theme songs. I am sure I have some kind of autism but not the kind that would make me able to watch all of Bonkers so I can remember way to much about it. Thank the good lord.

The comedy in this episode is some of the most try hard shit imaginable. I’m pretty sure the comedy in this episode was just written on the fly by someone who had never seen anything comedic happen in their lives. Somehow they got to the age of like, I dunno, 30 and never saw a joke or anything. It tries to “double up” on itself and show how everyone is making Lucky Piquel’s life so stressful as he tries to find a criminal called the Mole (who is an actual mole who is in the room with them at the moment. He is voiced by the original Gomez himself. If this was a YouTube video I would get 10000 comments by angry people over the fact I didn’t talk about the fact the name Gomez is hispanic but John Astin is a white dude. I would never be able to get angry at the past in the ways these people want me too. I do not even know why I’m mentioning this. I am just hitting the keyboard again and again and words are coming out.

Oh man. Now from “Let’s annoy the hell out of the character” failed to get any laughs we will bring you to the crappy slapstick part of the program. Lucky is told by Ludwig Von Drake (yes from the old ass cartoons) to get some exercise and he gets beat up by the exercise machines, I’m not even going to be sarcastic and be like AND THEY CAME UP WITH GREAT NEW JOKES. No, they didn’t. They go back to Ludwig and he tells them to rest. They try to rest by painting and oh no the Mole puts in some…..shithead talking grapes that ruin the fun of painting for Lucky. He also ruins their beach trip. Then he and The Mole get Lucky into an Isolation Chamber. He gets stuck in there for days which causes him to start acting like an Ape. I know this is a cartoon and people go “they are just for kids!” but children deserve things with fucking effort put into them. Seriously, I can now see why the Animaniacs gang made fun of this show like there was no tomorrow.

He then breaks his bosses car. I think his boss was voiced by Earl Boen, the police officer guy from the Terminator movies. I am not checking this but I know Earl Boen was in this cartoon. I do not care enough to check but I figured you, and by you I mean Portnoyd might like to know that tidbit of information. He then climbs a building and falls on the bad guy. Ending this crappy, crappy episode. Man oh man. This episode is all over the damn place. It’s bad comedy bit to bad comedy bit then they realize they need a plot so they are like OH YEAH HE STARTS ACTING LIKE AN APE! I’ll give them this much, they probably did not have a lot of time to make 40 new episodes for this show. It definitely shows.

I have to sit down and talk about the second episode right now. I was thinking of just saying fuck it and watching a movie or playing Donkey Kong Country 2 or something better. Like anything. anything. I just know that if I do not talk about this Miranda episode now I will never ever get this blog post done and I’ve talked way too much about this show to stop now. So we are going to talk about our second episode of the day “Cartoon Cornered”. This starts with Bonkers being late for his job just to be told he has to go back to his old job at Wackytoons Inc and pick up a check from Duck Jones. A donation check for some reason. He goes with the Sarge (a grumpy police officer) and Miranda. Sarge pisses off some cartoon Beaver and he puts him in a room with cartoon props. He then escapes and with Bonkers alarm clock hes in…the North Pole.

Meanwhile a man named WILD MAN WYATT (love that name. I will probably post it in all caps each time I type it. Deal with it) is escaping from Prison. Bonkers and Miranda don’t even realize Sarge and Bonkers Toon Clock (who I am now going to call Godfrey the Clock) are still stuck inside WackyToons inc. WILD MAN WYATT pretends to be the Sarge’s grandma to find out where he is. He then ties up Bonkers and Miranda and goes off to WackyToons Inc. The Inc part is a joke that I will run into the ground because I can and I learned it from watching you Bonkers I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU. After chasing Sarge and WILD MAN WYATT from Cartoon set to Cartoon set, they get to STAGE 13 THE CRAZIEST PLACE IN WACKYTOONS INC. They end up on a cliff with the Sarge on the edge and WILD MAN WYATT getting ready to take his revenge. Sarge pulls him off the edge and they fall until Bonkers yells LAUNCH which uh turns STAGE 13 into something normal.

