The History of "Quest For Camelot"

That post I did about the history of Home on the Range was, for the longest time, just going to be a one-off thing... like I said, it got its start as an edition of Back to the Drawing Board but I wasn't able to find out much about the original version of the movie, Sweating Bullets, while finding a lot of information about the development of the film we wound up getting, so I decided to work with it. But after watching various videos online about the development of certain movies, I started to think, what if I made this a recurring thing? What if I made MORE posts about the troubled productions of animated films infamous online for one reason or another? And thus, I now have a new series on this blog: The History of...

There's a very good chance you've heard of Quest For Camelot even if you haven't actually seen it. It's generally regarded as being one of the worst animated films of all time. Like, on par with Delgo and The Emoji Movie. For the longest time, I believed it was just as bad as everyone made it out to be... mostly because I, embarrassingly enough, was a fan of the Nostalgia Critic, and he did a negative review of the film. In fact, most of the criticisms aimed at the film are clearly because of his review: if you see somebody complaining about how the heroine looks like Belle from Beauty and the Beast (I mean, she DOES, but still) or that it doesn't make sense for the plants in the enchanted forest they go through at one point to move, you can tell they're a Nostalgia Critic fan.

I am no longer a fan of the Nostalgia Critic. Well, not a BIG fan, anyway. I'll admit that his pre-2013 reviews are still pretty funny, and most of the stuff he reviews genuinely ARE pretty bad, but I recognize that he's been an awful influence on the internet and has a habit of overreacting to films that are for the most part harmless. So, in preparation for this post, I decided to give Quest For Camelot a watch for the first time via Sling TV. What did I think of it? Well, it's bad, but it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. It's mostly just another generic animated film that wants to be like Disney's (and to a lesser extent Don Bluth's) but just isn't. The best thing about it is Devon and Cornwall, who are genuinely very funny characters and have most of the best lines. Aside from that, I found it to be just mediocre. There are far, far worse animated movies out there.

Have you ever wondered how Quest For Camelot became a thing? Probably not. But I'm going to tell you anyway! It actually has a fascinating history.

Concept art for the film.

Quest For Camelot was announced in 1995. It wasn't called Quest For Camelot at that point, it was called "The Quest For the Grail", and it was slated to be released in 1997 as opposed to 1998. The Los Angeles Times article announcing the film claimed that it would focus on "Susannah, an idealistic, independent young woman living in the days of King Arthur's Court, who goes on a dangerous quest for the Holy Grail to save her sister from a ruthless and powerful knight". Elizabeth Chandler was to be the screenwriter, and the co-directors were to be Bill Kroyer and Frederick DuChau.

What you might not have known is that Quest For Camelot is based on a book - specifically, The King's Damosel, a 1976 fantasy novel written by Vera Chapman.

I've never read the book, but according to Wikipedia it's about a character from the original Arthurian Legend named Lynette. And it's definitely not a book for kids. I won't go into details on why. So why on Earth would you adapt it into a kids' movie? Well, that wasn't the original plan. The film was supposed to be a lot darker, something with a PG-13 rating a la Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. But y'know how Rover Dangerfield was originally gonna be an R-rated comedy, only for the Warner Bros. executives to turn it into a kids' movie in an attempt to compete with the super-successful animated Disney movies of the 1990s? Yeah, the same thing happened here. I'm not sure how well Rover Dangerfield did at the box office, but if it was successful I guess the mindset was "Hey, if it worked the first time..."

According to Frederick DuChau, Warner Bros. had absolutely no clue about making animated movies. Apparently, the executives straight-up told Bill that he was going to make the film that wound up becoming Quest For Camelot and he was going to like it. "I, at the time, had just become a director in development at Warner Bros. Feature Animation, 'cause I'd just sold them two projects, and then one of them, I was attached as a director and that sort of made me get an office as opposed to being in a cubicle, and you are a director trying to push your project forward. And they really liked what I was doing, they liked my projects, they liked ME," Frederick explained. "In hindsight, probably because I was just too... not that I was a doormat, because I was doing the kind of stuff that they LIKED... they liked what they saw, basically. So right before they announced Quest For Camelot, they pulled me off my project that I was developing, and they got me into a room with Bill, we all got along really well... and they said 'Listen, this is how it's gonna go. Bill is gonna direct this movie and you're going to direct it with him. We do understand that Bill is the veteran director here." They didn't use these words, but it was very well understood that he was going to take the lead." He agreed with all of that, despite how skeptical he was that they really needed another King Arthur story.

A team of great animators was compiled. Production on the film started up... and then came to a halt when most of the studio's artists were reassigned to Space Jam. When storyboarding for the film began, the plot was divided up in sequences - Bill had half, and Frederick had the other half, and together they would present their sequences to upper management. "Which is already very wrong," Frederick said, "Because, if you're gonna hire directors to make a movie, let them make the movie. And they weren't, but if you were really good at running a studio, that doesn't mean that you are very good at making an animated movie from a creative point of view... those are completely different things. But, in animation back then, the management set it up that they got to decide everything and everybody else worked for THEM." When the sequences were presented to the higher-ups, they'd give feedback like claiming a sequence was "four minutes too long" - even though at this point it was just storyboards. Frederick was more willing to do what they wanted than Bill was, which led to Bill leaving production and having Frederick be the full director... that is, assuming they didn't find another co-director or replace him altogether.

Concept art by Cynthia Wells. She labeled it "badguyflirtswithsister_gif", so
I'm guessing this is concept art for the original version of the film about Proto-Kayley
saving her sister from a ruthless knight.

Frederick explained, "Bill came to see me... and again, I do not remember the exact words whatsoever... and basically said, 'Dude, we gotta stick together here. We're gonna walk. We should walk. This upper management doesn't know what they're doing. We need to walk... let's walk away.' I went into a panic... in my head, I was like, if I walk away from this, Warner Bros. is gonna go, 'What is this idiot doing? Walking away from an opportunity like this? He's never gonna direct anything in this town again.'" Plus, he had bills to pay. "I wasn't gonna drop the biggest paycheck I'd ever had. I wasn't gonna let that all just slip and fall away at all. There was no plan... there was nothing offered in return. So, no. That was not a good deal for me at all. They were really shocked when I was like 'Uh, no, sorry, I'm gonna keep doing this.' I could tell they were really disappointed when I didn't go, 'Yeah, man! You're right! Let's just walk!' So we both went our own ways. But it was bad... Bill and I, basically, I don't think we talked again. It was painful, it was frustrating, but there also wasn't any time to go 'All right, let's put the brakes on, let's sit down, let's talk about all of this.' On top of that, lots of rumors flew that I would have orchestrated his exit and all of that was one big plan..."

After that, the upper management decided to keep Bill on - they fired him but kept giving him a giant paycheck and had him and his wife just come in when they felt like it and roam the halls complaining to the crew about how much he hated the higher-ups. And in case you're wondering if Frederick ever regretted not walking with Bill, he said "No."

One member of the crew who DID leave production when Bill was fired was animator Darlie Brewster, who was going to be the lead animator of Garrett. He explained, "All of the best parts were the parts he boarded. The producer set us all up letting Bill pull in a crew, board the film and then pretty much stole it from him... what they turned it into was pretty much garbage."

More concept art by Cynthia Wells.

