Let's Watch This: "Quackerz" (2016)

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 movieI am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

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

You can find a lot of crap on Amazon Prime Video. No, really - if you take a look at their kids' movies section, you'll find a lot of really, really bad animated films. Lotta direct-to-video schlock. Among the films on there are Go Fish!, The Star, Khumba, Rock-a-Doodle, Top Cat: The Movie, and even The OogieLoves (remember THAT movie?). On the bright side, you can find Madagascar 3 on there too.

The good news is, all of this direct-to-video schlock makes for great reviewing material for my blog. Case in point, it is on Amazon Prime Video that you can watch Quackerz.

Weird thing is, the film's director, Viktor Lakisov, doesn't seem to have directed much else... he's mainly a visual effects supervisor. Oh, and one of the film's writers was also one of the writers of that Pauly Shore Pinocchio movie.

Is the film good? Well, uh... how do I put this? It's for the birds. Why do I say that? Well, for one thing, it's an obvious pun. But why else? Let's find out, shall we?

The movie starts off with two ducks in a cage. Say hello to Longway (voiced by Robbie Daymond, no stranger to voicing ducks) and Commander Duckmus (Michael Gross). Longway is trying to get them out of that cage with... a tablet. Yep, this is a 2010s movie all right...

"I told you to get the most recent version of the iPad! But NOOOOOOOOOOOO, 'this one should
work just fine', you said..."

So why are these two birds in a cage? To answer that question, the film takes us back three days earlier... it's revealed that Longway is the son of an emperor duck. Just in case you couldn't tell that this duck is supposed to be Asian, he has a stereotypical Asian guy mustache and goatee. And is voiced by Enn Reitel, a Scottish actor. This is making me uncomfortable.

On the bright side, they resisted the urge to call him "Pee King Duck" or something
corny like that...

Asian Stereotype Duck spews out exposition about how they're Mandarin Ducks, they don't fly, and how they don't NEED to fly because they've got everything they want on their island. First of all, this is what Mandarin Ducks look like...

Tell me, do ANY of the ducks we've seen in the screencaps so far look like that? They had the opportunity to make really unique-looking cartoon ducks and instead we just get these yellow bowling pin-shaped guys. Second, Mandarin Ducks actually DO fly. Of course, if we want to bring realism into this, Mandarin Ducks don't TALK like the ones in this movie do either, so I guess it's kind of a nitpick.

"I wanna see the world!" Longway complains. He wants adventure in the great, wide somewhere... he wants it more than he can tell...

His wings actually being just normal arms with feathers sticking out from under them
freaks me out.

After Longway leaves, Emperor Duck talks to his advisor (Joshua J. Greene) about why he doesn't want his son to learn to fly. You see, he's the Sun Duck, and there's some sort of prophecy about how the Sun Duck will one day sacrifice themselves to stop the forces of darkness from shrinking the sun down to the size of a pea. And as we've established in our review of Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, extinguishing the sun would be bad. Sundial sales would plummet, for one thing.

In three days, it will be precisely one hundred years from the day that this was foretold, which means that the "Dark Messenger" will show up. Emperor Duck does not want his son to sacrifice himself, even though that's apparently the only thing stopping the "forces of darkness" from plunging the world into darkness. "It's all under control..." he claims. "I have the lanterns ready."

So, is there literally NO OTHER WAY to stop these "forces of darkness"? Why is Longway, who seemingly has no skills or character traits other than "plays a lot of video games", the only one who can save the day? Who wrote this prophecy anyhow?

Meanwhile, in a Chinese village...

I can't take my eyes off that neon yellow dog and cat. Everything else in this village has a
normal color scheme, it makes those two stick out like a sore thumb.

We get an unfunny scene with these two guys named Shina (Bruce Nozick) and Kianga (Jesse "Lefou" Corti) stealing buns from a baker and getting chased into a train tunnel which is supposedly abandoned but, oh wait, it's not abandoned after all. Stepping out of the approaching train is this lady.