I think it’s easy to tell that neither of these episodes were something I enjoyed, however the Miranda episode was the clear winner because they had a plot that hit plot beats instead of just going to one crazy idea to another. The name WILD MAN WYATT is fun to say and also the cameos from Goofy and Pete were also fun. So I have to clearly give the winner to Miranda. Congrats. These episodes still made me want to give up. Again. after City Guys.

FINAL THOUGHTS: First off, I went and checked and I have not done The Adventures of the Gummi Bears. They were on the Disney Afternoon for like one year I think. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t because I would like to end off talking about Disney Afternoon shows on a high note. If you were to ask me twenty years ago when I was twenty what the worst Disney Afternoon show was I would probably have responded TaleSpin, now I will respond Bonkers. I actually look forward to one day hopefully maybe sitting down ant watching 65 episoddes of TaleSpin. I will never, ever, ever watch another episode of Bonkers. I can’t take the annoying main character and the trying to hard for stories and stuff. I will always have a soft spot in the old heart for this show but the passage of time has changed me from someone who liked this show to someone who wants to slap the person who made it all. P.S. WILD MAN WYATT. Yeah, I had to say that one last time.

The Final Episode #123: City Guys (1997 – 2001)

 Before I, uh, gave up on this series for almost two years I was going through and “finishing up” things related to other shows. Like doing all of the Disney Afternoon shows (only one is left I believe). Another “set” of shows was the Teen Sitcoms of the 1990s famously started by Saved by the Bell. I feel that Saved by the Bell was the best of that lot. Sure it was cheesy and goofy but at least that was a personality. California Dreams and Hang Time just tried to recapture that but without the personality. I was not a fan of either of those shows. So we finally end this series with City Guys. Will this be the one that I enjoy watching? Who knows!

I started writing this crap thirteen days ago. And now it’s one day after my 40th birthday and I decided after watching a really really really bad movie that it was time to finish this off. I figure since this is the last show I’m going to be talking about of his I’m goign to talk about Peter Engel. Also this might not be the last show of his because I found two others, one I cannot find the Final Episode for and one that I can. I do not believe they aired on TNBC so I will put them off for as long as I can because I’m not in love with these shows. Peter Engel was born in 1936 and started his career in TV in 1971 apparently with some show called The Ice Palace. It was slow going until Good Morning Miss Bliss, which didn’t completely work but Petey knew he had something so he tinkered with it and that’s how we got Saved by the Bell for NBC. This shit did so well that NBC just yeeted all of the cartoons off Saturday Morning sometime in the 1990s. Peter then ran to the nearest Xerox machine and made the same show several different times. Seriously, California Dreams and Hang Time were just Saved by the Bell without the charm. Still they made it long enough and were popular enough that I heard about them and were interested in seeing them. I don’t know how to end this paragraph so I will mention that Frank Bonner, Herb Tarleck himself (I really should have talked about WKRP in Cincinnatti instead of this show but whatever) directed just about every episode of this show. Wild!

So the wikipedia article for this show said that they refered to this one as the “urban” show. Do you think they did that because this show had not one but TWO black guys in it? I mean didn’t all of the other shows take place in like uh, cities and not rural areas? I think that’s the case. Anyway, like usual I’m going to talk about a bunch of other episodes along with the Final Episode as this is a show I’ve never seen before. I don’t even know why I do this, I’m sure I had a reason at one point but I just do. Why because I can? This pile of shit blog is mine and I CAN DO WHAT I WANT WITH IT!

The first episode is entitled Prom-Lems. Get it becuase it’s Problems related to Prom!!!! woah!!!!!! Anyway two of these problems were literally lifted from the other shows. One is that two kids are going to different schools. OH MY GOD WOWAH and the other is WOAH two characters don’t realize that the other actually wants to go to prom so they make up fake prom dates!!!!!!!! woah!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I haven’t seen that already! Woah! Did you know I didn’t go to my prom….or even my last year of High School? Wild huh? Uh. Where was I? oh yeah, the two black dudes got a limo and I wonder what their problem will be!!! Oh, they forgot to get a reservation. Wow. Such drama. Oh wow the girl thinks the guy wants to marry her!!!! I think my biggest problem is well two things. the actors are all uh not very good and two none of this is even remotely amusing. I could take these done to death plots if at least one of those things were there. Oh well. Can I just say everything gets fixed up at the Prom? Okay. I can. Well everything gets fixed up at the prom! Woo!

