Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 17

The Little Mermaid, the series: Wish Upon a Starfish

“Hey Mouse. I did you a solid with that Ursula episode, right? So how’s about you don’t rag on me quite so mercilessly from now on?”“My my. Am I already at the part where I hallucinate that the series I’m reviewing is talking to me? How time flies.”“C’mon Mouse. Isn’t there enough negativity in the world? Just give me a good review and I’ll make it worth your while.”“Lie to my readers? Why that’s…I couldn’t possibly…NO! GET OUT! GET OUT OF HERE! LEAVE ME ALONE!”“Suit yourself. It was only a suggestion.”

Wha’ Happen’?

Of all the nerve! I’m going to be absolutely brutal on this one. Wish Upon a Starfish begins with Sebastien looking for Ariel and telling her she’d better be studying for her “Crab Philosophy” test…okay, I already have a million and one questions here.

Ariel is receiving some kind of education? Sebastien is her tutor now (why am I not surprised)? But most importantly, which crab philosophers are on the curriculum? Crabistotle? Socrabstes? Crab Camus?

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk beside me because I walk sideways. Because I’m a crab.”

Anyway, Sebastien tells Ariel that there’s a storm going on overhead so she swims to the surface to see if she can get some of that sweet, sweet human swag. She finds a music box with a ballerina figurine (I would really have liked if this was the same music box we see in Part of Your World but alas) but Sebastien and Flounder yell at her to come back because the storm is dangerous. Somehow.

Oh no! They might…drown?

Well yes, actually. They get hit by a wave and we next see Ariel unconscious, washed up on a beach with Flounder beside her. And Flounder’s first words are “Ariel, are you okay?!”

Yeah dude. She is. Because she has LUNGS.

Like, sweet and all that he cares about her so much but sometimes it’s okay to prioritise your own needs, y’know?

Our trio look around and see a house on the beach with music coming from the window. Ariel asks Sebastien to take a little peeky-poo into the home of the massive monstrous apes who eat crabs on the reg and he outrageously refuses if you can believe it. Ariel sighs and says “I guess I’ll just have to find another crab who will…”

Can I just say that one of my least favourite parts of this series is how they completely removed Sebastien’s (metaphorical) spine? In the movie Sebastien was cool. He had style. He was an accomplished musician. He went toe to toe with human beings and won. He had the best lines. When he’s giving Eric and Ariel advice on romance you’re thinking “yes, listen to the crab. Clearly the crab is getting it.”

This is a crab that fucks.

In this series he’s just a perpetual butt monkey, it’s really frustrating. Anyway, after Disney have successfully modelled emotional manipulation to our impressionable daughters Sebastien ventures into the house where he almost dies many, many times. First he’s almost eaten by a cat and then he gets trapped in a piano and is forced to re-enact either Rabbit Rhapsody or Cat Concerto depending on which you believe came first (I will do a post some day, it is a wild story).

Then, a little girl comes outside and dances ballet while Ariel watches, enthralled. But she sadly realises that she’ll never be able to dance like that because….duh. She goes back to her trove and mopes. And Sebastien, get this, tells her that the human world is a mess and that life under the sea is better than anything they’ve got up there. And then Ariel sings a song about how she wants to be where the people are, wants to see, wants to see them dancing and I’m sorry is this sounding slightly familiar to anyone? This episode is already halfway over and it’s all been so pointless. What hasn’t been Sebastien getting degraded like a gimp for our entertainment is just repeating beats from the original film. And here’s another problem, this is the song she sings:

I mean, you can compare it to Part of Your World, but only in the same sense that you can compare an ignited fart at a dorm room party to the sun. I mean, mocking this episode just feels so pointless, if only it would try something new so it could really fall flat on its face. Why, who’s this?

Ah…excellent.

So this new mermaid appears with her octopus buddy. What a transparent, cynical attempt to sell a few more dolls. Let me just learn a little more about this character so I can properly take her to task…

Okay so, this is Gabriella. She is a deaf Latina Mermaid who speaks in American sign language as a way to introduce American children to ASL and was based on a little girl who loved The Little Mermaid but passed away from leukaemia before the episode was aired.

“…”“Your move, funny guy.”

Okay, so because I’m not an absolute sociopath I’m going to stop here.

How was it?

According to the accounts I’ve read this episode meant a great deal to the parents of Gabriella Angelina Bommino who never got to see their little girl grow up. So, yeah, I don’t feel comfortable reviewing this. Is it a good episode of television? No, it’s a beautiful act of kindness and solidarity for a family going through the worst grief imaginable. Questions of artistic merit are pretty much moot.

The moral of the story is: Disney has a heart after all?

“If you breathe a word…”

Does this violate continuity?: A little, yeah. It turns out that Ariel has been where the people are, and she has seen, seen ’em dancing.

The Little Mermaid, the series: Against the Tide

Wha’ Happen’?

The episode begins with Ariel riding a sea horse throughout the entire ocean to wish every single sea creature a good morning and to continue her descent into self-parody. One creature who is not having a good morning however, is whatever the hell this thing is:

What? What!? WHAT?!!

So this…flipped bird from evolution itself is a Bad Luck Creature and none of the other sea creatures will have anything to do with it because it’s supposedly unlucky which, clearly from the fact that it’s living, it is. The creature, which we shall call Lucky, is very sad because all of the other ocean denizens shun it and call it names.

“FREAK!”

Ariel comes across this abomination and starts make cooing noises and oh God, you know what this means don’t you?

Now, when I realised we were in for yet another “Ariel takes in another poor, misunderstood sea creature” episode I almost checked out there and then. But then, oh but then, I saw THIS…

Oh. Fuck. Yes.

Yes people. She’s back.