The Holy Grail was replaced as the thing everyone is trying to get their hands on by Arthur's sword Excalibur. Why? Well, for one thing, Warner Bros. was nervous about the inescapable religious connotations associated with it. But according to Max Howard, the president of Warner Bros. Feature Animation, "The symbol of Camelot is the power of Excalibur, and that became a more interesting theme: Whoever held the sword, held the power." There were so many delays during production that the release date was changed from November 1997 to May 1998.

Frederick wanted to hire a lot of "European comic book people" that he knew like Claire Wendeling and Frank Page, and had them design the characters and do visual development - really go back to what the King Arthur story is. It wasn't all just "knights in shining armor with lots of flags", it was the year 4000 and early Britain. He described it as "this whole world that you can tap into". A few months after doing that, the higher-ups rejected all of this because it wasn't anything like they'd seen before. For example, when Frank Page came in, Frederick put him on a sequence in which the characters encounter rat-like trolls. He went full throttle on that, with a very "earthy" feel and a lot of dark humor. This didn't make it into the movie. His designs for the dragons did, but they were "watered-down".

Eventually, the heads of Warner Bros. at the time, Robert Daly and Terry Semel, saw what Frederick's crew was doing and gave a mandate: since Disney already made The Sword in the Stone, an animated movie about a young King Arthur, we should never at any point in the film see a young King Arthur pull the sword from the stone because then you're just begging for comparisons to be made. Their response was, "What? We're doing a King Arthur movie and we can't do the most iconic scene from the story?" This is why, in the movie, when we actually see Arthur pull the sword from the stone near the beginning, it cuts away to the people that are just standing around watching him.

Concept art for Devon and Cornwall.

"I was surrounded by too many people that they assigned... 'Well, these people are gonna do layout, these people are gonna do colors, and backgrounds...' And before you know it, you basically have an old Disney crew, doing something that they weren't comfortable with either," Frederick lamented. "Because, again, the movie wasn't set up from a director's point of view, around he or she with the people they would like to have around to do their vision and so on. It was backwards, it was from the top. Y'know, 'We just get a bunch of people, tell 'em what to do, hire enough people that worked at Disney and hopefully something good will come out.' And so, this is where I failed completely, I had no experience how to get my vision done. Most people probably didn't even know I had a vision." All those European artists were also pretty miffed about their work on the film being either watered down or cut.

In fact, the movie originally wasn't even going to be a musical. That was another decision from the higher-ups: they wanted it to be "Little Mermaid with swords on horses". This was both because of the whole "trying to be Disney" thing - Disney movies have songs, so we should have songs too! - and because the wife of Bob Daly was Carole Bayer Sager, an Oscar-winning songwriter and her group of friends really wanted to write songs for an animated movie. Y'know that really popular song from the movie performed by Celine Dion? "The Prayer"? Y'know how it plays over an unfitting chase sequence between Kayley and Ruber's minions? Apparently, that was delivered and recorded so late into production that the movie was practically finished and they went back in and re-animated a bunch of stuff to find a spot to put it in (Frederick thought it worked really well, but a lot of us beg to differ).

Frederick DuChau admitted that the studio's vision was only "If Disney did it, we should do it too." "They had no vision other than 'Well, when I was a production coordinator at Disney during Aladdin, we did THIS!', which has nothing to do with running a studio..." he claimed. "Lots of studios were starting up. FOX had one, DreamWorks just started... and so everyone who was a production assistant at Disney would become a department head at one of these studios." Even just watering the flowers at Disney could get you a job as president of feature animation, it would seem.

Concept art of Kayley and Ruber.

Quest For Camelot's production had the unintended consequence of another animated film, one that was released before it but while it was in production, being a flop: Cats Don't Dance. That movie was originally in development at Turner Feature Animation when Time Warner purchased the studio just before it came out. Which meant Warner Bros. would have to release Cats Don't Dance. And they really didn't want Cats Don't Dance to outperform and overshadow Quest For Camelot, so they released it on a crowded Easter holiday weekend and barely marketed it (there was ONE POSTER made for the movie, toys in Subway kids' meals, and that's about it).

The film's producer, Frank Gladstone, wound up leaving the project in February 1997 and was replaced by Dalisa Cohen - who, according to animator David Germain, HATED animation for some inexplicable reason and apparently only got put on the project as punishment for a previous film she co-produced, A Little Princess, being a flop. Most of the animation was done at the main Warner Bros. Feature Animation facilities located in Glendale, California and London, England. Yowza! Animation, Heart of Texas Productions, and A. Film A/S also worked on the film. For the CGI effects, Silicon Graphics' Alias Research software was used.

Most of the animators involved in Quest For Camelot hated it. Lauren Faust has admitted that they all knew it was going to bomb and dubbed it worse than Don Bluth's 1990s films. If you go on Facebook, you can find a lot of comments from animators who worked on the film complaining about how much of a pain it was. For example, David Lee Thompson said, "The movie was a bunch of missteps and they switched everyone around after I signed on. I was on the Kayley team. They changed directors, designers, animators, writers, and on and on. Kayley was first Suzanna... then Lynett and finally Kayley... they put the songs in the worst places. Putting the award-winning song over a chase sequence. Kayley's first song where we are supposed to really care for her was farmed out and then crapped out. She floated from rock to rock... I just have post-dramatic stress all these years later... the original artwork and development was stunning and what made me want to be on the production to start with. There were some great animators on the project and people I still hold in high regard to this day. I remember Max Howard standing up in front of us all and saying we were going to do something that Disney couldn't touch. Something uniquely WB and then they say we are doing Quest."

Concept art by Michael Gagne.

Jerome K. Moore, likewise, had this to say: "WB's first mistake (of which there were many) was in trying to emulate the Disney style. I mean, we're talking about a studio that was and still is at the top of the animation game, and WB tries to copy their expertise? Better to have done what they did in the old days, with Looney Tunes' Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Termite Terrace being the antithesis of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Nine Old Men. Then they lost the Kroyers, the couple that started out designing the whole Quest For Camelot production. They couldn't pick a consistent direction with Kayley, originally making her more heroic and tomboy-ish, then switching to make her more girlish. It was indeed an absolute mess. As I sat up there on the 19th Floor of the building in Glendale, I mostly heard complaints from all the animators and production assistants."

Steve Garcia, meanwhile, said, "I was at Warners at this time. Even though I had an offer from DreamWorks to go help them finish up the project they were doing at the time (I think Prince of Egypt?) and then go onto their next film, I opted to stay because I reeeeeeally wanted to work with Brad Bird on his flick, The Iron Giant. My one stipulation was that I NOT work on Camelot. So... they put me to work in viz 'til Giant was ready to go to animation. Man did they beg for those of us that weren't on to take scenes and help out. It was mired in one terrible problem after another. It was a train wreck. Warners was a company that tempted a lot of talents to come on (including me) because they were saying they wanted to be the non-Disney studio. Doing different types of things. And I can tell you right now... that what we were doing in viz dev... it WAS different. But... that said... it did raise suspicions with us when the first [CENSORED] movie that they were putting out... was nothing more than Disney Lite." No wonder near the end of production, the entire crew bailed to go work on The Prince of Egypt (actually, Warner Bros. lent DreamWorks their crew).

John Alvin's concept art for the film's poster.