The actual Final Episode is a clip show, so I’m not watching it. Why the hell did people think “Oh I know I’ll jam a bunch of clips together from previous episodes for the FINAL EPISODE instead of an actual fucking story involving the characters of the show. Seriously as someone who lived through the era of clip shows (well not the entire era but the end of it) it was always a time when you went “well I’m gonna see what else is on” If you were a regular viewer of said show you already saw that they were going to show you, and if you weren’t it just never felt like a good showcase of the show really. You want to sit down and see how an actual episode from beginning to end worked out. Every time, no matter the show, (except Webster) a Clip show just felt like a wasted opportunity to tell an ACTUAL final story with the characters of any show. I really don’t know how so many people were able to sell the idea of a CLIP SHOW FINAL EPISODE as a good thing. It’s wild. I’m glad Clip shows are dead.

The Final Episode is one called Al’s in Toyland. It was totally not meant to be the last episode but it aired last. I don’t care to talk about OH MY WOAH WOAH WOHHHHHHH another graduation episode. I can’t do it. I have a copy of it. I just can’t physically put it on. I’m sorry but we are going to talk about this episode and if you are really sad about it just bitch at me in the comments. Anyway this episode has the lowest stakes I’ve seen in any tv show. The characters……………….HAVE TO JOIN THE SCHOOL BAND OH MY GOD AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HOW WILL THEY GET OUT OF IT!@!#!!!!!

Yeah, I’m not doing this. I’m sorry but I can write ten thousand words on the final episodes of Doug and Sabrina the Teenage Witch but I just can’t give a single second more of my time to this. I don’t know what Saved by the Bell had that these shows didn’t. Maybe it was the cast, maybe it was because it was somewhat original for the time. I don’t know but it had something. It’s like your favorite fast food hamburger. It’s probably not good for you but fuck it you still like it. City Guys (and the other two shows) were like a smelly rotting dollar store hamburger that was left behind the dirtiest toilet in town.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I can remember being disappointed when NBC stopped showing cartoons. I have no idea when that totally happened but it did and it disappointed me. It was even more disappointing when I found out that they replaced them with like four copies of something a lot more memorable. Like these shows aren’t even cheesy fun. These are just boring. I know that I try my best to write something about a Final Episode but I just can’t do it. OH NO WE HAVE TO JOIN THE MARCHING BAND is just so low stakes and pointless that I could not, would not, spend the time writing about it. You beat me City Guys, congratulations. 

Comic Review #93: Jughead’s Double Digest #1 (1989)

 

Well, It’s time to get back to the good stuff. Which is the stuff I started this blog with. I brought back the Final Episode, where I go over the Final Episode of some television show that started before the year, I dunno, 2002. That’s kinda when I stopped caring about a lot of new things. I like the past. It’s a warm comforting blanket. Anyway, I bring bad news… You see a thing from the PAST is seeming to come to some kind of end. They are now no longer selling Archie Digests. Yes, a 50 year old institution is coming to an end mostly because children today only enjoy Minecraft. A friend brought up a interesting thought today. Do children even have shared experiences anymore? Like I’m sure anyone over the age of 35 bought or had a Archie’s digest bought for them. It doesn’t matter what you think of Archie comics but I’m sure you read some of them before.

Personally, I like Archie. There’s something charming and fun about something being so squeaky clean wholesome in this society of ours. One that feels like it’s crumbling around all over the place. One that I don’t even know how to function in. Uh, I guess that’s too much information and also depressing thoughts for a review over Archie. It’s just that this world is weird and distressing and not like it was even twenty years ago. Uh, okay back to Archie. I chose Jughead’s Double Digest #1 because I felt like talking about a #1 issue because why not and also because Jughead is the best Archie comics character. I do not care what you think of Archie overall but Jughead fucking rules. The man does not give a shit about this teenage life but he sure as hell gives a shit about a hamburger. It’s kinda beautiful really. I’m not going to talk about every single story in this two hundred and fifty six page comic book. Just the ones that I was entertained by the most.