Here’s the amazing thing. Not only does this episode re-introduce Ursula, one of the absolute GOATs of the Disney Villain Pantheon. Not only do they have Pat Carroll back voicing the character. But they don’t fuck it up. I’m serious. This deeply mediocre little cartoon actually manages to do Ursula justice. Now, a lot of that is on Carroll. They give her a song when she appears, You Wouldn’t Want to Mess With Me. Now, the song is better than most of the songs this show had simply by dint of being a villain song and therefore not dripping in treacle. But it is certainly not, objectively, a good song. But Carroll sells the hell out of it. She fills every syllable with such husky, voluptuous relish that she makes it listenable through sheer force of personality. Now, Ursula’s spells keep going wrong and she assumes that since it obviously can’t be because she’s doing something wrong, there must be another reason. And when she sees the Bad Luck creature she decides to choke a bitch.

Meanwhile, in Atlantica, Triton has arrived home after some state visit or other and one of his daughters calls out to him “Welcome home father! It’s me, Arista!”

Which just…oof. Like, open secret that Triton doesn’t give two shits about any of his non-Ariel daughters but jeez louise. It’s the “it’s me! Arista” that just kills me. I’m starting to suspect that Triton had Sebastien write Daughters of Triton just so that he had a mnemonic to remember their names.

Fair’s fair, Triton does at least acknowledge her presence but then Ariel shows up to steal Daddy’s attention away as is right and proper. Ariel, for once, doesn’t even bother hiding the Bad Luck creature and just tells Triton that she has one and that it’s his move. The other mermaids are horrified, particularly Arista, demands that the creature be thrown out before it brings bad luck on all of them. Ariel does not take this in stride.

“FUCK YOU SAY TO ME?!”

But before things degenerate into Real Housewives of Atlantica, Ursula arrives and we are suddenly in a different show my friends, a completely different show. First of all, there’s Ursula’s arrival, descending down like Cthulhu in drag to the sound of thunder and two moray eels orbiting her arms.

ICON.

Then, we get something that we never even saw in the original movie, an actual proper battle between Ursula and Triton. And it is AWESOME. Ursula goads Triton into blasting her with his trident, which allows her to temporarily steal his power and turn it against him. Also, the animation in this sequence is leagues ahead of the rest of the series. I don’t know if the budget was increased or the animators were jolted out of their stupour by the chance to actually draw something cool but whatever, it happens. Ursula turns Flotsam and Jetson into two massive monster eels and siccs them on Triton. She only leaves when Sebastien creates a dummy Bad Luck creature out of a cake which Ursula destroys and, thinking that her job is done, peaces out.

Ariel is delighted when she realises that Lucky is safe and then…oh boy. Lucky makes a face and just drifts off screen and then…

Not joking. That’s the actual line of dialogue. Our characters just watch as Lucky pups offscreen for like a whole minute. This comes out of nowhere. And by the end of it she has given birth to five babies and it’s supposed to be cute and heartwarming but all I can think of is that that everyone is just standing around breathing the same water.

Guys. Mothers poop during labour. That is a thing that happens.

How was it?

I have got whiplash overhear. I flat out hate everything to do with Lucky, I hate the design, I hate Welker’s vocal performance, I hate that we’re doing this same damn plot again. That said, every scene Ursula is in is such a riot I have no hesitation calling this my favourite episode thus far. If we can get one of Ursula and the Evil manta hanging out I will die a happy mouse.

The moral of the story is: Pat Carroll could serve you shit in a sundae glass and tell you it was chocolate ice-cream and you’d believe her.

Does this violate continuity?: I thought having Ariel and Ursula meet (even if they don’t actually technically interact ) would violate canon but actually I think it reinforces it. When Flotsam and Jetsam first offer to take Ariel to Ursula it’s clear that she a) knows who that is and b) thinks that she is BAD NEWS. Ursula’s assault on the palace would absolutely leave that impression on her. I dig it.

The Little Mermaid, The Series: Save the Whale

Wha’ Happen’?

If my kids ever ask me about the nineties I’ll tell them of a wondrous time when the Soviet Union had collapsed, the Cold War was over and we were all free to focus on what was really important: dinosaurs and whales. Seriously, if it wasn’t big, extinct or going extinct it could get fucked. The mania of interest in dinosaurs obviously followed in the wake of Jurassic Park, whereas the world’s global bout of cetaphilia was a result of the movie Free Willy, a film about boys and whales and whales jumping over boys.

Not a great movie. Sorry.“Between this and talking shit about Darkwing Duck, you are just asking to be killed by nineties kids at this point.”

This episode deals with Spot, a baby killer whale that Ariel adopted in the pilot for this series which I haven’t reviewed because Disney, in their infinite wisdom, decided to not put it on Disney plus. And this episode is a sequel to that one where Spot returns because Disney was decided in 1993 that having an episode about a killer whale trying to escape from a water park might be an easy sell.

Ahem.

Actually I can’t be sure of that. This episode aired in October 1993, a mere three months after Free Willy premiered which seems like an awfully quick turnaround. I mean, that would mean that this episode was just slapped together in ninety days and ohhhhhhhh I see…

And all the pieces fell into place.

So Ariel, Sebastien and Flounder are just chilling on the surface when Spot shows up out of the blue. Ariel is delighted to see him again and they take him back to Atlantica. Triton is a little leery of having Spot crashing at the palace because some of his subjects are unreasonably prejudiced against killer whales.

Ariel suggests putting on a show for the other fish so that they can see that Spot is just a big cuddly snugglesmoosh of an apex predator and Triton agrees. The show goes swimmingly…

That was unintentional, I swear to God.

The show goes well, until a ship appears overhead and captures Spot. Well, I saw “captured”, the way its animated it kinda looks like Spot just happily jumped into a cage that was hanging from the side of the boat.

Triton is all like “Nothing to see here, humans are scum, move along”, but Ariel naturally isn’t going to stand still for this and follows the boat. Spot’s been taken by a guy called Pettigrew who owns a Penguin Park where people peek and peer at his penguins. So, quick question:

I mean, I’m not expecting exact historical accuracy here but I think it’s fair to say that The Little Mermaid takes place in the Age of Sail, right? What with sailing ships being a pretty important feature of the setting. So where the hell did these penguins come from? Humans didn’t even set foot in Antarctica until 1895!