This is our main villain, Ms. Knout (Alanna Ubach). She's looking for someone to take her to a condemned building. But enough about her, let's get back to the ducks.

Longway wants to learn how to fly. Unfortunately, there aren't any George Lopez-voiced toucans around to give him lessons (I know I already made that joke in my Holidaze review, but hey, if Garfield can recycle jokes, so can I), so he has to try and teach himself. Only problem is, he sucks at it. Then he sees these guys flying by...

"I don't know, but I've been told..."
"I DON'T KNOW, BUT I'VE BEEN TOLD..."
"Valiant is a much better movie!"
"VALIANT IS A MUCH BETTER MOVIE!"
"Wait, that doesn't rhyme."
"Shut up, Darryl..."

And among them is a guuuuuuuuuuuuurl duck who I'm sure is not supposed to be Longway's love interest.

Seriously, their wing-arms are freaking me out... couldn't you just give them regular wings?

Then "Who Let the Dogs Out" starts playing for some reason as the new ducks, led by Commander Duckmus from before, land. They think they're in Hawaii. The emperor duck shows up and tells them they're in China, but Duckmus doesn't believe him.

For those wondering, yes, the emperor duck does indeed have a name (if he didn't, I would've
told you so earlier). But eh, I'm just gonna call him "the emperor duck"...

"Our traditions oblige us to welcome all vagrant birds, especially the stupid and fat," the emperor duck says. But Duckmus winds up ticking him off, leading to the emperor duck attempting to go all Tae-Quack-Do on his tailfeathers.

"You gotta ask yourself... do I feel DUCKY? Well? Do ya, PUNK?"

After the fight, Emperor Duck runs off to "pump up the sun" (the sun is setting and he thinks he can push it down) and talks to the other Mandarin Ducks about how the new ducks are going to destroy all that is good on their island.

Then we cut back to the humans. Shina and Kianga try to steal gold from Ms. Knout's suitcase, but a police officer apprehends them, only for Ms. Knout to say that they're actually her pool boys. Why? Because she could use the thieves' help. And then the police officer starts beatboxing and rapping. Y'know, whenever I think this movie might not be as bad as I thought it would be, it throws something really cringe-worthy in my face.

After slamming the door on the police officer, Ms. Knout tells Tweedledee and Tweedledum that an extremely rare duck lives on an island. "Bring me this duck, and I will make you rich beyond your dreams," she claims.

"Uh, are you gonna tell us why you WANT this duck?"
"No. Just get it!"
"Okay..."

Meanwhile, Longway wants to fight the new ducks, but Emperor Duck is all "Nah, that's not necessary, go play your video games." So Longway heads back to his place. And then Duckmus' right-hand duck Duane (Robert D. Howard) throws the female duck from before in there as punishment for going AWOL earlier. This girl duck? Her name is Erica (Andrea Becker), she's Duckmus' daughter, and despite how clear he made it to Duane that he really didn't want to punish her and only agreed to it because he didn't want the other ducks to think he was soft, Duane tells her some crap about how he thinks his reputation is more important than his daughter.

So now that Erica and Longway are face to face, it's time for them to do some awkward getting to know each other as Longway shows her the secret way out of his room - through his toilet. Say, if Erica is Duckmus' daughter, how come she's clearly the same species of duck as Longway as opposed to a regular mallard like Duckmus? Is she adopted? Or maybe she's not the same species of duck as Longway and it's just the weird art style that's throwing me off.

Also, I'm just now realizing that Longway looks like a duck version of Sora from Kingdom Hearts. I've been racking my brain trying to think of who that hair reminds me of, and it JUST came to me. He looks like Sora!

I gotta give the filmmakers credit for casting a professional voice actor as Longway instead
of tossing the role over to some celebrity with a generic "pretty boy" voice (like with Bo from The Star).

Longway winds up angering Erica by saying insensitive things about her dad and her species. Then we see Dumb and Dumber in a boat, only for that police officer to show up and give chase again. This is another scene that's meant to be funny but isn't funny at all.