Let's talk about the voices. Eric Idle stated on Twitter that he and Don Rickles "ad-libbed for days", but for some reason, the filmmakers "didn't use a single line". Do those recordings still exist? I'd like to hear those ad-libs. Christopher Reeve was originally supposed to voice either King Arthur or Merlin, but eventually was unavailable to record new dialogue. According to Darlie Brewster, Garrett was originally going to be voiced by Jared Harris - his readings were incredible and he fleshed out the character, but for some reason he got replaced by Cary Elwes. As for the voice of Ruber, Gary Oldman... TV Tropes claims that he was drinking alcohol while in the recording booth and would record his lines drunk. Take that with a grain of salt.

How did Warner Bros. promote the film? Boy howdy did they make merchandise: dolls, video games, books, you name it. Toys were included in Wendy's Kids Meals. There were tie-ins with Tyson Chicken, Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay, Kodak, and Act II popcorn. Devon and Cornwall hosted the Kids' WB Saturday morning lineup on May 9th (Eric Idle reprised his role as Devon for it, Maurice LaMarche filled in for Don Rickles as the voice of Cornwall). Six Flags Great Adventure received a live show called Quest For Camelot Nights, which featured live characters, fireworks, pyrotechnics, and water effects.

From left to right: Garrett, Kayley, Devon, Cornwall, Merlin, and...
I'm not sure who that guy in blue behind Kayley is. King Arthur?

When the film was released, it wound up being a flop - the budget was forty million dollars and it only made $38.1 million at the box office. Why? After all, being a poorly-recieved movie isn't enough for a film to flop. Otherwise that live action Smurfs movie from 2011 wouldn't have become a hit. I don't think it was solely because it was such a blatant Disney wannabe either... Don Bluth's Anastasia, which was released the previous year, was also a pretty blatant Disney wannabe and it did pretty well at the box office. Apparently, one of the reasons it didn't do better is because of the tie-in with Wendy's - the toys also gave tickets for adults to pay child admittance fees to see the film, which cut a lot of the profits in half.

And as a result, Warner Bros. completely gave up on the idea of doing theatrical animated films. The three films they still had in production - The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action - were basically sabotaged like Cats Don't Dance was, given little advertising and crappy release dates. Whatever plans they had for animated films after that were all scrapped: an adaptation of The Snow Queen, King Tut, Arrow, the list goes on. Apparently, there were also plans for sequels to Quest For Camelot, based on Vera Chapman's books The Green Knight and King Arthur's Daughter, but those got scrapped too. Oh, and there was also going to be a touring live production debuting at Six Flags Fiesta Texas and then traveling to different renaissance fairs in the United States, but that got the axe as well. On the bright side, Six Flags Great Adventure's Quest For Camelot Nights stuck around for four years because it was pretty popular.

Presented by Tyson Chick'n Chunks!

So, basically, it's another case of the higher-ups at a movie studio having no idea what they were doing and then refusing to admit they were at fault when the film underperforms. Did Quest For Camelot deserve to bomb? I'm not sure. Even if the movie itself isn't great, I think its flopping did more harm to the theatrical animation industry than good, and I don't think the movie itself is that bad - far worse animated movies have been box office hits (I haven't seen either of the Minions movies, but somehow I doubt they're better than Quest For Camelot). Then again, if it HAD been a success, then Warner Bros. would have basically been "validated" in their meddling with the movie and made sure all of their post-Iron Giant animated films were just like it. Boy, this is a double-edged sword (no pun intended), isn't it?

Ah well. At least Eric Idle had fun working on it.

Sources:
- https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-05-26-ca-6143-story.html
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeCFeEuyzFk
- https://variety.com/1997/film/news/warner-bros-searches-for-boxoffice-grail-111662043/

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Dawn of the Croods"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

The Croods isn't exactly one of DreamWorks' more popular movies. It was released during that brief time period in the 2010s where DreamWorks' animated films were more often than not box office bombs - however, unlike most of DreamWorks' releases during that time, this one actually did well at the box office. And this was also the same time period where DreamWorks was teaming up with Netflix to do shows based on their animated movies. Shows like Turbo: F.A.S.T., All Hail King Julien, The Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show, even Home got a show for Netflix at one point. You can see where I'm going with this, right?

And so, Dawn of the Croods premiered on Christmas Eve 2015 on Netflix. The show took place before the events of the movie, detailing the adventures of the Crood family in the valley where they lived before they met Ryan Reynolds' character Guy. Fifty-two episodes were produced.

According to the show's producer, Brendan Hay, "I loved how [The Croods] managed to carefully balance a modern, relatable family dynamic between characters with a caveman's point of view. I love The Flintstones, but it was always about transporting the modern world's conveniences into its time period. The Croods took the time to create an experience based on how a cave family would live, which surprisingly hasn't been done that often, at least for comedy. The only condition going in was that Dawn of the Croods had to be a prequel, because the next feature film is going to be a sequel. So my thinking went into what the first family sitcom in history might be like. There's a sentence in The Croods' prologue where Eep explained that they used to have neighbors, which sounded like a fun world, so we decided to build that out. What would be The Croods' version of The Simpsons' Springfield? If we put them into situations that modern families like ours understand and take for granted, how weird, strange, or funny could it be?"

The show differs from the film in a few ways. First of all, it's 2D as opposed to CGI. The crew wanted the show to have a cartoonish look, but it's really hard to do cartoony squash-and-stretch in CGI on a television show's budget. Second, all of the characters have been recast because the celebrities who voiced them in the movie were likely too busy or too expensive to do the show. So, instead of Emma Stone we have Stephanie Lemelin as teenage cavegirl Eep (not the first time - she previously did Eep's voice for a video game), Dan Milano of Robot Chicken fame instead of Nicholas Cage as her father Grug, Cree Summer instead of Catherine Keener as her mother Ugga, AJ LoCascio instead of Clark Duke as her dimwitted younger brother Thunk, Grey DeLisle-Griffin instead of sound designer Randy Thorn as the rambunctious baby of the family Sandy, and Laraine Newman instead of Cloris Leachman as wisecracking grandma Gran.

I've never watched a single episode of this show before, but I did like The Croods (and I thought its 2020 sequel was pretty good too) and find DreamWorks' 2010s Netflix shows to generally be pretty good. So let's take a look at Dawn of the Croods and see if it's a fun show or if it's a blast from the past that should have just stayed in the past. We're reviewing the tenth episode of the second season and the twenty-third episode overall, which consists of the segments "Croodtopia" and "Hands on a Hard Egg". Why an episode of the second season? Because I've noticed that I usually review an episode of a show's FIRST season and I feel like it's becoming a bit repetitive. Let's get started.

"Croodtopia" begins with Eep, like all cartoon teenage girls, whining about how her parents never let her do anything fun. In this case, Grug and Ugga are telling her and Thunk to stop licking rocks - wow, if this is what cavepeople considered to be a fun activity, thank goodness they invented things like bicycles and televisions.

In the movie, Ugga wasn't a redhead, she was a brunette. In hindsight, it's a little
weird that Eep was a redhead when in the movie both of her parents were brunettes...
maybe the colorists thought so too?

The reason why Grug and Ugga don't want their kids licking rocks is because there's a case of something called "the Sneezles" going around. If you get "the Sneezles", your nose leaks out, your stomach does somersaults, and your boogers turn purple. Grug demonstrates all of these symptoms, so I wonder if HE'S been licking rocks too...

"Ugh, there's nothing more disgusting than getting barfed on by Grimace..."