Then again, this cartoon apparently thinks penguins breathe underwater so maybe I’m failing to see the forest for the trees.

Now that I think about it, Little Mermaid 2 had a penguin character as well. Okay, that’s it. I’m calling it. No one involved in the wider Little Mermaid franchise knows jack shit about penguins. There. I said it.

Okay, so there are two characters in this perfidious, penitential penguin pokey, Pettigrew pere and his son, Junior. I’m going to explain the entirety of their characters with one exchange of dialogue.

“Dad, don’t you care about anything other than making money?”“Nya ha haaa! Money money money!”

Got that? Good. Moving on.

Ariel and Flounder pass through an underwater gate roughly the size of the Black Gate of Mordor and find themselves in the water park. A show is being put on and Ariel and Flounder than Sebastien was also captured along with Spot and that Pettigrew has…trained…the crab…to….dance…?

What?

“Hello ma baby! Hello ma honey!”

I know I’ve been saying this a lot this month but, I feel like this would be a bigger deal in universe. Like, oh, you trained a killer whale to roll over that’s nice but HOLY SHIT THAT CRAB IS DANCING LIKE FRED FRICKIN’ ASTAIRE AM I HIGH?!

Anyway, Ariel and Flounder put together a plan to free Spot and Sebastien by opening his cage and waiting until the Black Gate is open to allow the audience to leave by boat. But when the moment arrives, Spot refuses to leave his penguin homies behind in the Big House. But then, suddenly they’re set free by some mysterious person (it’s one of the two humans, try to guess who it was). They reach the massive gate but they’re too late! Pettigrew has closed it.

“Nya ha ha ha money money money etc….”

But fortunately, if Free Willy taught us anything it was that orcas view the entire concept of gravity with sneering contempt and Spot just decides to fly. You might think he jumps but, no. He clears a twenty foot tall door from a stationary position while carrying a mermaid and an entire flock of penguins. That’s not jumping. That is levitation.

And the episode ends with Spot hearing the sounds of other killer whales and leaving Ariel to join his people. This, incidentally, was exactly how the first episode he was in ended. Ah well, it’s all about the journey, right?

I regret all my life choices.

How was it?

No Tim Curry. No batshit insane plot revolving around Footwear of Mass Destruction. Just the bland, badly animated warmed over plot of a movie that was never that good to begin with.

The moral of the story is: Little girl likes her whale.

Does this violate continuity?: Of human history as we know it? Yes. Of the original film? Nah.

The Little Mermaid, The Series: Thinga-Ma-Jigger

Wha’ Happen’?

Ariel and Flounder are out minding their own damn business when a naval battle between some pirates and the Royal Navy breaks out overhead. During the battle, one of the pirates drops a boot and Ariel, little hoarder that she is, is fascinated by it and takes it back to Atlantica to show to her friends. Now, The Little Mermaid the film had a lean, tight little screenplay with very little fat which was to its credit. But it does mean that Ariel’s world is really under-populated. She has literally two friends in that movie (Sebastien is more of an authority figure), Flounder and Scuttle and she hasn’t actually met Scuttle yet. So the episode has to create some new fish friends for Ariel. Who are these fresh new additions to the rich Mermaid canon? Well, we get an unnamed posh lady fish who loves fashion dahling and an uninspired Woody Allen impression. God, uninspired Woody Allen impersonations used to be everywhere in cartoons and they were never a good sign. Foodfight! had one. That should teach you plenty. By a rather morbid coincidence this episode would have aired right around the time Dylan Farrow went public.

Probably why this guy isn’t on a lot of merch.

Ariel and the fish try to figure out what the boot (which they call a “Thingamajigger”) actually is. Triton comes out and says that he knows exactly what it is: FILTHY FILTHY HUMAN PERVERSITY. He then tells Sebastien to ensure the boot is safely buried far away from the city. So, this series clears up something that always bugged me about the original movie: why does Triton appoint Sebastien, the court composer, to chaperone his daughter? Well, it turns out that Sebastien is the only person Triton has on the payroll. He has to do every literally every thing in this court.

“Sebastien! Compose a symphony in my honour, prepare a five course banquet, negotiate peace with the neighbouring kingdoms, raise taxes, draft a constitution, put out a hit on Ursula and FOR THE LAST TIME TIME BEAR ME A MALE HEIR OR IT’S YOUR HEAD!”

Sebastien is too small to lift the boot so Ariel reluctantly helps him take it to a remote location to bury it. But Triton’s warning about the Thingamajigger being dangerous is overheard by clams, who pass this knowledge along to all the other clams in a massive game of undersea telephone. Word reaches the Lobster Mobster, an Edward G. Robinson sound-alike with designs on taking over Atlantica, see? He and his sidekick, Da Shrimp, decide to find the Thingamajigger for themselves as even Triton is apparently afraid of it. They find the boot where Ariel half-assedly buried it and decide to use it to destroy a nearby coral reef. By total coincidence, another navy ship overhead drops a cannon ball on the cliff at that exact moment and the Lobster Mobster now thinks that he’s got his hands on an undersea MOAB.

The clams pass the word back to Atlantica that the Lobster Mobster is coming to wreck shop and Ariel decides that their only hope is to travel to the surface and see if they can learn the secrets of the dread Thingamajigger. They surface at a harbour and are horrified by the sights of fishermen massacreing their fellow fish by the thousands and it’s so awful oooh cute boy!

Huh, judging from that chin Eric is part of the Hapsburg dynasty. Who knew?

Ariel watches as this mysterious land hunk rescues a dolphin from some fishing nets and then tosses his soaking wet boots into the sea and she realises that they’re just useless foot coverings.