After getting away from the cop, Shina gets the idea to disguise a fish they caught as a duck and give it to Ms. Knout. Because she's not an idiot, it doesn't fool her. She tells them to get her that duck or else she will make them into cat food. Yeesh, that's a disturbing mental image... cat food made out of people? What would you even call it? "Soylent Meow Mix"?

The next morning, the Mandarin Ducks use rocks to spell out a message for the mallards: "GO HOME". This makes Duckmus MAD!

"Well, that just ruffles my feathers!"

Also making him MAD is that he sees Longway hanging out with Erica, leading him to believe that Emperor Duck sent him to be a spy and get military secrets from her. Emperor Duck isn't too keen on his son liking Erica either. Hoo boy, is this one of those Romeo and Juliet-inspired love stories? If Duckmus says "They're not like you and me, which means they must be evil!" at some point, I'm turning the movie off.

While Erica is teaching Longway how to fly, Skinny Thug and Fat Thug manage to drain the island's lake with dynamite (it makes sense in context), leading Longway to assume that when he landed in the lake his head made a hole big enough to drain it. Erica suggests they get the heck off the island and go see the world, but Longway says he shouldn't leave his dad when there's all this trouble with the mallards. Her response is to tell him to "quack off". Wow, how did a kids' movie get away with THAT?

The next morning, Duckmus (what kind of a name is that anyway? Is that supposed to be a pun?) discovers that the lake is empty when he tries to dive into it. "What the quack?!" he says, narrowly avoiding being shisk-ka-bobbed by the pointy stalagmites (does it qualify as a stalagmite if it's on the bottom of a lake?) inside. He assumes that the Emperor Duck somehow did this and declares was on him and his people.

Nice underpants, Emperor Duck.

In an attempt to stop the Mandarin Ducks and mallards from going to war, Longway tells his fellow Mandarin Ducks that it's his fault the lake was drained and that they shouldn't blame the mallards and how he's a loser who can't do anything right and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. As punishment, Emperor Duck forbids Longway from using his tablet. Horror of horrors. Duckmus shows up disguised as a Mandarin Duck (so is this considered the duck equivalent of blackface?) but Emperor Duck figures it out and kicks him into the empty stalagmite-filled lake. He winds up getting caught in Shina's net.

Duane isn't too upset about Duckmus being in danger - without Duckmus leading the mallards, HE can assume command. I knew there was something suspicious about that duck... Erica flies off to save her dad, and then this sun tattoo on Longway's chest starts glowing, revealing to everyone that he's the Sun Duck.

This is just a nitpick, but why is Longway wearing a belt when he doesn't have pants for it to hold up?

Longway calls out his dad for polluting the air with his filthy lies, then flies off to help Erica. Meanwhile, Shina and Kianga have second thoughts about giving Ms. Knout the duck because they figure out that it's the Sun Duck and that she might want it so she can block out the sun. So what do they do? They... give it to her anyway. Uh...

Okay, she immediately figures out upon seeing Duckmus that he's not the Sun Duck. Then Longway and Erica appear in the window, and when Mrs. Knout sees Longway she recognizes HIM as the Sun Duck, captures him, and throw him in the cage with Duckmus.

Back on the island of the Mandarin Ducks, Emperor Duck's advisor gives him a pep talk and then he decides they must help Longway. Then we cut back to the bad guys, who throw Duckmus and Longway's cage into a closet until it's time to kill the Sun Duck. This is where we came in, you'll recall. Hey, wait a minute! Emperor Duck confiscated Longway's tablet. Why does he have it back?!

Why did the movie start off with this scene again?

Fortunately, Erica sneaks through a window and tries to save them, but they insist that she should go get help. She does. Then Kianga opens the door, the cage spills out, and he starts playing basketball with it for some reason. Outside, Ms. Knout somehow manages to suck Shina into her luggage... which also has robotic Dr. Octopus-esque arms. What sorcery is this?!