Now that Grug has the Sneezles and Ugga and Gran have been sneezed on by him, there's only one thing for Eep, Thunk and Sandy to do: leave the cave until they've got the Sneezles out of their systems. A few seconds later, they run into their pals Lerk (also Grey DeLisle-Griffin) and Womp (also Dan Milano). All five revel in their newfound freedom - with the parents not around, they can do whatever they want. They can go swimming, watch animals fight like professional wrestlers (complete with a "pro wrestling is fake" joke)...

A scene from the long-awaited WWE/Where the Wild Things Are crossover.

Eventually, the kids come to a disagreement. They're hungry, and Eep and Lerk want to hunt a tasty-looking mosquitoad, one of the many bizarre animals that live in their world... so, is the Croods' valley just a prehistoric version of the Land of Wuz? Is this show a prequel to The Wuzzles? That's my new headcanon.

Since he's part-bug and part-toad, he lives in a constant state of turmoil regarding
whether or not he should eat himself.

"I'm not in the mood for mosquitoad. How about spike-apples?" Thunk suggests. Womp agrees, he's not so much a huntER as a huntEE. "Fine. You do what you want, I'll do what I want, and Sandy... do what Sandy wants," Eep tells them. And what Sandy wants to do is chase after a cross between a chicken and a fish.

Look, it's a literal Chicken of the Sea!

Thunk and Womp head for a tree bearing spikeapples, which are apples with spikes sticking out of them (which sounds dangerous to eat, doesn't it?). Because Thunk is an idiot, he winds up having three of them FALL INTO HIS EYEBALLS. Ouch! That's not funny, that's just painful! Meanwhile, Eep and Lerk's attempt at hunting the mosquitoad (they throw rocks at it) is a total wash too, which Eep blames Thunk for. For some reason. She's so mad that she draws a line in the sand and we do the "This is my side, and that is YOUR side" cliche.

"This side's the best! That side STINKS! You're on the JERSEY side of this cesspool!"

More problems arise. Eep and Lerk are promptly attacked by what looks like a cross between a vulture and a dinosaur, while Thunk and Womp are chased by a moler bear... you can probably guess which animals THAT is a fusion of. Once they're dealt with, Eep and Thunk start arguing again, and then the chicken-fish... or, as the characters call it, a Chickuna... shows up and they get into a tug-of-war over it. Then Sandy appears, grabs the Chickuna in her mouth and runs up a tree with it. Seeing their sister in danger, Eep and Thunk realize that working together is good or whatever and save her through the power of teamwork... and then all three of them fall out of the tree, but it's a cartoon, so of course they survive.

That night, the three Crood kids arrive back at their cave and beg Grug and Ugga to tell them what to do, much to their confusion. Then Sandy sneezes at the camera, covering it with purple glop. Uh oh, she's got the Sneezles!

Our next segment, "Hands on a Hard Egg", begins with Grug, Thunk, and Eep ready to eat. Fortunately, Ugga has something for them to munch on: sticks! Because... I guess she now thinks that they're beavers.

Ugga's homemade "fish sticks" leave a lot to be desired.

Why sticks? Because there's a food shortage going on - the trees aren't growing fruit and prey is scarce. Because there's not enough prey to go around, Eep points out to Grug that he'll probably need some extra help to find it, wink wink, nudge nudge. Grug is all "No, you're too young to help me hunt!" and then goes flying into a pile of rocks, which (since this is a cartoon) does NOT crack his skull open like a coconut but rather sends all the rocks flying, revealing a giant egg. And upon seeing that giant egg, all of the cavepeople in the valley are suddenly craving omelets.

"POACHED!"

"FRIED!"

"SCRAMBLED!"

"SUNNY SIDE UP!"

"OVER EASY!"

Since they all grabbed the egg at the same time, they decide to have a little contest: whoever takes their hand off the egg is disqualified, and whoever's remaining after everyone else has taken their hand - or some other body part - off the egg gets it. I think people actually have contests like this, but it's usually for a new car or something. Not a giant egg. Mostly because giant eggs are very hard to find nowadays (maybe if moas weren't extinct...). And in case you're wondering, no, I have never taken part in any of these contests. I don't even drive, what would I want with a new car?

This isn't as easy as it sounds. First, it gets really hot. Then, when the sun sets, it gets really cold. By morning, the first caveperson has dropped out, and then a Chris Parnell-voiced caveperson decides it's not worth it and walks away while he still has his dignity... off a cliff, where he is promptly mauled by a moler bear.

Meanwhile, back at Casa Del Crood, Thunk and Ugga are trying to get Sandy to eat. But she's not a fan of eating sticks, and Thunk's most recent attempt at feeding her results in her hallucinating that he's a rejected Wuzzle.

"Two kinds of fun, wrapped up and rolled into one..."

Eventually, Eep falls asleep, and when she wakes up, she discovers that she's the only one still holding the egg. Did everyone else leave? Nope - the egg is alive, and it's carnivorous! And now it's going to eat HER! Boy, this episode took a dark turn all of a sudden...

Talk about a rotten egg.

Despite Eep's efforts to gnaw her arm off, she is promptly eaten by the sentient egg. Just kidding - she's just dreaming about the egg being alive. She really needs to stop taking acid if this is what her dreams are like.

When Eep wakes up, Grug advises her to just go home... only for Eep to trick him into taking his hand off the egg. Mind games: they're so easy even a caveman can do them. I'm sure everyone's going to get THAT reference, right? It's not dated at all, is it? Surely everybody reading my blog remembers that ad campaign, don't they?

Now it's down to Eep and her teacher, Squawk (Dee Bradley Baker), who like all teachers (in cartoons, I mean. Most of my teachers were nice) is a master at torture. Can Eep endure his incredibly long spiels about the history of wet dirt? Maybe if she holds the egg over her head and runs around with it, dragging Squawk along for the ride...

Wow, Squawk is much stronger than he looks...

After some WHACKY SHENANIGANS, Eep winds up the winner of the contest and brings the egg home for everyone to eat. They don't cook it, of course - they just crack it open and help themselves to the yolk. Except Sandy. She actually likes eating sticks now, and after hallucinating that Ugga is Groot's sister, she decides to eat HER. The episode ends with her lunging at the camera while Ugga screams. I know Ugga's presence in the movie, with this show being a prequel and all, makes it clear that Sandy did not actually eat her, but that's the indication I'm getting here.

Actually, maybe she DID eat Ugga and the Ugga in the movie is a different caveperson. It would explain the different hair colors...

What's the Verdict?

As far as cartoons based on DreamWorks movies go, this isn't as good as The Penguins of Madagascar or The Adventures of Puss in Boots (note to self: review that show at some point), but it's much better than Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness or that crappy Monsters vs. Aliens show they had on Nickelodeon. I think the main problem is that so much of it is focused on Eep and Thunk, who to be honest aren't super-engaging characters. Eep is your typical rebellious teenage girl, and Thunk is basically just a typical cartoon dumb guy. Regardless, this show is genuinely quite funny, the animation is pretty good, the voice actors are giving it their all, as a whole the show's pros outweigh its cons and I found it enjoyable. If you like the movie, you'll probably like Dawn of the Croods. If you haven't seen the movie, I'd recommend watching it first and THEN checking out the show.