Meanwhile under the sea, under the sea, there’s plenty of aggravations and unfriendly crustaceans under the sea. Things have gone from bad to worse as the Lobster Mobster has been waylaid by the Evil Manta (aw yeah, we got continuity up in this bitch) who takes the Thingamajigger for himself. This means we get to hear Tim Curry (it was Tim Curry, but you knew that of course) purr the word “thingamajigger” and I don’t know if this is too much information but I came four times.

“I owe it to you as a reviewer that you know that.”

The Evil Manta rolls up to Atlantica and calls Triton out. Triton is ready to throw down, but the fish have become so terrified of this leathery menace that they surrender and Woody Allen fish yells “All hail King Manta!”

Ah, THAT’s why this guy isn’t on a lot of merch.

Ariel then rocks up and shows the Manta that she has a thingamajigger of her own so he’d better am-scary but he challenges her to see which of their two boots has the bigger kick so to speak. And then Ariel plays her hand: a pair.

That is the Little Mermaid duel-wielding Thingamajiggers like Neo in the Matrix and I take back every bad thing I ever said about this show.

Seeing as he’s called the Evil Manta, and not the Crazy Manta, he realises that he’s been out Thingamajiggered and peaces out. Triton is grateful to Ariel for saving the kingdom, but still thinks that human stuff is dangerous and tells her to get rid of the boots and not to half-ass it this time.

And the episode ends with Ariel, Sebastien and Flounder hiding the boots in the cave that will one day become Ariel’s collection.

How was it?

I…kinda dug the hell out of this, I’m not gonna lie. The clams are genuinely funny with this perpetually amazed breathless delivery that reminded me of the little green aliens from Toy Story. The mid episode villain switch from the Lobster Mobster to the far more menacing Evil Manta was unexpected and a quite effective escalation and the sheer nuttiness of the premise is weirdly entertaining. Definitely a step up.

The moral of the story is: Rumours and conspiracy theories have a way of taking on a life of their own and becoming dangerous. In other news, GET YOUR DAMN VACCINE.

Does this violate continuity?: I was honestly kind of charmed by the lengths this episode went to to ensure that Ariel never actually sees Eric’s face. I appreciate that commitment. On the other hand, this episode establishes that Sebastien already knew about Ariel’s treasure trove before he came there in the movie which kinda makes his reaction to seeing it a bit illogical. Ah well, maybe he was just shocked that it had grown to the extent that it had.

The Little Mermaid, The Series: The Evil Manta

Wha’ Happen’?

Things get off to a bad start right away when The Little Mermaid the series violates the unwritten rule that all Disney series from the nineties have to have an absolute banger as a theme song. Instead, TLM has a wordless medley of the themes for Under the Sea and Part of Your World. Fantastic pieces of music no doubt, but it still feels more than a little lazy.

Anyway, remember the Under the Sea sequence from the original movie? Sure ya do. Well, it turns out that’s just how life is in Atlantica all the time, a never-ending calypso-infused bacchanal under the kindly patrician gaze of beloved despot King Triton. So Triton and Sebastien are taking a trip see the “turtle races” and Ariel and Flounder take the opportunity to go exploring. Near a sinister looking volcano they hear a weak, pathetic voice begging them for help and discover an unseen creature trapped in the volcano’s crater. Ariel wants to help but Flounder reminds her of the legend of a terrible monster that was trapped in a volcano (much like this one actually) by the ancient Atlanticans and that would certainly doom their entire civilization if it was ever freed. Ariel, naturally, tells Flounder not to be such a little bitch and frees the creature which turns out to be…the thing, the thing I just said.

I’m not even going to insult you by telling you who they got to voice him. You should be able to tell just by looking at him.

This is the Evil Manta and he is far and away the best thing in this episode and the series itself. Great vocal performance and a magnificent design based on an earlier concept for Ursula.

The Manta thanks Ariel for freeing him and soars off towards Atlantica like a Fellbeast of the sea. And how does he propose to bring about the doom of the Ocean Kingdom? With Mean Girls Bullshit.

Seriously, his plan is to go to each sea critter in Atlantica (individually) and tell them how they are so much better than all the other fish. Pretty soon Atlantica’s peaceful multi-ethnic monarchy has become riven with factionalism and sectarian strife in a startlingly accurate depiction of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Pretty soon the octopuses are fencing off their octo-territory, the sword-fishes are sharpening their blades and the goldfish are presumably dying because they are a freshwater species but until that day comes they are ready for war.

Ariel and Flounder hurry back to the city to try and stop him. Flounder gets caught and hypnotised by the Manta and Ariel thinks that he’s been turned against her but fortunately the power of friendship makes him immune to Manta’s power. We then get a flashback to how Ariel and Flounder first met because finding enough plot to fill twenty minutes is really hard.

Ariel manages to defuse the impending race war by singing a song about the joys of multiculturalism (the Rodney King riots were ended the same way, I seem to recall) and the Manta is driven off by the sheer power of music.

How was it?

From an animation perspective this is really hard to judge. On the one hand, it’s obviously leaps and bounds ahead of 90% of animation on TV screens at the time. There’s some really cool use of lighting effects too, a lot of striking imagery and some really lovely, painterly backgrounds.

But there’s really no getting around it, these character’s are just too complex to animate on a TV budget. Glen Keane’s Ariel design, one of the crowning achievements of the Renaissance, just looks subtly wrong and poor Flounder seems to spend as much time off model as on. And much as the design of Ariel has been flattened and simplified, so too her character. There’s none of the anger and emotional turbulence that made her such an instantly iconic and appealing figure in the original film. Here she’s pretty much what you picture when you hear the words “Disney Princess”. She teaches some animals about loving each other and being friends with a song for fuck’s sake. That’s bordering on self-parody.

The moral of the story is: Racism is caused by one guy going around talking shit.