As for Erica, she makes it back to the other mallards, but Duane has taken over as commander and has her thrown in "the slammer". Because the other mallards trust Duane over her, apparently.

In the words of another animated duck, he's despicable.

Duckmas narrowly manages to avoid getting his head chopped off by Kianga and manages to tie him up. Ms. Knout and her walking luggage carry Longway to the roof of the building, and then what looks like a satellite dish pops out of the luggage just as the sun comes up. Her plan, it would seem, is to suck up the sun's light, which will somehow allow her to live forever. Wasn't this Yzma's plan in the original version of The Emperor's New Groove? Destroy the sun so she wouldn't get old?

Actually, the villain's goal in Tangled was sorta similar, too, wasn't it? Harness the power of the sun to be young forever? So does that mean this movie plagiarized Tangled?

"I'll show those idiots at DirectTV that there are OTHER WAYS of getting high-quality television!"

Erica and the other mallards show up (I thought they listened to Duane over her... guess not) just as Duckmas is beating the crap out of Kianga. Emperor Duck and the Mandarin Ducks are flying in to rescue Longway, and one duck fires a toilet plunger at her. When she pulls it off, it's revealed that she was wearing a mask - she's actually really, really old and wrinkly!

Oh, wow! This would be a huge twist if it weren't for the fact that we already caught a glimpse
of her real face earlier in the movie.

Longway winds up in some sort of control room with a bunch of TV screens and technology. Erica tells her dad about how Longway is the Sun Duck, and how according to legend he's gonna save the world by sacrificing himself. Duckmas' response? "Well, that sounds like a win-win!"

Wow. That's just COLD.

Pictured: a massive tool.

Erica is all "If you really loved me, you'd save Longway!" to which Duckmus is all "Okay, I'll help." The mallards join the Mandarin Ducks' fight against Ms. Knout, who jumps into the luggage and into the room where Longway is. She pulls a lever which causes another robotic arm - this one much larger than the ones in the luggage - to emerge from the house. Then she puts on a helmet that bombards her with the rays stolen from the sun, making her younger. Longway finally gets out of the cage, and Erica destroys the satellite dish by throwing a helmet of Longway's which he claimed could read minds at it. And that causes the robotic arm to collapse too.

Now that the satellite dish is finito, Ms. Knout becomes all wrinkly again. "I HATE DUCKS!" she shouts, and then she pushes a button that causes guns to emerge from the house and start spraying green gas.

This is also what happens when you eat everything on the menu at Taco Bell.

Fortunately, the mallards have gas masks. The Mandarin Ducks try to hold off the beam that's sucking the sun's rays. Oh, and guess what? Ms. Knout also has a backup antennae. Jeez, this climax is long. Would they just defeat her already?

Okay, long story short, this happens. It is, without a doubt, the coolest part of the movie.

"OW! OOOOOOH! YEOW! OUCH! PAIN! I AM HURTING SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!"

"I AM THE SUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" Longway screams as he is blasted with the beam, which proceeds to pull him into the sun for some reason. Then it sets him aflame, filling the surrounding air with the smell of roast duck, and sends him hurtling back towards the building where Ms. Knout is, causing it to explode. This presumably kills Ms. Knout, but Longway, being the main character, survives.

The ducks fly home and then it's revealed that Ms. Knout actually survived. Okay, I call bull. How did she survive that explosion?

Heck, she doesn't even get a comeuppance. As the credits roll, we see Kianga and Shina flying around in a hot air balloon doing nothing funny whatsoever, the ducks have a party, and Longway and Erica fly off to Hawaii. So the moral of today's story is, you can attempt to DESTROY THE SUN and just get a slap on the wrist for it.

What's the Verdict?

What's the only thing worse than a movie that's really bad? A movie that's really BLAH. It's so hard to get joke material out of a movie that's really blah. Case in point, this.