The first story involves Big Ethel. You know the giant goofy looking woman with the buck tooth who has the hots for Jughead, the man who cares not for any kind of sexual touch but just wants to eat hamburgers? Yes. This time she actually gets a date with him because……She’s dressed up as a Hot Dog! That’s right! However when the date comes she’s dressed up as someone else and Jughead is his normal “eh whatever” self. Until she then gets the Hot Dog costume and Jughead becomes horny as shit! They have a great time until it’s tomorrow when Jughead is like NO MORE DATES WITH THAT WOMAN until she comes out dressed as a BURGER! It’s corny, it’s cheesy but it’s a fun five page story and I love how Jughead is drawn running to Big Ethel in the end like a crazed maniac.

I think I now know the reason I hate the Flintstones. It’s because Fred Flintstone is such an asshole that he won’t give his fucking friend any of his cheap SHITTY STUPID GARBAGE cereal. Like the poor bastard has to pretend to be a woman or a priest or a dog or whatever just to get some. You call this man your best friend, Give him some fucking cereal you amazing jackoff. I’d give portnoyd some cereal and he’s a damn jerk! Anyway on to story #2: This is a simple story where Betty just comes out and asks Jughead why he hates girls and he’s like I just don’t like what they do to my best friend and we see Archie going gaga over Veronica. He wants to find a way to lure her away form Archie and Betty goes “how about using her because her favortie thing is herself” It really is true. Archie should go with Betty because Veronica is a shitty little hobgoblin. He talks about how there’s a club that no one can get into! No matter who they are! Which annoys Veronica so much that she goes to this club! Insulting Archie before doing so! Betty thinks she’ll get the date but does not because Archie now hates women apparently. Jughead then says she can’t get into the club because it’s not open yet! Hilarious. Veronica is a bitch.

Story #3 involves Jughead getting a job! As an Ice Cream salesman! Of course this Job is not one Jughead should keep for very long! He’s surly and rude to the customers and even drives away from them. He causes a giant crowd to form and it even gets on the news. He’s talking about how he’s going to fight anyone who wants ANY ice cream from him. They will get the ice cream out of his cold dead hands. Somehow the people love him and that gets him a bigger job at the ice cream factory which is now making more money by being jerks to customers. They ended up firing Jughead because he couldn’t stop smiling after seeing his first paycheck! I laughed for a minute at the panel of one guy having an ice cream after getting his ass kicked by Jughead. It’s just so goofy I couldn’t help myself.

Also this JUGHEAD DOUBLE DIGEST has too many ARCHIE and BETTY AND VERONICA stories in it. I made my mom put down two dollars for Jughead and Jughead only! I WANT JUGHEAD STORIES YOU FREAKS!!!! Anyway Story #4 and the last one I’m going to talk about has one of my favorite Archie characters. Moose. Moose is just a giant moron who loves Midge. However Midge thinks Moose is uncouth, a slob and a brute who’s too violent. Moose comes ot Jughead and tries to get him to help and Jugheads like nah until Moose mentions DINNER and this is how Moose and Jughead go out on a date. Archie and Reggie find out and are FREAKED OUT by the news. They run across Midge who finds out and then goes to them and literally goes like “I could take it if it was Betty or Veronica but NO ONE DUMPS ME FOR THIS” pointing at Jughead. Oh and then she beats the piss outta Moose. Wild.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I had a lot of fun reading these and it’s made me want to delve into the weirder Archie comics that they’ve put out so expect to see stuff like that around here sometimes maybe. Anyway I didn’t know where to put this but whenever I think of Archie I think of that scene from the Simpsons “Duhhh, Stay outta Riverdale”. I think Archie’s entire existence is worth that joke from the Simpsons!

The Final Episode #122: Quack Pack (1996)

 

Wow, now isn’t this a blast from the past….the past of almost two years ago. Yes. The last one of these I wrote was on Aladdin and I just stopped. I mean I would stop and start with this blog but as you can see from the number up there I wrote 121 of these things previously. I had blogs and websites that I wrote like 5 things for and gave up on. I mean these posts are thrown together nonsense for the most part but they are better put together thrown together nonsense that I used to write. Maybe by the time I turn 65 I’ll finally have written something that I could be proud of for more than 5 minutes.

So, I’m back to the blog stuff again. Hope to start reviewing and discussing things again. Just to keep myself from watching stupid conservative youtubers and twitter shit because I hate myself and want to keep myself angry so I read people getting angry over the dumbest shit. So I’ve decided to do what was actually fun about the internet in these days. Spend way too many words talking about an old tv show or movie or comic book and yelling at portnoyd for just shitting up my comments section with his FILTHY INCORRECTNESS.