Oh, by the way, another Croods show taking place after the second movie came out in 2021. It's called The Croods: Family Tree. It wasn't on Netflix, it was on Hulu and Peacock. Unlike this show, it was CGI. Once again, they didn't get Nicholas Cage, Emma Stone, Catherine Keener etc. back, but for some reason the only actor to reprise their role from THIS show was AJ LoCascio (Ryan Reynolds didn't reprise his role either, Guy was now voiced by Darin Brooks from Days of Our Lives). I remember watching one episode and finding it mediocre. Maybe I'll do a review of it too, maybe I won't, we'll just have to wait and see. It got eight seasons (same number of episodes, though), so clearly SOMEBODY must have liked it...

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Bravestarr"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

Filmation shut down in 1989. I'm not one hundred percent sure why the animation studio went under, but from my understanding, it has to do with its sale to Paravision International, which was part of L'Oreal... yes, the guys that make lipstick and shampoo. I have no idea how they wound up the owners of an animation studio. They didn't have any intent of producing new animated shows, they just wanted Filmation's pre-existing library and shut them down. Apparently, what also played a factor was Filmation's decision to start making unofficial sequels to Disney movies. They managed to make two - a sequel to Pinocchio and a sequel to Snow White - and were planning on doing unofficial sequels to Cinderella, Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book, and Alice in Wonderland as well, but Disney caught wind of what they were up to and sued them. Filmation's justification was that these stories were mostly public domain and existed before Disney's adaptations, so technically it wasn't copyright infringement, but it was obvious what they were up to - Disney knew that they specifically wanted to trick people into believing that they were official sequels to Disney's adaptations.

Before Filmation's shutdown, however, they managed to get one more show out there. That show was called Bravestarr.

How was Bravestarr created? Apparently, the villain of the show, Tex Hex, was originally designed as a character for Filmation's Ghostbusters cartoon (we'll look at that show another time). The studio's founder, Lou Scheimer, liked the character so much that he suggested giving him his own show. The result: a show that aired in syndication from September 1987 to February 1988, with a total of sixty-five episodes.

Bravestarr combined the science fiction and western genres. The show took place on a planet called New Texas, whose chief export was a red mineral called Kerium. Tex Hex (voiced by Charlie Adler) and his gang want to get their hands on as much Kerium as possible. Fortunately, Marshall Bravestarr (voiced by Patrick Fraley) and his horse Thirty-Thirty (voiced by Ed Gilbert) are there to make sure they don't succeed. Raised by a mystic shaman creatively named Shaman (also Ed Gilbert), Bravestarr could call upon the power of "spirit animals" to do superhuman feats - "Eyes of the Hawk" for great eyesight, "Ears of the Wolf" for fantastic hearing, "Strength of the Bear" for super-strength, and "Speed of the Puma" for the ability to run so fast that he makes Speedy Gonzales look like Regular Gonzales.

I've never seen a single full episode of Bravestarr before - it went off the air long before I was born, and I never got any of the DVDs nor did I watch the reruns on Qubo or Retro Television. But what luck, you can find full episodes on YouTube! We'll be watching the tenth episode of the show, "Kerium Fever", to see if Bravestarr is worth checking out or not.

We start off in a canyon that looks like it was constructed in a game of Tetris before zooming in on the tiny town of Fort Kerium, where Bravestarr calls home. He's hanging out with his deputy, Fuzz (also Charlie Adler), a member of a species called the Prairie People - not quite humans, not quite prairie dogs, but something in-between. There's something about Fuzz that gives me the creeps. I can't put my finger on what, but I think it has to do with the fact that he looks too human to be an animal but too animal-like to be human. It's an Uncanny Valley sort of thing.

Do you remember that other 1980s cartoon The Littles? They're who Fuzz reminds me of.

A guy named Zeke shows up, and after a bit of dialogue between him and Bravestarr, he heads into the local cantina for a glass of "sweetwater" - a pink lemonade-resembling liquid and the most popular drink in New Texas. Unfortunately, since nobody in Fort Kerium has much in the way of money, he and the other bargoers have to share one glass of the stuff. I sure hope none of them have a head cold.

So THIS is where Dreamfinder wound up after getting kicked out of EPCOT...

"If we don't scratch some kerium soon, we gonna end up drinkin' lizard milk!" somebody complains. And do you know how difficult it is to milk a lizard? This is apparently the longest New Texas has been without somebody finding kerium. This is probably why it's a bad idea to base your entire planet's economy on one mineral.

Suddenly, in walk two more half-munchkin half-rodent creatures, and THEY have enough kerium to pay for some sweetwater. Upon seeing it, Zeke's eyes do this:

Well, that's not creepy at all, is it?

The bargoers demand to know where the Prairie People got the kerium, but because they say it in a very threatening manner, the Prairie People get scared and run out of the cantina. The bargoers give chase, but are promptly stopped by Bravestarr, Thirty-Thirty, Fuzz, and a character I didn't mention before: Judge J.B. McBride (Susan Blu), Fort Kerium's principal judge and lawyer and Bravestarr's possible love interest.

It weirds me out that the horse has fingers. Especially since his feet are regular hooves...

"We're starvin' and those got critters got Kerium and they ain't even human!" one of the bargoers snaps. "They don't need Kerium! Kerium's for REAL people!" another one declares. Ouch, science fiction racism. The bargoers draw their weapons, but Bravestarr ain't having any of that and uses "Strength of the Bear" to destroy their guns. But he doesn't arrest them, instead he just tells them to buzz off. Thirty-Thirty says that they've got Kerium Fever (hence the name of the episode), which makes folks go crazy. Kind of like politics, except with less arguing on the internet.

"They've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"

Unfortunately, somebody ELSE knows about the Prairie People's supply of Kerium too - a spy for Tex Hex. His name is Cactus Head (also Patrick Fraley), so called because he wears a cactus for a hat, and he scampers back to Tex Hex's domain of the Badlands to fill him in as to what's going on. Tex Hex, of course, declares that he will steal it.

"Right after I find mah dentures!"

I should probably also introduce you to Tex Hex's other two henchmen. The one on Cactus Head's left who looks like the Mad Hatter and Madame Mim had a son who went down a dark path is Outlaw Scuzz (Alan Oppenheimer), a cousin of Fuzz and the only Prairie Person to be EEEEEEEE-VIL! And the tall robot with some sort of weapon for a hand and the snazzy yellow jacket is Thunderstick (Patrick Fraley again). Not pictured are the two other members of Tex Hex's gang, a red "sand walrus" that looks more reptillian than pinniped named Sandstorm (Lou Scheimer himself) who can spew sand out of his mouth and a snake woman named Vipra (also Susan Blu).

You wouldn't want to run into these three in a dark alley. Well, except maybe Scuzz - you
could probably just pull his hat down over his eyes and make a run for it.

To make sure Bravestarr is out of their hair, Tex Hex summons a little helicopter-y robot to spy on the people of Fort Kerium. And what does he find out? That those three bargoers are determined to find the Prairie People's supply of Kerrium, even if they risk igniting the wrath of Bravestarr. In fact, when Bravestarr walks into the cantina, they straight-up tell him that they're gonna make the Prairie People tell them where they found the Kerrium. They're not very smart, are they?

"Those stupid prospectors are gonna help me dig that Kerrium!" Tex Hex snarls. How? Because they're gonna declare war on the Prairie People. But first, we cut back to Fuzz moping about how those big meanies called his kind "critters", which is apparently some sort of racial slur. "You see, when things go wrong, some people just have to blame others. And they usually pick on somebody who can't protect himself," Bravestarr explains to him. Don't I know it, Bravestarr. Don't ANYONE who spends a lot of time on the internet nowadays know it.