Does this violate continuity?: If you are, like me, one of those poor wretches who actually cares about the narrative consistency of the Little Mermaid franchise be at peace. This doesn’t clash with the original movie. It does contradict the first meeting of Ariel and Flounder depicted in Little Mermaid 3 but that movie came later so that was violating the canon already established by this episode. I am 38 years old.

The Little Mermaid The Series: Introduction

Look, in my time I’ve clapped back at people who disputed bad reviews I gave with the shop-worn riposte “well it wasn’t made for you!” but there does come a point where you have to admit that something just…wasn’t…made for you. Case in point, over the next few posts I’ll be reviewing a cartoon series made for nine year old girls in the early nineties. And it’s one thing to dunk on DarkWing Duck but beating up on a show made for little girls is cheap even for me. Fortunately, Unshaved Mouse inc. has a nine year old girl on staff and she kindly agreed to watch the series with me. And Mini Mouse peaced out after three episodes so I know it’s not just me. Actual transcript:

“Is this a new show?”“Oh no, it’s almost as old as I am.”“Oh, that’s why it’s so…”“So what?”“Nothin’.”

And look, I wanted to like this series. Hell, I have always wanted to like this series. I’ve mentioned before that The Little Mermaid was the first Disney movie I ever owned on VHS. I loved that film as much as it was safe for a seven year old boy in a rough North Dublin school to love that movie. And I remember being deeply bored by this series. In retrospect, I don’t know what I was thinking. Not because the series is good (oh no) but it is ABSOLUTELY BUCK WILD.

See this? This is from the episode where Ariel defeats a racism powered Ocean Satan with footwear. I made LITERALLY NONE OF THAT UP.

Buckle up, Mother-Guppies. We’re gettin’ weird.

You win. Good day sir.

In 1964 British-Norwegian author Roald Dahl published Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I wouldn’t call it the greatest Dahl novel (I actually prefer the sequel, believe it or not) but it’s a fun romp nonetheless where you the reader get to enjoy one of the most scabrously funny writers of the twentieth century sit an entire generation of children down and say “Listen up, you little bastards. Here’s why you suck.”

However, it has to be said that the ending is objectively terrible. Willy Wonka finishes the tour of his factory, glances over his shoulder and sees that Charlie Bucket has survived his gauntlet of death by dint of having no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever, and essentially says “yes, you, bland cipher child, you shall inherit my chocolate factory!” And that’s it. That’s the ending.

Now, a mere seven years later the book was adapted into Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory directed by Mel Stuart and starring the late great Gene Wilder in the title role. The screenplay is solely credited to Roald Dahl but around 30% of it was actually written by David Seltzer, including (I’m pretty certain) the scene I want to discuss. It’s a movie that I love with all my heart and soul and consider one of the very best literary adaptations ever made. I love this film. I love the performances, I love the songs, I love the gags. Those weird, Monty Python-esque skits where the whole world goes nuts looking for the Golden Tickets? I love ’em. And, in my opinion, it improves on the novel in every single change that it makes.

Removing Charlie’s Dad? Makes Charlie more sympathetic and gives Mrs Bucket more of a focus. Having each child only bring in one parent to the factory? Trims the fat. Making the Oompa Loompas little orange dudes instead of Arican pygmies?

But these are all mostly minor, cosmetic changes. There are two scenes added to the story that drastically change the meaning of the story and the character of Willy Wonka. The first interpolation happens between Violet Beauregard being turned into a blueberry and Veruca Salt being sent to the furnace (man, this movie is a fun time). Charlie Bucket and his Grandpa Joe steal Fizzy Lifting Drinks and almost get chopped to pieces by a ceiling fan. They belch their way to freedom and rejoin the tour, with Wonka seemingly none the wiser.

Now, a lot of people hate this addition and I can definitely see why. The whole point of Charlie is that he’s not like the other kids. He’s supposed to be the good one. And, you could argue that by stealing the Fizzy Lifting Drinks Charlie is actually worse than the other kids. I mean, it’s definitely worse than Augustus Gloop drinking from the chocolate river. Wonka just let those kids loose in a chocolate world and told them to go nuts, so why wouldn’t Augustus drink from the river? Why is the river off limits but not anything else? Mike Teevee was definitely out of line but I think the real blame is on the Oompa Loompas for shrinking him. Violet Beauregard may have taken the chewing gum against Wonka’s advice, but at least she was upfront about it and didn’t steal it behind his back! And Veruca…

Okay, Veruca just straight up trashed the egg laying room like the Rolling Stones trashing the Miami Hilton.

ROCK AND ROLL!

He’s not worse than Veruca but, other than the upper echelons of the Nazi party, no one is.

If Charlie Bucket isn’t good, then what even is he?

This ties into the second big addition, which seeks to resolve the problem of the book’s weak climax and boy howdy does it deliver. You know the scene I mean. Memed to hell and back it has been.

And again, this scene really rubs some folks up the wrong way. And with good reason. Like the infamous boat scene it just comes out of nowhere and the tonal shift is brutal. Gene Wilder was possibly the greatest comic actor who ever lived, because he also happened to be one of the greatest dramatic actors who ever lived but chose to devote his gargantuan thespian talents almost exclusively to comedy. And in this scene he gives everything and more. The rage, the pain, the sheer vicious bile he vents at Grandpa Joe and Charlie is honestly quite upsetting. It’s a phenomenal performance but it is a hard watch. But personally I think this scene is close to perfection and often completely misunderstood so we are going to go through this step by step.

But firstly, let’s talk about Wonka. I think it’s very significant that the title of the movie is not “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” but “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. Wonka is our main character. And this movie is essentially a relationship study. The relationship in question being; Willy Wonka and the entire goddamned human race.

Willy Wonka is simultaneously the world’s greatest inventor and its most brilliant artist and the field in which he practices both these disciplines just happens to be the creation of high-sugar confectionary treats. He is a brilliant, sensitive artistic soul and the world treated him the way it always treats such people: it sucked him dry, chewed his withered husk and spat him out. Cheated, swindled, lied to and unappreciated, he literally shut himself off from the rest of humanity, barring the gates of the factory and…hiring? Let’s go with hiring. Hiring the Oompa Loompas so that he could run his factory literally without relying on another human being.