It is not the worst animated movie I've ever seen, but I would not call it good in any sense of the word. The characters are flat, the jokes aren't funny, and the plot moves as slow as molasses and on top of that is not very interesting. The animation itself is a mixed bag - I'm not a huge fan of the character designs, but the textures are good. The lip-syncing and movements are really inconsistent, I noticed several moments where the dialogue didn't match up with the mouth movements (at least one scene had Duckmus say something without his mouth moving at all!). The voice actors all did a fine job, if nothing else (I do have to raise an eyebrow at them having most of the characters be Chinese and then seemingly not cast any Asian actors as the voices).

If you want a good animated movie about ducks, go see Migration. I think it's still in theaters. I personally liked it. This film, on the other hand? The best I can say about it is that it's at least better than Go Fish. But if you want to watch a lousy animated movie, I'd say this would definitely fit the bill. Get it? Fit the bill? Because... yeah, okay.

I'm sure eventually Bobsheaux or DazzReviews or Saberspark or whoever will do a review of this movie that's much funnier than mine. In fact, I'm shocked that none of them have reviewed this film before me. You can find a couple reviews of the film on YouTube, though, so there's that.

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

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.

Another cartoon from the folks at Nelvana, Sidekick was the creation of Todd Kauffman and Joey So, premiering on YTV in Canada on September 3rd, 2010. Three seasons and a total of 52 episodes (each one consisting of two segments) were produced.

The show stars twelve-year-old boy Eric Needles (voiced by Miklos Perlus), the kid sidekick of superhero Maxum Man (Ron Pardo), who has mysteriously gone missing. Along with his friends Trevor (Christian Potenza), Vana (Stephanie Annie Mills) and Kitty (Denise Oliver), he goes to a school called the Academy For Aspiring Sidekicks, where the kids of his town Splitsboro learn how to be superhero sidekicks. That's an interesting idea for a show.

The characters in Sidekick first appeared in shorts that aired as part of an anthology series created by Nelvana called Funpak. Funpak showed various animated shorts that could potentially be pilots for new cartoon shows on YTV - viewers could go online and vote for which ones they thought were the best. I don't think any of the other shorts went on to become full shows (if I'm wrong, somebody please fill me in). I guess this was the one viewers just really, really liked. Or maybe this was just the least bad of the shorts, I don't know.

I have never watched a single episode of Sidekick. Here in the United States, the show aired on Cartoon Network for a while, and then on Qubo for a few years. I have no idea if it's good or bad. But that's what we're going to find out today! We'll be watching the twentieth episode, which consists of the segments "Match Dot Com" and "Stupor-ize Me". Fortunately, you can find most of the episodes on YouTube, so let's dive in.

It's Valentine's Day in Splitsboro... and before anybody asks me why I didn't post this review of a Valentine's Day-themed episode on the actual Valentine's Day as opposed to a WEEK AFTER VALENTINE'S DAY, I wrote this review on the day AFTER Valentine's Day (I didn't know this was a Valentine's Day episode going in, I picked an episode of the show to review at random). And at the Academy For Aspiring Sidekicks, the students celebrate Valentine's Day by having some guy dress like Cupid and shoot arrows out of a BB gun. But like all schools, they also have a Valentine's Dance that night, and Kitty really, really, really wants to go with Eric. I guess one of her main character traits is that she has the hots for Eric?

Unfortunately, Eric doesn't go for girls with extremely long necks.

Alas and alack, Eric doesn't want to go with Kitty... he wants to go with Vana. Upon hearing this, Kitty runs off crying, and Eric doesn't ask if she's okay or even acknowledge it. What a tool!

Eric asks Vana to the dance, but she tells him she's already got a date and she wouldn't have gone to the dance with him anyway. Then a giant Care Bear shows up, causing Eric's skull to pop out of his head (which was probably meant to be funny but is more disturbing than anything) and he runs out of the room screaming - he's terrified of mascots.

"Are you a Care Bear?"

"I'm an Intensive Care Bear. I left my crowbar at home, though..."