So I come back with I believe, the second to last Disney Afternoon show I have to discuss, Quack Pack a not very good piece of animation from Disney. I know of this show and I honestly am not sure if I had ever seen an entire episode. I just saw COOL 1990S DUDE VERSIONS of Huey Dewey and Louie and even at eleven years old I was able to go “wow this is a messy pile of shit” and go do something else. Which was probably play Super Nintendo. So like when this happens I tend to review two episodes instead of one and not really being sure if I ever watched this show I watched two episodes of this show.

Before I get into the review, I want to do some history because I just fucking feel like it, ok? It’s my fucking blog and I can do what the hell I want with it. Anyway the character of Donald Duck was created ninety-one years ago in 1934. He became very popular very quickly. Carl Barks and Al Taliaferro. IMDb even gives Al Taliaferro credit for helping write these episodes even though he died in 1969! the characters would end up showing up in cartoons until 1967. They would return in 1983 for a Christmas special and 1987 for Disney’s third television cartoon DuckTales. I have talked about the Final Episode of DuckTales and it’s quite good.

The first episode we will be talking about today is the second to last episode. It was just easier to do it that way. It’s called Stunt Double or Nothing. It involves a new character who’s name I forget. Kent something. He’s a part of this series. Daisy Duck and Donald Duck work for him. He’s an egotistical blowhard who finds out that people like Daisy Duck more because she’s willing to do crazy shit t oget a story. Like get right up in the face of Gorillas and all kinds of shit. They bet that Kent could never do this and then he gets this Gorilla that was in Daisy’s newscast to uh pretend to be him. Yeah, the Gorilla is a big dummy and likes bananas. So this somehow doesn’t work for Kent and you could easily see that it was a Gorilla in one scene. Hubert, Dewford and Llewellyn Duck show up and erase the tape accidently. Oh no!

They did redo the tape because they think they have fucked up and will end up getting Daisy and Donald fired. So they start fighting with Gorillas and flying around a Volcano. Yeah. So they fix it all up just to get Daisy and Donald fired and then they find out Kent faked the shit. They then fix up a bunch of stunts that will make Kent look foolish on TV. Daisy and Donald get their jobs back and you can easily tell where I just gave up and stopped caring about writing about this episode. This was the episode that was trying to be funny and it wasn’t. Sorry.

Now we finally get into the Final Episode, Feats of Clay… just like the Batman: The Animated Series episode which was about forty times better than this one. This is a very bad episode. I very much did not enjoy it. I’ll get into why after I recap the whole thing for you. It starts with Huey getting horny as shit for an Asian girl as they are somewhere in the far east today. the Mysterious far east as Daisy Duck said. Some youtuber would probably spend 10 minutes going on about how that was an outdated stereotype and I’d be like yeah you’re talking about something that’s almost thirty fucking years old my man. It happens a lot in old media. Anyway after annoying her enough that she starts talking to him (yeah what?) she gives him a marble and says “Nothing is what it seems!!!” Oh man. I wonder what that means (it means she’s the bad guy of this episode OH WOW)

Louie and Dewey annoy him and they all end up at an archaeological dig of some old clay statues. Also Huey is badmouthing archaeologists and WHOA the girl is also one of them! a junior archaeologist or some shit. I don’t know what they said exactly and I’m not re-watching the episode to find out. So eat shit. So they are recording clay statues and other treasure shit in something that really does not look like an actual dig. It’s just a bunch of stuff in a warehouse. I mean they are antiques but they are in a warehouse. Huey learns that they will leave after taping this stuff so he ruins the tape. Huey does this because he wants to hug and kiss the Asian girl. I do not remember her name. So they go to the museum where they move all of the stuff to. I guess they are just showing off a Asian museum now not an archaeological dig. I don’t know. I don’t care.