But years pass and he decides to give the human race another chance. He sends out the tickets, hoping to find one good person. One person who won’t lie to him, who won’t steal from him, who won’t be a selfish, narcissistic garbage person. Willy Wonka wants to believe that people can be good and he’s looking for someone to restore that faith. And then he meets Charlie. Actually, even before he meets Charlie he’s rooting for him to win. At the gate he tells Charlie and Joe that he read about them in the papers. He knows who they are. He knows they’ve got nothing. He wants this kid to do it. He wants him to be the one.

And then? Charlie fucks it all up. Charlie Bucket, Wonka’s last hope, proves himself to be just as greedy and stupid and selfish as anyone else. He steals from him. He’s not different. He’s just like everyone else.

How does that make Wonka feel?

Like he’s been cut in half.

They reach the end of the tour and Wonka is barely able to feign civility. He just wants these people out of his home now. He just wants to lock up the gates and wait to die alone, safely isolated from the rest of the human race.

Joe follows him into his office, wanting to know when Charlie will get the lifetime supply of chocolate. And Wonka, of course, fucking loses it.

Joe is devastated. He responds to Wonka’s rage the way any of us would. With shock, disbelief, wounded pride and rage of his own. He calls Wonka a crook and a monster. He can’t believe that anyone could raise a small child’s hopes so high and then dash them so cruelly.

Charlie just watches in numb disbelief. He can’t believe it got so bad, so fast.

Joe ushers him out of the room whispering “I’ll get even with him if it’s the last thing I do! If Slughorn wants an everlasting gob-stopper, he’ll get one!”

Now.

I think a lot of us in this situation would look at Wonka and think: fuck this guy. I have nothing. He lives in opulence. I have a shack. He has a factory. I made one, tiny mistake, and he destroyed all my dreams for it. Fuck this guy. I’m going to sell this everlasting gobstopper to Slugworth for as much as he’ll pay me and I’ll get mine.

But Charlie Bucket doesn’t do that. Because Charlie Bucket is good. And being good doesn’t mean you never do the wrong thing. It means being able to understand when you’ve done the wrong thing and hurt another human being.

And he takes the Everlasting Gobstopper, something that could change his entire life. And he gives it back. Because that’s the right thing to do.

And just like that, Wonka is pulled back from the brink.

Because now he realises that Charlie isn’t perfect. No one can be perfect. But he is good. And that’s plenty.

I think the next part is why so many people dislike this scene. Wonka suddenly switches back to joyful gaiety, apologises to Charlie and says: “I’m sorry I had to test you, and you passed the test!”. Which, when taken at face value, is incredibly cruel.

But I think when Wonka says “You passed the test” he’s paltering: lying while not saying anything that is technically untrue. Wonka did indeed test Charlie, that’s what the whole tour was about. And he did hire an actor to impersonate Slughorn to test Charlie’s honesty. But Wonka is being deliberately misleading here, I think, and doing it so successfully that he not only tricks Charlie and the audience but maybe even himself. By saying “I was testing you” he’s implying that the entire scene in the half room was staged. But how could it have been? How could Wonka know that Charlie and Joe would steal Fizzy Lifting Drinks? I’m not buying it. Everything from when Joe enters that room is real. Wonka’s fury, his pain and eventually his joy. None of this was a trick or a test. Wonka meant every hateful word.

And that’s why Wonka turns and calls him back. Why he suddenly realises why this boy is the proof of the goodness in humanity that he was searching desperately for. Not because he’s perfect or without sin.

Because Charlie saw Wonka at his very worst, his angriest, ugliest and most vindictive.

And he forgave him.

Darkwing Duck: Just Us Justice Ducks

Wha’ happen?

If, like me, you were unfortunate enough to grow up in a third world nation untouched by the beneficent glow of the Disney Channel then your only way of experiencing TV shows like DuckTales and Darkwing Duck was the sporadic VHS releases that Disney deigned to let drop from their table. In the case of DarkWing Duck, this meant that the only contact I had with this show was the two-parter Darkly Dawns the Duck which we’ve already looked at and this, Just Us Justice Ducks. And going from one to the other is a bit like watching Iron Man and then following it up immediately with Endgame.

WHO THE FUCK ARE ALL YOU PEOPLE?!

In these episodes Darkwing puts together a superhero team of former super-powered enemies and rivals to battle his arch-nemesis Negaduck who’s put together his own Legion of Doom of Darkwing’s most dangerous foes. The trouble is, thanks to Disney’s insistence on releasing episodes in an order dictated by tarot cards and the phases of the moon, many of these characters hadn’t even been formally introduced yet. Hell, considering that Just Us Justice Ducks consists of episodes 18 and 19 and Darkly Dawns the Duck was episodes 29 and 30, you could argue that Darkwing himself hadn’t been introduced yet.

Anyway, Darkwing is preparing to go on a date with Morgana MacCawber, a Transylvanian sorceress who was a villain but who he’s now dating (this fucking show). Unfortunately, their date has to be cut short because two of Darkwing’s villains, Megavolt and Crackerjack, have attacked the local power station. Darkwing tries to stop them but Morgana turns him accidentally turns him into a pudding and the villains, having him at their total mercy, just laugh and leave him there. They then install an “electro slave” device in the power station and Darkwing just…leaves it there.

Later, after he’s been returned to normal, Darkwing races to the police station which is being attacked by two other villains, Bushroot and Liquidator. He also runs into Stegmutt, a genetically engineered dinosaur duck hybrid with the strength and intelligence of a car-compactor. The villains get away by convincing Stegmutt that Darkwing’s on fire and telling him to put him out.

“Puny god.”