After that, the headmaster, Professor Pamplemoose (Patrick McKenna)... an odd name seeing as there's nothing moose-like about him... tells him that his freakout is going on his permanent record.

Later, at the mansion where Eric and Maxum Man live...

Brought to you by the letter "M".

Eric complains about his problems to his Indian-accented sentient computer, Maxum Brain (Tony Daniels). He's sure that he can find a date for the dance using Maxum Brain's "super-database". First, he has to set up a dating profile... and we are treated to a glimpse at Eric's nose hairs. Because I really needed to see that.

Get a nose hair trimmer, Eric.

After entering three hundred character traits of his, the "super-database" helps Eric find his perfect match. And it does! In just three seconds! Wow.

His perfect match? Mandy Struction, and with a name that sounds like "Destruction" you just KNOW she's gonna turn out to be a villain. So he calls up her house and asks her mother if she'd like to go to the dance.

At the dance...

Villainous girls go for guys who are much, much smaller than them. Just ask Natasha Fatale.

Eric and Mandy discover that they have so much in common. They both hate dancing, they both say "lame" all the time (well, Eric gets CALLED "lame" all the time), and they both wear custom-made shoes. Then we get a disgusting close-up of Eric's feet. Geez, and I thought the nose hairs were gross...

If I had to look at it, so do you. Sorry.

So, just a reminder... this show is about a school where kids learn how to be superheroes' sidekicks... and we're at a school dance. A school dance that has nothing to do with superhero-ing. Whee.

They then meet up with Kitty, who tries very, very hard to hide how crushed she is that Eric went out with some other girl instead of her. "Hi, pretty new girl who seems to have appeared out of thin air to ruin my life!" she says cheerfully. "I'm SO HAPPY Eric brought you with him! Heh heh... I'm here with someone too, you know. Uh, Alan Amazing! KNOW WHY THEY CALL HIM THAT?! BECAUSE HE IS AMAZING!"

Okay, I'm starting to like Kitty a lot more than Eric. I think this is another one of those shows where I think the female lead would be a much better protagonist.

Plus, if she were the main character, you'd have a superhero show where the protagonist
is both a young girl AND Asian! It'd be very progressive!

Trevor is suspicious that Mandy is a robot. I guess the implication is that Eric is such a loser that even his best friend has his doubts that he'd be able to find anyone to go with him to the dance. Or maybe he watched that SpongeBob episode where SpongeBob and Squidward thought Mr. Krabs was a robot before going to the dance or something?

After Professor Pamplemoose shows up again, Eric tells Mandy that he just so happens to keep permanent records of every sidekick's likes, dislikes, toenail sharpness, vulnerabilities... and that makes Mandy very, very intrigued, as does Eric's mentioning that he keeps them all in this rickety old desk in Room 218, top left drawer. Hmmm, I wonder if she's up to something...

"Did I mention that I'm not a villain?"

Not too far away, Vana and Kitty are spying on Eric and Mandy, enraged that HIS date is cooler than THEIRS. Kitty says that she's seen Mandy before, but WHERE? They need a hair sample to analyze. Problem is, they're not particularly stealthy... always a good quality for a sidekick to a SUPERHERO, right? What the heck is the school teaching these kids?

I actually do think this gag is pretty funny.

We get a montage of Eric and Mandy doing fun things like graffitiing the walls and putting tiny sharks in the punch bowl... Eric is supposed to be a SUPERHERO's sidekick, right? Then Mandy says she has to go, uh, call her parents, and once she leaves Vana and Kitty tell Eric that there's something weird about Mandy. Aside from, y'know, that she came to the dance with him. Eric is all "You're just miffed that you wouldn't go to the dance with me!", which falls flat when one remembers that Kitty did make it pretty clear that she wanted to go to the dance with him and he was too thick-headed to pick up on it.

Then Eric gets a call from Maxum Brain, who tells him that Mandy Struction is a villain. Wow, what an unexpected twist! And here's something else you didn't see coming - David Zaslav is a lousy CEO. Yes, I'm upset about Coyote vs. ACME too...