Just then, Bravestarr hears the alarm from J.B.'s office going off. What looks like a Prairie Person burst into her office and holds her at gunpoint. I thought Scuzz was the only Prairie Person to be EEEEEEEEEEE-VIL.

"All this just because I said that your Jawa costume could 'use some work'?!"

Another Prairie Person appears to do battle with Bravestarr, Fuzz, and Thirty-Thirty while J.B. is kidnapped (because of course it's the GIRL who gets kidnapped, right? Prairie People are so sexist). Even with his "Speed of the Puma", Bravestarr can't stop them. "What nerve! Those blasted little critters took J.B.!" he snaps... right in front of Fuzz, who he knows considers the word "critters" to be a very hurtful Prairie Person racial slur.

To be fair, though, Bravestarr apologizes to Fuzz and assures him that he didn't mean what he said - he's not even convinced those guys were REAL Prairie People. But Zeke and those other two bargoers are convinced that they were indeed and that clearly all Prairie People are the scum of the Earth... er, the scum of New Texas... and that Bravestarr is a fool for defending them.

The two phony Prairie People send Bravestarr a message demanding that the humans deliver all the Kerium in town to them or they'll keep J.B. prisoner forever. So what do Zeke and the other two bargoers (maybe the names of the other two were revealed in another episode, I don't know) do? They say that they're going to drive them pesky varmints into the Badlands. I guess they're thinking that if they do, Tex Hex will eat them or something?

It's really hard to take a buff horse seriously. I keep wondering if he takes Horse Steroids.

"If I need you're help, I'LL ASK FOR IT," Bravestarr says, then he rides off on Thirty-Thirty to save the day. Meanwhile, in the Badlands, we get an explanation for why those Prairie People kidnapped J.B. - they're not real Prairie People, they're robots built by Tex Hex to make Prairie People look bad!

Wouldn't it make more sense to just use Scuzz? He's an actual Prairie Person and
the only one who happens to be EEEEEEEEEEE-VIL, after all...

They also have J.B. bound and gagged. Just wait until DeviantArt becomes a thing, J.B., you'll be having this happen to you more often. In fact, the reason why I'm not including a screencap of it is because I don't want to give the folks on that site ideas. Fortunately, J.B. is able to free herself from the ropes binding her via a convenient blast of light from the sun.

Back in Fort Kerium, Zeke and the other two bargoers - y'know what, I'm gonna call them Zeb and Zack - are REALLY getting paranoid, believing that Bravestarr wants all the Kerium for himself. So they decide to go out there and lay waste to the Prairie People themselves. Then we cut to the interior of the cantina, where some guy is talking to the bartender, Handlebar (also Alan Oppenheimer), about how in the past, whenever there was tension between the humans and the natives, the humans got blamed because there were less of them. J.B. sees this on the TV screen that Tex Hex was using to spy on the bargoers earlier with his helicopter-y robot - which Handlebar swats before she can hear them discuss how much Bravestarr has the hots for her. Sorry, J.B., your "will they or won't they?" thing with Bravestarr continues.

Also, Handlebar kind of sounds like ALF.

Tex Hex spots Zeke, Zeb, and Zack flying to the Prairie People's land on their motorcycle/robotic snails and gets all giddy. His plan is working perfectly... or at least it would be if J.B. weren't escaping. Fortunately for him, he can conjure up a vehicle of his own to give chase. He can also bring the bones of Broncosaurus (which seem to be some sort of bull/dinosaur hybrid animals... even though "bronco" generally refers to a horse, but maybe they couldn't think of a bovine-related pun) to life and have them attack her.

"I'd love to eat you, but I can't because I don't have a digestive tract. So instead, how about
I just stand here menacingly and hope you don't fly away?"

As luck would have it, Bravestarr and Thirty-Thiry show up and see J.B. being chased by the Broncosaur fossil and save her with the help of Bravestarr's magic lasso presumably on loan from Wonder Woman. Then, when Tex Hex shows up, Bravestarr shouts "STRENGTH OF THE BEAR!" and conjures up an axe, which he promptly throws at Tex Hex's vehicle, destroying it. "ANOTHER TIME, BRAVESTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!" Tex Hex roars before he vanishes. Now they just need to figure out how to stop Zeke, Zeb and Zack...

[Please start singing "Ride of the Valkyries" in a stereotypical cartoon prospector voice
while looking at this screencap]

Before the three lunatics can commit Prairie Peoplecide, Bravestarr and J.B. arrive to tell them that the Prairie People who kidnapped her were actually Tex Hex's robots. And then one of them just nonchalantly says, "Oops." Funniest moment in the episode by far.

Zeke, Zeb, and Zack feel guilty about their racism towards the Prairie People and apologize. But what's this? Fuzz is holding a gun, and he looks MAD. I'll be honest, I legitimately thought for a second that Fuzz was going to murder them, but of course he doesn't do that - instead, he uses the gun to blast a nearby rock, revealing that there's Kerium in it.

"This is the stuff they make Ring Pops out of!"

The episode ends with Bravestarr and the Shaman sitting around a campfire, discussing the moral of the episode: when things go wrong, don't just put the blame on someone else willy-nilly. Otherwise a crazy zombie in cowboy duds will take advantage of your prejudice and you'll learn a valuable lesson, after which you'll get what you wanted in the first place... okay, so the execution wasn't perfect.

What's the Verdict?

Evil cowboy zombies, buff horses, skeleton bull/dinosaur hybrids, a voice cast including people like Pat Fraley and Charlie Adler... why on Earth is Bravestarr not more popular? Seriously, why hasn't this gotten a reboot or something by now? I think the show's being made by Filmation probably scares people away - we tend to associate Filmation with cheap animation and corniness. But, as any fan of Hanna-Barbera can tell you, just because the animation isn't great doesn't necessarily mean that something is bad. Good writing can make up for lousy animation. And yeah, it's one of THOSE shows that lures you in with action and then shoves a moral in your face (there's also an episode about drugs, for example), but sometimes a moral needs to be taught. In today's world, I think the lesson of not blaming an entire race, nationality, etc. for the actions of one person, or something completely out of their control, is pretty important.

So, yeah. I recommend checking out Bravestarr. Like I said, you can find full episodes on YouTube. Go in with an open mind and you might find yourself liking it.

Further reading:
- Nothing But Cartoons' review of another episode
- An article about the show's development from 1986

This review is brought to you by...

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That's where Rocko's Modern Life Insurance enters the picture. Despite the name, it's not solely for life insurance, it's for all kinds of insurance: auto insurance, travel insurance, home insurance, you name it. Who we are is driven to be the best, helping people live a better way of modern life. At Rocko's Modern Life Insurance, we make sure that you're paid the money you're owed and you can step outside your O-Town home and say, "Hello, world! I'm prepared for whatever you throw my way*!"

So call up Rocko's Modern Life Insurance and you'll be in good hands, like those of a good neighbor who can protect what matters most. And maybe consider ditching that fat steer you pal around with while you're at it. That turtle is a much better best friend. He is the best character on the show.