Bushroot causes a massive bean stalk to grow up under the police station and they am-scray back their hideout where we meet the leader of the villains: Negaduck. Ohhhhh boy and I gotta explain him now don’t I?

So this Negaduck is Darkwing Duck from an evil “Negaverse” which would only be introduced 17 episodes after this one aired. Oh, and I said this Negaduck because there was also a Negaduck introduced in the episode “Negaduck” who was the result of Darkwing Duck being hit by a beam by Megavolt that split him into good and evil versions. And, despite that Negaduck being considered the “first” Negaduck the episode where that happens is actually the last one in broadcast order.

I swear to God, guys, I have reviewed X-Men movies where the continuity explanations were less torturous. You just think about that. Anyway, Negaduck, disguised as Darkwing, infiltrates S.H.U.S.H., the local S.H.I.E.L.D. analogue and cripples it, leaving the entire city defenceless. Darkwing, naturally, is thrilled, because he gets to take on an entire cohort of super villains without anyone hogging the spotlight. But then he discovers that the national guard has been called in and that they will be led by Duckburg’s own superhero Gizmoduck, who Darkwing has an instant irrational hatred of.

“Do you bleed? You will.”

While Darkwing is squabbling with Gizmoduck, Negaduck activates a massive forcefield that encircles the city, cutting it off from the rest of the world and waaaaaaait a minute this is all starting to feel real familiar.

“We come here not as conquerors but as liberators! To return control of this city to the people!”

Damn, between this and the Inception/Donald Duck controversy, did Christopher Nolan make any movies not inspired by the Disney duckverse?

Darkwing still refusing any offers of help, storms the Fearsome Five’s headquarters and promptly gets his ass handed to him and gets thrown off the top of their skyscraper.

Or possibly a large box?

He lands safely in a garbage truck only to discover that, literally in the time it took him to reach the ground, the Fearsome Five have seized total control of the entire city. Fuck me, the Taliban couldn’t pull off a takeover that speedy.

With Darkwing out of the picture, Gizmoduck leads a team of Stegmutt, Morgana and Neptunia (a fish lady who just showed up) against the Fearsome Five and they all get captured and are about to be tortured by Negaduck but Darkwing shows up, frees them, they have a big superhero brawl and the day is saved.

Oh, and then Darkwing and Morgana go on their date and escape everyone else by passing through the Iris at the end of the episode. Which is…something that Darkwing can do. Apparently.

I feel like this should be a bigger deal in-universe.

How was it?

It was…actually kinda bad. Sorry. This was a big step down from Darkly Dawns the Duck. There’s a serious downgrade in animation quality and the writing was honestly pretty piss poor. And you might say “Mouse, it’s a Saturday morning cartoon from the nineties, you really except good writing?”

To which I respond:

Uh…yeah?

On top that, some of the vocal performances were nail-on-a-chalkboard bad. If I never have to listen to Joey Camen’s Stegmutt again it’ll be a good life.

Hello! You may remember me from The Simpsons!

Not only do we have Homer Simpson himself, Dan Castellenata, as Megavolt, we also have Frank Welker voicing several critters who voiced Santa’s Little Helper as well as a few other roles here and there.

I am the terror that flaps in the night!

I am the single career man all women want to date! 

I am the self-centered boob who hands over the city at the drop of a dime. I’m a gipnoid, a slug, a spud mothering jackanape!

Darkwing Duck: Darkly Dawns the Duck

Wha’ happen?

Darkly Dawns the Duck originally aired as a one hour special on the Disney Channel, introducing the main character and his supporting cast and setting up the status quo for the series going forward. That was a smart thing to do. Disney then took this one hour special, re-cut it into two episodes and made them episodes…30 and 31 of Season 1 on Disney Plus. That was a very stupid thing to do and I have no idea why they did it. In fact, the entire running order is batshit insane. Characters appear in episodes as a known quantity only for Darkwing Duck to meet them for the first time twenty episodes later, it’s crazy.

“We’re experimenting with avant garde forms of non-linear story-telling you philistine clod!”

Unfortunately, this means we also miss a pretty fantastic sequence of Darkwing hunting some criminals through the streets of Saint Canard to the strains of the immortal theme tune sung by Jeff Pescetto who also sang the theme for Ducktales and Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers. The Disney Plus version just cuts to Darkwing delivering these hoods to the local police station and bemoaning that he can’t get no respect around here and he needs to start taking on some big time criminals.

He gets his wish when Taurus Bulba (Tim Curry) a crime boss who’s been running his empire from his prison cell, sends his goons to steal the Ramrod, an anti-gravity cannon, from a military train. DW fails to stop Bulba’s men (technically sentient farm livestock) despite and assist from Duckburg’s own Launchpad McQuack.

Bulba now has the Ramrod but he doesn’t know how to use it. The creator of the Ramrod, Professor Waddlemeyer, was killed by Bulba’s men meaning that his only hope of getting the code is from Waddlemeyer’s orphaned grand-daughter, Gosalyn (Christine Cavanaugh) who has been sent to the St Canard orphanege.

Yeah, basically.

But Darkwing, who is no fool, has also figured this out and manages to rescue Gosalyn from the orphanage before Bulba’s goons can grab her. Bulba decides that the time for fucking around has passed and reveals that he’s somehow built a massive flying death fortress in the prison where he was being held.

Well, what do you expect with the Democrats in the White House?

Darkwing puts Gosalyn to sleep by singing a lullaby that her grandfather taught her and then realises that the lyrics are a code to activate the Ramrod. Bulba lures Darkwing out of hiding by offering to surrender only to turn the tables on him and force him to surrender the code and then kidnaps Gosalyn as collateral. Darkwing gets arrested by the cops who think he’s part of Bulba’s gang but he gets sprung when Launchpad shows up to pay his bail and ends up crashing through his cell wall. Launchpad then shows him a new plane he’s been working on, the Thunderquack (in toy stores now!)