The clay statues come to life and scare the shit out of Huey! Oh no! Huey then meets up with The Asian Girl and woah she tells him Mr Woo is a bad guy and Huey just believes her. He then follows a clay statue man to Mr Woo just to find out that the Asian Girl is a bad guy!!! OH MAN!!! WHAT A SHOCK!!!!! It’s not actually a shock. Uh, where was I? oh yeah. They fight the clay statues and then Huey has to fight a dragon that was once a place to sit. Woo. You can clearly tell I’ve given up and am using the last fuck I have to finish this post. The Asian Girl is arrested after the crown she was wearing was destroyed and she lost the fight. I do not know why she didn’t just run off with the giant amount of treasure she already had but she just HAD to do something with Mr. Woo. A reason the episode never actually gives. Yep.

I can’t give a full review of the entire show but I can say this show is not something I want to return to. I will give three reasons why: 1.) I do not like the 1990s-ification of Huey, Dewey and Louie. It was like they looked at the success of Goof Troop and was like do that again. Except they forget to make them charcters instead of just WOO IN YOUR FACE 1990S DUDES MAN WOOOAH. I mean yeah Max could be a in your face 1990s dude but he still had some character beside that. It just feels very lazy and forced in this show.

2.) This show does not know what it wants to be. The two episodes I watched feel like they were from two different shows. One show that wants to be a comedy goof off (and isn’t good at it) and the other was from another show that wanted to be an action adventure show (and isn’t good at it).

3.) It’s really boring. I get the feeling from this show that the writers just didn’t care. Like with writing you get jobs that you are like “Holy hell I get to write for this show YES!” and other shows you’re like “oh shit this is about as fun as a detention assignment from Mr. Collins”. This is the Mr. Collins job.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I think you can tell what I thought about all this without me giving you yet another paragraph. This is probably going to be on the bottom 5 of Final Episodes thats for sure.

Box Office Bombs! Let’s Discuss!

 

It’s time for an interesting group of discussion because I kinda feel bad for some Box Office Bombs. Some of them deserve didn’t to be a failure. So I think over the next little while we will end up discussing box office bombs. I think a lot of them don’t even get watched by many people, just they decide they aren’t any good because they didn’t make the money. I dunno. I just felt like I REALLY had to discuss one of these movies so let’s get to it. I dont like to rate a movie out of anything so I’m just going to say, Highly Recommended, Somewhat Recommended and Not Recommended.

This was the one of the movies I decided that I HAD to talk about because really this might just may be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I’m talking about the one of the 25th worst ever film. And you know that’s something when I willingly stick up for a LOT of films that no one cares about. A LOT of them. This is the remake of the 1975 film starring James Caan I don’t remember much about it because I haven’t seen it in almost twenty years, but I do know that there’s no way that it could be as bad at this movie. This movie literally was edited so badly that It’s taken away every put every thing the movie was trying to do, to the point where you just got a weird mess of a movie. Some shit in this movie makes no sense. Some thrown together garbage that you can’t even blame Chris Klein, even though he’s very boring as an actor, because clearly everything was edited from R-rated to not R-Rated that makes the entire thing a pointless thing to watch. I mean I doubt that this movie was going to be all that good even if it wasn’t edited to shit because really it was clearly “we don’t really care about this movie at all we are just making it because it was popular enough in 1975 and we had the rights to do it”. This is completely unwatchable shit that I hope no one bothers to watch. If I cannot stick up for it I do not think any one could and that’s really saying something. The one point about this movie is that it’s nice to see Rebecca Romjin naked. Not recommended. In fact never watch this.

Another movie that made about 32 dollars and 12 cents but really should hade made more because people who made this movie seemed to care about it. the directors and writers and actors at least seemed to care about this movie. It’s weird and out there but it’s still got a lot of charm and entertainment. There’s nothing much else I really can say about either of this movies I’m going to be talk about except that I was amused by the comedy within both. I just had to say something about Rollerball and you can tell this is the worst post I’ve made in the entire time I’ve made these comments. I really don’t know what else to say. I will say this regardless of what you feel about this movie that effort was put into it and it wasn’t edited to the point it felt like everything that makes a story a story was removed. Still I think this movie could have been made to be funnier but it’s still enjoyable to watch. I’d rate it Somewhat Recommended.