Is it just me, or does Kitty kind of look like Dora the Explorer?

Kitty gasps. "The Struction family runs the Splitsboro Crime Syndicate! THE MASS DESTRUCTIONS!" she informs us. "They leveled TEN BANKS in TWO DAYS with their SEISMO SHOES!" Seismo Shoes, Vana explains, are shoes with the ability to cause earthquakes. Because Eric is an idiot, he doesn't believe that Mandy is evil. Then a red light starts flashing and everyone hears an announcement that a classroom's security has been breached by an intruder "who at first seemed really cool but then turned out to be evil". Eric is promptly on the receiving end of dirty looks from his peers.

Then he gets a pig thrown at him... for some reason. I don't get what the joke here is.

Vana, Kitty, Trevor, and Eric run into Mandy sneaking around with their permanent records. She uses her Seismo Shoes to open up a large crack in the floor. Y'know, for how much I've said that the twist is obvious, I will say this is a clever twist on the cliched "school dance" episode for a cartoon about superheroes - a superhero sidekick goes to the dance with somebody who's a supervillain. I just wish they'd made Mandy's name less on-the-nose. Or at least waited until later to reveal what her last name was.

And presumably none of the superhero sidekicks in this school have the ability of flight?
Is it just that none of the sidekicks have superpowers, like Robin?

Fortunately, Eric does something right for once and comes up with a way to defeat Mandy. "I have to know! Am I really just a pawn in some evil game? Or did you really like me?" he asks her. Mandy tells him that he makes her feel something that she's never felt before... and she suggests that he transfer to the Evil Henchmen School so they can be together. Eric declines - he's no good at evil faces.

Your Tasmanian Devil impression needs work, Eric.

And then Kitty shows up in the Care Bear costume. Eric was hoping that, since they have so much in common, Mandy would be afraid of mascots too (she is not). Then Eric remembers that, oh yeah, HE'S afraid of the Care Bear and his body parts fall off.

Pink bears have given Eric the heebie-jeebies ever since he watched Toy Story 3.

While trying to get away from the scary pink cuddly bear, Eric winds up falling off the side of the roof (yeah, they're on the roof now. I probably should've brought that up) and clinging to it. Before he can fall, Kitty saves him while Trevor and Vana... just stand there eating ice cream. Okay, first of all, even if Eric is a tool, Vana and Trevor are crummy friends. Second of all, where did they get the ice cream? Where did Vana even come from? I figured she was in the Care Bear suit with Kitty, but apparently not.

If Kitty isn't standing on Vana's shoulders, how the heck is she fitting in that costume?
She's not that tall... is she using stilts?

Once Eric is safe, Vana calls him out for letting Mandy escape... even though she and Trevor didn't do anything to stop her from escaping either. Eric is actually glad that she got away because he's still gaga for her, angering Kitty. Tell me again why Kitty isn't the main character and Eric is?

Next up, "Stupor-ize Me", which from the sounds of it was inspired by that certain documentary from 2004 about how eating nothing but McDonald's is not good for your health... which is about as obvious as Mandy's being evil, and yet everyone STILL acted like the guy who made it was some sort of hero for "revealing the truth" about McDonald's. Ever wonder why McDonald's don't have playplaces in them anymore? Blame Supersize Me.

The segment starts off with a training video for Maxum Man's enterprise Swell Burger. At Swell Burger, when the assistant manager orders you to repair the thermo-nuclear oven, you do it. And make sure not to spill the nuclear waste that powers it, or you will become a giant and the whole place will blow sky high. I believe this is more or less how the Burger King training video goes, too.

Maxum Man also likes to channel Scrooge McDuck.

After the training video, we see that Eric and Trevor are Swell Burger's new employees. "As fifty-one percent owner of Swell Enterprises, he left orders that before I become a full sidekick, I have to work at Swell Burger," Eric explains. And if HE has to work there, he claims, so does Trevor. It's a best friend rule.