“You know what to do, kids!”

Darkwing storms Bulba’s air fortress and manages to shut down the Ramrod but he seemingly perishes when the fortress crashes. Back at the orphanage, a despondent Gosalyn refuses to give up and is rewarded when “Drake Mallard”, a mysterious yet strangely familiar duck, shows up and tells her that he’s going to adopt her.

“Fortunately for us, child services in this city are deeply, deeply corrupt.”

How was it?

Interestingly, given his pedigree, the cartoon bird I found Darkwing reminded me of most was not Scrooge or Donald but Daffy Duck, particularly in his Dorlock Holmes/Duck Dodgers/Robin Hood personae when he was paired with Porky Pig as his much more competent sidekick.

Like Daffy in those shorts, Darkwing is a vain, preening egomaniac desperate for respect and adulation. But unlike Daffy, the cartoon makes it clear that Darkwing actually has the makings of a phenomenal superhero if he could just get over his massive ego. And this is the root of why Darkwing Duck just doesn’t quite click for me. It seems unsure what kind of show it wants to be.

On the one hand it’s very, very much a kids TV comedy from the early nineties and that comes through in the writing. There’s lot’s of corny gags, lots of asides to the audience. Obviously the voice cast is stacked and Jim Cummings definitely made some of the jokes land harder than they would have otherwise but it’s still very much a show of its time and the writing has little of the sharpness and wit you’d expect from a Disney series with a comparable budget being made today. So it’s only so-so as comedy, but is it even supposed to be?

Here’s the thing, for all its kid friendly vibe, it’s quite shockingly dark in places. There’s a scene where Darkwing and Gosalyn are being pursued by police who are shooting at them. With actual guns. Shooting actual bullets. And I know that might not sound too hardcore but this was in an era where the only guns you’d see in Saturday morning cartoons were lazer blasters. There’s also a scene where Taurus Bulba berates his goons for loosing Darkwing and Gosalyn (who escaped them by driving his bike into the sea) and Hannigan says “we didn’t know he’d off himself and the kid”.

There are also explicit references to characters being “killed” rather than “destroyed” which again was really pushing the envelope in the era. Likewise, there are shots in this thing that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Batman the Animated Series.

And this is the problem: it’s also clearly trying to be a superhero drama with real stakes. But I can only really get invested in the drama if it seems that the protagonist is in actual peril and…I’ve seen this guy get crushed by a fridge and walk it off. He’s going to be fine.

So this, for me, is the awkward position that Darkwing Duck finds itself in. It’s not quite funny enough to work as comedy and too cartoony to work as action/adventure and it ends up in this weird middle ground. It is, if you’ll pardon the expression, neither flesh nor fowl.

Hello! You may remember me from The Simpsons!

For whatever reason a lot of Simpsons voice actors also ended up working on this show. Jim Cummings himself, while never a main cast member, did voice Duncan the Horse in the episode Saddlesore Galactica which I’m guessing he doesn’t brag about to the other voice actors.

“And lo, I beheld a pale horse…”

Marcia Wallace (Mrs Krabappel) also plays two minor roles.

I am the terror that flaps in the night!

I am the switch that derails your train!

I am the jailer who throws away the key! I am feeling really stupid!

I am the surprise in your cereal box!

I am the chill that runs up your spine!

Darkwing Duck: Introduction

Can we just take a minute to appreciate how deeply weird DuckTales is? How would you even explain that show to someone who’d never heard of it?

“Richie Rich if he was an old duck?” That’s not even a premise, that’s a meaningless Mad Lib. And yet, DuckTales was a massive, massive deal. It ran for one hundred episodes, kickstarted the modern era of high quality TV animation and spawned a veritable multimedia empire. What gives? How did a show with such a weird, clunky premise achieve that kind of success? I think it comes down to a few different factors:

Carl Barks was given a job drawing funny little Donald Duck cartoons and decided to use that opportunity to write the Great American Novel. His duck universe cartoons were used as the basis of DuckTales and that’s some damn strong source material.Mark Mueller’s theme song is so insanely catchy that I can just type “Ducktales!” and your brain has already gone “Woo hoo!”Scrooge McDuck is basically the Doctor.

Here’s what I mean. The reason Doctor Who has lasted so long is that it’s an inexhaustible premise. There is an alien with a box that can go anywhere in time and space. You will never run out of stories to tell with that setup. In the same way, Scrooge McDuck has something almost as powerful as a Tardis: A metric shit-ton of money.

And this is why the show was able to run for 100 episodes. Scrooge is so rich he can basically buy his way in to any genre you can think of. Over the run they did space-opera, western, time travel, romance, pulp adventure, giant mech battles, horror. That’s the beauty of Scrooge McDuck; he’s a strongly defined character who nonetheless can slot into almost any kind of story. Case in point: the time they made him a superhero.

Right, so in Season 3 Scrooge gets so sick of the lying or “fake” news media making people think that the gold-loving billionaire is a bad guy so he decides to become a vigilante and wooooooow this hits different in 2021. Anyway, in order to improve his public image he becomes a superhero called the Masked Mallard.

Stop sniggering in the back, please.

Okay, fast forward a year after DuckTales ended and Disney are prepping a new reboot of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show only to discover that they don’t actually own the rights to Rocky and Bullwinkle.

“That story makes no sense.”“Back in the nineties there were still things Disney didn’t own. It was nuts.”

So a hasty, last minute replacement had to be found and they decided on expanding the Masked Mallard concept into its own TV show. The Mallard was re-worked into “Darkwing Duck”, a fedora wearing, cloaked, nocturnal crime-fighter clearly modelled on…

“Don’t say Batman, don’t say Batman, don’t say Batman…”“The Shadow.”“Never doubted you.”

And so, as the first stop on our look at Disney cartoon animation for Shortstember, I’ll be doing mini reviews of four episodes of this childhood classic. Let’s get dangerous.