This movie was pretty unique honestly. It was half animated and half live action. Bill Murray plays a guy named Frank who gets sick and a white blood cell lives within side him played by Chris Rock. He teams up with a pill named Drix voiced by Niles from Fraiser. The biggest problem with this movie is that I really think it could have been a funnier movie. I mean this is made by the guys who did Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary and this is kinda should have been made to be funnier. It’s still an entertaining enough little piece of cinema but there’s not much to say about it. Somewhat Recommended

That’s it. Go away.

Let’s Talk About Some Old Comic Book Movies Because I’m Really Bored.

 Oh hey, It’s me posting on my blog again. Hopefully I’ll post more on this blog again because it’s literally the only thing that I find fun related to the internet these days but I always forget about this shit. Anyway, I’ve found myself watching some comic book movies, but not from the 1970s or 1980s when they first started happening. No, it’s that weird moment in time from 1998 when Blade came out to 2008 when Iron Man really really changed the game. This was a pretty Marvel centric era (not much different than today ho ho ho) but it felt for the most part the people who made these movies never touched a comic book in their lives, despite having Kevin Feige as a producer on several of them. Not to ruin the fun but I will ruin this blog post because I think the MCU even at it’s worst, is still (mostly) better than the majority of the movies from this era, and we will see why.

This movie is one hell of a mixed bag, but I’m going to ruin this blog post a bit by saying……….This is the only one of these four movies that I enjoyed watching. No, it’s not perfect. The Hulk Dogs are fucking hilarious. The movie starts pretty slow and doesn’t really start getting entertaining until they show up. Nick Nolte I think is starring in an entirely different movie and giving one hell of an unhinged performance. I love it. His performance is the best part of these movie. He is amazing in this film. He is the bad guy of the picture. The Absorbing Man, he’s also the Hulks dad and killed his mom. This is a big problem with a lot of these movies as they seemed to feel like they needed to jam EVERYTHING into one movie. Still I did enjoy this one. It’s nothing amazing but I would watch it again, if only for Nick Nolte. The worst part is probably Eric Bana as Eddie Nort and Markie Ruff are better at playing the character.

Speaking of overstuffed this movie decides to shove in Daredevil’s origin story, Elektra, Bullseye, people finding out who the Kingpin is and his downfall, AND a courtroom case and man it feels like they had ideas for an entire tv show season but they had to shove it into one movie. It does not work. The biggest thing is that I don’t think the people making it really got most of these characters. Bullseye is played for some kind of terrible joke character. It’s very annoying. Ben Affleck tries but I don’t think he’s cut out for playing superheroes. I know people complain about race swapping characters now (and if you care about my opinion is that I don’t really care who plays a character in live action as long as they don’t change the comics. Leave them separate. Which means I’m in the middle of a dumb internet argument and no one likes nuance on the internet these days) but Michael Clarke Duncan is literally one of two reasons why you should check this bloated mess of a movie out. The other is for some of the weirdest cameos ever. Kane Hodder, Kevin Smith and COOLIO show up in this movie. Just wild. Anyway, I did not much care for this movie and would not watch it again.

You know how sometimes you can tell when an actor does not want to be making the movie they are making. Yeah this is one of the times here. Jennifer Gardner does not want to be making this motion picture. It is so 100% obvious in every single scene. I’m pretty sure she did what she could to make it so every single scene was done in one take. This makes for one really really boring and terrible movie to watch. I mean when the star does not want to be there can you really make the audience care? It’s neat to see Terrence Stamp actually be one of the people who played a DC character and a Marvel character (having played General Zod in the old Superman movies) but for the most part this is a forgettable mess.

Hooo boy, we got ourselves a stinker here. Superman is in the news again with the newest movie which people again argue about because everyone argues about new movies on the internet now. Just with a weird political bent because again everything has to be about politics on Shitty Internet. The Internet used to be so good and now it’s so bad. Anyway this movie takes it self way too seriously. I don’t even know if Bryan Singer even saw the old Superman movies from the 1970s and 1980s because they were pretty damn goofy and yes I’m including the first two in there too. They were delightful and entertaining though, even when they got Cannon Movie Group’d. Yes, I’d rather watch Superman IV The Quest for Peace instead of this movie. This movie took itself too seriously and really should have just restarted the character in movie form, but whatever. It’s still better than Man of Steel and this version of Superman likes to stalk Lois Lane and her boyfriend and son. Yes, it’s very weird. This movie does have a good point and that’s Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. Yes, I know I’m now supposed to retroactively think everything someone who’s been accused of crimes did was bad and awful but fuck that, the movie comes to LIFE when the man is on screen. It also has a dog eat another dog. This movie is weird and unpleasant.