* Rocko's Modern Life Insurance does not guarantee that you will be prepared for literally every single thing the world throws your way. So, for example, if you get captured by a crazy sausage-worshipping cult who tie you to a post and decide to chuck bowling balls at your head (even though the Book of Bratwurst specifically says "If there be one among you who does not follow the way of the Schnitzel, let that one go and do NOT throw bowling balls at them." - it's a matter of interpretation), we can't help you with that. We're not miracle workers.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Almost Naked Animals"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the show I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this show, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

This is another one of those shows were just the name was enough to make me say "no thank you". Well, that and the character designs. Animals tend to be a lot less appealing-looking when they're hairless. Unless they're a species that's not known for having hair, like reptiles and amphibians, I mean.

Almost Naked Animals is the creation of Noah Z. Jones, and if that name sounds familiar, it's because he is also the creator of a cartoon that I've previously reviewed on my blog, Fish Hooks. THIS show, produced by 9 Story Media Group, premiered on YTV in January 2011, then started airing on Cartoon Network here in the U.S. a few months later.

The premise? A bunch of animals have their fur shaved off for whatever reason, and the only clothes they wear are their undergarments. I suppose we should give them credit for wearing something at all, seeing as most animals walk around au naturel. Led by a cheery, not particularly intelligent dog named Howie (voiced by Robert Tinkler), the animals run a hotel called the Banana Cabana. WHACKY SHENANIGANS ensue from there.

Almost Naked Animals is generally regarded as being one of the worst - if not THE worst - Canadian imports to air on Cartoon Network in the 2010s. However, the show did receive praise from People Magazine and Common Sense Media, as well as a Gemmy Award nomination and pretty high ratings. There was merchandise, up to and including toys in Taco Bell kids' meals. And do you know how many seasons were produced? THREE - that might not seem like much, but most of the cartoons that I've reviewed on this site are lucky enough to even get TWO (The Buzz on Maggie deserved better!).

So what was it about Almost Naked Animals that made it such a hit (sort of)? Why don't we watch the show and find out? We'll be watching the twelfth episode of the show, which consists of the segments "Cool Paw Howie" and "S.S. Banana Cabana". Against my better judgment, this is Almost Naked Animals.

NOTE: I didn't find out until after I posted this that Mr. Enter did a review of this very same episode. Any similarities between my review and his review are entirely coincidental.

It's a beautiful day at the Banana Cabana, but instead of having fun in the sun, Howie and his friends Octo the Octopus (voiced by Howard Jerome) and Bunny the creatively named bunny (voiced by Emilie-Claire Barlow) are watching TV. Octo is the overly cautious desk clerk of the hotel, whereas Bunny is the activity planner who has mood swings. Neither of them share Howie's enthusiasm for watching the Open Fridge Network (even though it's "Mustard Week").

Odd that Bunny can't be bothered to put on any clothes other than her underwear, but can be
bothered to put on makeup. Is she an escapee from one of those places that tests makeup on rabbits?

Eventually, Howie comes across an ad that encourages viewers to turn their home or business into a prison. Because who WOULDN'T want to run a prison? Surely that's not an absolutely soul-crushing job.

This ad gives us the first genuinely funny joke in the episode: they show a snake in prison, complaining that he wants to talk to his lawyer... and then he just slips through the bars with ease, because A) he doesn't have limbs and B) the bars are pretty widely-spaced (apparently whoever built this prison didn't count on a snake being thrown in there at some point) and leaves.

I didn't know snakes had belly buttons (or little hairs sticking out, for that matter).

Howie practically wets his underpants at the thought of turning the Banana Cabana into a prison. He could call it the "Banana Slamma" - actually, maybe not. That could earn him a phone call from Donkey Kong's lawyers. But before he can actually make it a prison, he needs to get it inspected by a chicken who I guess acts as some sort of prison building inspector. Even though he claims that there are too many "escape areas", curiously NOT mentioning that Howie's stupidity would make him a lousy prison warden, they DO have a group of prisoners that need housing. In they walk, and...

...these guys are prisoners? They look more like tourists. Well, I guess the badger's a little shifty-looking. Maybe he robbed a bank or two at some point.

Why do ALL of the animals have little hairs sticking out after being shaved?
Shouldn't the penguin have little feathers sticking out instead?

Actually, CAN you shave something that's covered with feathers? Wouldn't that
actually be, like, plucking the feathers off one by one?

Anyway, Howie doesn't seem to quite understand how a prison works, because he still describes it as though it were a hotel. I suppose now it's just a hotel that you need to have committed a crime to get reservations for? And these prisoners seem a lot less like tough criminals and more like massive trolls. In fact, according to the chicken, they were thrown in prison for being super annoying. That's against the law? I guess Pinkie Pie, Newton from Ned's Newt, and Monkeybone all have to do jail time, then...

I really don't like looking at the characters' exposed belly buttons.

After gluing Octo to his desk and listening to Howie recite a list of rules that turn out to actually be his to-do list (are you laughing yet? I'm not), the prisoners walk off. Howie assigns everyone their roles and starts doing "warden stuff". One montage later, everyone except Howie is fed up with the criminals... particularly the anteater's shtick of gluing people to things... and want to go back to running a hotel. Howie insists that they just need to give it a chance... until he finds out that the anteater glued him to his sandwich. Then he agrees that the prisoners have got to go.

Did you know that anteaters don't have teeth? I guess this guy must be wearing
dentures.

So they call up the chicken and ask him how they can close the jail is if all of the prisoners escape. Well, that shouldn't be too hard, right? Between Howie being an idiot, the anteater's habit of gluing people to things, the badger probably being able to distract them all by being annoying while the others make a run for it, and the fact that security in this "jail" seems to be nil, they could probably escape without a problem. Oh, wait, there is ONE problem - the anteater, cow, badger, and penguin don't want to escape. They like it at the Banana Cabana. Howie assumes that this is because he's been too good of a warden. Clearly he must get himself thrown into his own "prison" and then lead the escape himself if he wants the prisoners to escape!

Makes sense to ME, I don't know why YOU'RE confused...

"Maybe you should change the wi-fi password. They'd probably leave if they didn't have
free wi-fi."

"Nah, they probably have cellular data..."

So how is Howie going to get himself thrown in his own jail? Simple - he'll do what the cow, badger, anteater, and penguin did and act tremendously annoying. There are many ways he can do that: make that irritating tongue-clicking sound that really gets on my nerves, sing at the top of his lungs, go online and badmouth Hanna-Barbera while gushing over how Jellystone! is such a fantastic "love letter" to it and a "perfect modernization" of the characters, be Adam Devine, drive very slowly on the highway when there's a lot of other cars behind him, go see Disney's newest live action remake in theaters and increase the chances of it becoming a hit at the box office (encouraging Disney to make even MORE of them), get a Twitter account, mindlessly parrot Mr. Enter's opinions about cartoons... but instead, he decides to pelt Bunny with chocolate pudding. Bunny claims that this isn't as annoying as you'd think. Really? If somebody walked up to ME and threw chocolate pudding in my face, I'd probably find it irritating. But what do I know? Nobody's ever actually done that to me.

Side note, it's a good thing that Howie didn't EAT the pudding. Chocolate is toxic to dogs.

It's toxic to rabbits, too, which means Howie is essentially trying to murder Bunny.
Now THAT should get him thrown in prison for sure.

"If anyone knows how to be annoying, it's YOU," Bunny tells Howie. I do love when the characters in the show that I'm reviewing make the jokes for me. Despite this, none of the annoying things that Howie does - shouting out spoilers, tripping people, letting the air out of somebody's pool raft - are apparently considered annoying enough to get him thrown in the slammer. The solution? Howie goes HYPER-ANNOYING, pulling such mischief as replacing everyone's dinner with garbage (except for a raccoon and a rat... he replaces the garbage THEY were going to eat with actual food) and picking up a mole and shoves him into the cow's pie. But apparently THAT'S not jail time-worthy either. It isn't until he makes the anteater drip his glue that he does something so annoying he gets thrown in his own jail.

