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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Animaniacs Vol. 4 Review Hello, Funny and Violent Cartoons! Missed You


 Animaniacs, Vol. 4 

Yakko, Wakko and Dot, the Warner Bros, and the Warner sister are back for the last volume of Animaniacs. No more volumes for you sir. I wrote no more and I meant it. If it ever goes to Blu-ray it'll be sort of a travesty of a lie as the quality isn't that great. The show was made before HD broadcast so it was never planned to be in higher definition formats. It does look a little dated, but nothing that bad, it did come out in the 90's.

When writing about quality I just meant it's appearance and when Hello Nurse is in frame the quality is just fine. For a shocker, I did realize that cartoons today in no way capture the quality of being as funny as this show. Jokes come from hitting people and perhaps meeting Ernest Hemingway and making him go crazy. It's insightful, silly and at many times you won't learn any thing, you'll just laugh.

Be it Rob Paulsen voicing Yakko and singing insane songs or crippling you with one-liners. Slappy Squirrel solving problems by hitting people or watching fat Hippos hurt American Gladiators each show is a mixed bag of nuts and those nuts are the stars. Watching episodes will resort in you keeling over and asking in a young street urchin voice, "Mr. Cartoon-maker, why aren't cartoons funny anymore?"

Sight gags, puns, plays on words, pop culture jokes are all here. I forgot the existed unless watching a Naked Gun movie and since Judd Apatow movies and reality television dominate entertainment right now I doubt I'll remember what was entertaining unless looking back into great animation like this.

Making fun of Star Trek with Star Truck or watching the monolith from 2001 turn into a remote will put a smile on my face. Where Animaniacs really shines are it's parodies on Disney films. Beauty and the Beast and Pocahontas are mocked with their own songs and musical numbers.When the Warners aren't making fun of other studios they're going after their own. Warner Bros is ridiculed and put down all the time, but so is really everything, including Hollywood.

If you live in the greater Los Angeles area jokes about Burbank, the animation capitol of the the world, Hollywood and places you drive past are talked about as though a daily commute for those involved with the show.

It's not always the Warners making fun as there's a huge ensemble cast of characters from Chicken Boo, a chicken who pretends to be human. Pinky and the Brain, would be world conquering lab mice, though they might have been mostly in their own show at this point and don't appear often in these last episodes. Be it talking animal it's here and ready for some odd hijinks.

So do yourself a favor and pick up some cartoons to watch perfect for the whole family. There are jokes adults will get and kids will not. So if you watched the show as a kid it's the perfect time to pick up some jokes you didn't when you were little.