Maybe I’ll come back and review another four movies no one cares about anymore. Probably, why the hell not. Anyway, I hope portnoyd’s terrible comment doesn’t annoy me to much.

The 80s Cartoon Project Thing #7: DiC Animation

 

Now we’re getting to the wild shit! Yeah! This is a one hell of an animation company honestly. It started in 1971 and was created by a man named Jean Chalopin for French audiences. He ended up creating cartoons for America in the 1980s. The first one was a show called Uylesses 31. Then came Inspector Gadget which we already talked about. I like to group things together so today I’ve decided to write about 3 random DiC cartoons that come from the 1980s, but this company lasted until at least the mid 2000s which makes it one of the longer lasting companies! This is the worst opening I ever wrote! Let’s hope we can dig it out of this cesspool!

The Littles is something that I legit remember from my childhood despite being born in 1985. I do not know if this is even true but I swear I remember this shit. I remember that I didn’t like it all that much! I dunno, maybe I saw the movie (yes the Littles is up there with The Transformers and GI Joe as 80s cartoon shows that got movies!) but I don’t know why I didn’t like it, I guess I’m just more easy to entertain these days as a sad adult. I dunno. Just give me something somewhat entertaining from the final decades of the 20th Century and I’ll probably gleam some entertainment from it. Anyway this show was made in 1983 and ran until 1986. It was based on a series of books about weird mice people. They literally have adventures with a human sized child named Henry. They keep themselves hidden from Dr. Hunter…..a regular human sized man. Seriously. I know he can crush them but every other show had so many unique and crazy villains in this decade you just give these guys a regular person. And his henchmen……..whose an older man. Not the most exciting villains. Still the heroic characters are memorable and this makes me want to see the movie. Anyway this is a pretty okay animated series and I’d probably watch more episodes.

Here’s a weird one. It was based on a series of toys for girls. Maxie. Maxie feels like the dollar store Barbie. It makes sense because this show feels like a dollar store 80s cartoon. Everything is there that a story you know needs, characters, conflict. Stuff like that. However it is just missing the heart of it all. It just feels like they put it out to put it out. No one really seemed to care. Strange because the people who made this did work on other things. Better things. This was clearly just a job where they write some stuff and get paid. I mean there ALL jobs but I get the feeling that this was just, Yeah, whatever. You can tell when that happens when you watch the project and this is literally the most “Yeah, whatever” cartoon of all time. I would like to say more but there’s not much there to do so.

Hey, Popples! Popples were a neat toy. They were a bear of some sort that you could hide away in a pouch in its stomach. I at least thought they were neat! Hey, back in the day that’s all you really needed for a damn toy! I’m amazed this cartoon did not get shown on YTV up here in Canada. It was voice acted by Canadians and I swear it was animated by Nelvana, just put out by DiC. That would cause it to be good enough to be considered Canadian Content which all Canadian channels have to have some of. To the best of my knowledge it did not air here in reruns on YTV. I am too lazy to find out for sure so we will never know. Anyway this is not a very exicting cartoon. It’s very laid back but I can at least say that it feels people cared a little bit behind the scenes. It feels like an actual thing and not a Dollar Store Thing. It also feels a LOT like Care Bears where it involves Popples helping (and sometimes causing trouble for) children. It’s nothing exicting and I wasn’t exactly wowed by it, nor will I watch any more but again it’s vastly better than Maxie’s World. I think anything is better than that.

Anyway, that’s todays blog post. Go away.

THE LIST:

1. DuckTales
2. Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers
3. Inspector Gadget
4. Spider Man and his Amazing Friends
5. The Incredible Hulk
6. The Smurfs
7. Go Bots
8. Adventures of the Gummi Bears
9. Mister T
10. Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos
11. Spider Man (1981)
12. The Littles
13. Camp Candy
14. Turbo Teen
15. Goldie Gold and Action Jack
16. Rubix the Amazing Cube
17. Care Bears
18. Pac Man
19. Popples
20. The Gary Coleman Show
21. The Wuzzles
22. The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
23. Maxie’s World