Now to lead the escape, right? Nope. He doesn't have to: the cow, penguin, anteater, and badger are leaving on their own accord. Mission accomplished, I suppose.

I notice that there's a washing machine outside the hotel. Maybe that's why nobody
wears actual clothes - they're all in the wash!

Well, that was weak. Next segment!

This episode starts off with... the badger being back? This time he's a toilet salesman. I know this is probably meant to be a different character, but it sure LOOKS LIKE the badger from the previous segment. If so, nice to see that he cleaned up his act.

Judging from the hat he has on, he might also be a member of the OWCA from Phineas
and Ferb. I didn't know they sold toilets.

The badger suggests that Howie swap out his boring toilet for the Flushinator, the most advanced, powerful, and expensive on the planet. Howie buys all one hundred and eighty-seven units - one for each room at the hotel, presumably. And probably also one for himself - after all, he's a dog, and you know how much dogs love drinking out of the toilet...

Apparently, Howie also likes drinking the ink from pens.

After installing all of the toilets, Howie brushes off Octo's suggestion that they read the Flushinator's manual, which is full of warnings. By now, it should be obvious that Howie isn't exactly the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. He presses a big red button and wouldn't you know it? Things go wrong. The toilet starts sucking up almost everything in the room - what is it, a toilet or a vacuum cleaner?

Octo is terrified, but Howie is thrilled by the toilet's ability to suck up anything not tied down and keeps pressing that button over and over again. And that does a lot of damage to the pipes, which leads to this...

"I told you building a hotel on top of Old Faithful was an awful idea!"

The hotel is launched into the air and lands on top of the badger's rowboat. This, Mr. Badger, is why you do not give powerful things to complete idiots. Letting Howie have the Flushinator would be like giving nuclear missiles to Donald Trump.

Needless to say, everyone is quite surprised to discover the next morning that their hotel is floating in the ocean. Howie assumes that this is some sort of Waterworld-esque situation and all land on the planet has vanished. He's wrong, of course, but considering that the Flushinator has EXHAUST PIPES and that he bought one hundred and eighty-seven of them, I wouldn't be surprised if they contributed to global warming at all. Nice going, Howie, you've melted the polar ice caps!

Oh, and by the way, say hello to Sloth (voiced by Linda Kash). Her shtick is that she has the hots for Howie. Because, y'know, he's SUCH a catch.

What would the children look like?!

In Howie's mind, the Banana Cabana is now a cruise ship - or rather, a BOAT-tel. That lousy pun is from the episode, I swear I didn't make it up myself (I don't blame you for thinking that, though). Downside: the hotel's being tossed and turned by the waves makes everything slide around and makes everybody seasick... even the narwhal, which is ironic because he's a sea mammal. "We're a hotel, not a boat! This is unnatural!" Octo tells Howie, and besides, what if something goes wrong? Just as Howie is declaring that nothing could possibly go wrong, guess what happens? Something goes wrong. The house winds up shipwrecked on an island.

Well, this doesn't seem so bad. The hotel was already built on an island paradise, so all it really did was move. Downside Number Two promptly rears its ugly head, however, as Octo points out the nearby volcano.

If the Volcano Gods demand a sacrifice, I think I know who the others are going to
choose...

(HINT: he's the only character in this screencap)

After the initial "oh crap, we're stranded on a deserted island" reactions, everyone seems to settle into their new surroundings pretty well. But if you're in a cartoon and you've been stranded on a deserted island, what is the one thing you're likely to run into? I'll give you three guesses. Is it...

A) A tribe of natives wielding spears and wearing grass skirts
B) A dragon with five heads
OR C) Mike Myers?

For those of you who guessed A, congratulations!

I was about to complain about the crabs having those little hairs sticking out as well (and yes, I know it's really stupid to bring realism into a show with talking dogs and octopi in it, but still) but then I did some research and I found out that while crabs don't have HAIR, they DO have hair-like structures called setae (extensions of their exoskeleton) so maybe that's what those little "hairs" actually are? However, crabs do NOT, in fact, have NIPPLES.

The crabs, who like to channel the Yip-Yip Martians from Sesame Street, carry Octo off to be sacrificed to the volcano. They explain to Howie that if the volcano isn't happy, it'll erupt, and the only way to make it happy is by feeding it something with many legs. Now it's up to the others to rescue Octo with a foolproof plan: they will disguise themselves as a creature with even MORE legs than Octo has.

"Please don't question why all of my legs look different! I'm a freak of nature, herp-a-derp!"

He claims that he has fourteen legs, but as you can see, he only "has" nine legs, which is still more than Octo but not by much. Unless you count the tailfin (does that qualify as a pair of legs?), in which case he has eleven. Either way, the narwhal clearly isn't very good at math...

It works, the crabs release Octo... and then the others mess up their whole plan by revealing themselves under the grass skirt. As they make their escape, Howie tells Octo to do that thing octopuses are known to do - spray ink, of course.

I recall the crew of SpongeBob SquarePants stating in an interview that they were initially going to have Squidward spray ink, but it looked more like he was farting (Squidward did eventually wind up squirting ink in the Season 6 episode "Giant Squidward"). Looking at this... honestly, I can see their point.

"I really shouldn't have eaten at Arby's!"

Now they all just need to get off the island before the volcano erupts. They manage to get the hotel unstuck with the help of the Flushinator and "flush [their] way home", leaving the crabs to their fates on the island. I know they tried to sacrifice Octo and all, but you're not gonna let them escape with you? That's pretty cold.

Long story short, they get the hotel back home... just in time for Howie to install the new showerheads he bought and launch the roof back to the island. Huzzah.

What's the Verdict?

Y'know, it's not easy to review something bad that's desperately trying to make you laugh. There's only so many times you can say "This is not funny" before the review starts to get repetitive.

I'm gonna get right to the point: this show is bad. I will say in its defense that "S.S. Banana Cabana" was slightly better than "Cool Paw Howie"... it was still bad, but at least it was less boring. Every so often there's a funny joke, but they can't make up for the multiple other unfunny jokes the show throws at us. The characters? The only one with a personality to speak of is Howie, who isn't funny or charming at all. He's dumb and excitable, huzzah, never seen a cartoon dog like THAT before...

Just so we're clear, I'm not saying that Howie is a Dudley Puppy knockoff,
I just find them rather similar personality-wise (and species-wise, of course).

The other characters are just there to either slap their foreheads in response to Howie's stupidity or be even more obnoxious. And this is just a personal thing, but I really don't like the show's art style: staring at the characters' naked bodies (why do they all have nipples?!) is just gross. But even if it had been Fully Clothed Animals, I doubt the show would have worked. It's another cartoon that's mediocre at best, and I really don't think it's worth your time. Consider this my Hotels.com review for the Banana Cabana.

Oh, by the way... after this, Noah Z. Jones went on to create another show for Disney, Pickle and Peanut. I don't know if I'll be doing a review of that. It looked lousy to me, but I don't want to make it look like I'm picking on the guy. He did work on The 7D, which I personally think is pretty good, maybe I'll review THAT instead...