The boys' supervisor, Sammy, comes over and says that he knows they go to the Academy For Aspiring Sidekicks (we'll just call it the AFAS from now on, okay?), which he claims is run by "know-it-alls who wouldn't recognize the perfect student if he hid in their houses and BEGGED THEM". Yep, this guy's got some issues. Eric says that it's pretty cool... except for the pummeling during training. And in the middle of the night when Vana comes over to pummel you. For some reason. I guess she has issues too.

Yep, she's got issues...

One montage later, Eric and Trevor are put to work cleaning the floor. But then they start fighting over the mop, leading to some WHACKY SHENANIGANS, which makes Sammy MAD. He demands to know how they even made it into the academy. According to Trevor, no other school would take him. Not even homeschool. "Yeah. And I just showed up," Eric adds. Sammy is furious - HE got turned down every time he applied to the school but THEY got in? What is this madness?!

Next, Eric is put to work at the cash register. Vana and Kitty show up... huzzah, Kitty's back! I still want her to be the main character. Sammy offers them a "new and improved" Swelly Shake, then proceeds to laugh evilly. But don't worry, I'm sure he was just thinking of something funny from earlier and NOT letting everyone know that he's concocted an evil plan involving the shakes.

Meanwhile, Trevor is failing miserably at food-preparing. Why do so many of these Nelvana cartoons have an idiot best friend as one of the leads? Trevor, Entree, Dave... are there just a lot of Patrick Star fans at Nelvana?

At least Trevor isn't really fat, or I'd definitely call him another Patrick knockoff...

Everybody in the restaurant helps themselves to a free Swelly Shake. But what they don't know is that THESE Swelly Shakes suck out their smarts and "Sidekick Essence", which Sammy guzzles down himself. Now the AFAS won't be able to turn him down, and he'll be a superhero sidekick!

He offers Swelly Shakes to a suspicious Eric and Trevor. Eric politely declines because he's lactose intolerant, but Trevor, being the colossal moron that he is, drinks both of them and becomes a grey-skinned idiot (well, he was ALREADY an idiot, but y'know what I mean) as well! Oh, and Sammy now looks like this:

Eeeeeeeeeeeugh...

"You won't get away with this, Sammy!" Eric declares, but Sammy easily clobbers him. Wow, Eric must really suck as a sidekick if he can be defeated that easily. But then Eric realizes that, if Sammy stole all of the other sidekicks' abilities and skills, he must have gotten their bad habits too - like Trevor's love of floor food! And you thought I put in that screencap of Trevor eating food off the floor for no reason, didn't you?

Well, actually, yeah, I did. I had no idea that it would be brought up again.

"Prepare to taste Silly Putty-colored gunk! Which, by the way, is what Chicken McNuggets
are made of!"

While Sammy is distracted by the food on the floor, Eric sticks the suction hose in his mouth and drains him of everyone's abilities and skills. But Eric is sympathetic when he laments that he'll never get him into the sidekick academy and pulls some strings to get him accepted. But then he gets accepted at that Evil Henchman School as well, and he admits that getting into the AFAS was actually his "fallback dream". Oh-kaaaaaaaaaaaaay then...

After Sammy jumps out the window (it makes sense in context), Eric sprays everyone with the shake mix, restoring them to normal... almost. Kitty's now in Trevor's body, Trevor is in Vana's, and Vana is in Kitty's. And Vana-Kitty can't fight the urge to pummel Eric. The end.

What's the Verdict?

Congratulations, Sidekick. You're the first of these mediocre Nelvana cartoons to get a "YOU TRIED" stamp.

I would not call this a good show. The animation is wonky, a lot of jokes fall flat, and the characters aren't very interesting. HOWEVER, there are a couple of jokes I did think were pretty funny, the voice actors all do a good job, and - as I've said before - I actually liked Kitty. Why couldn't the show have focused on her? I think she could've carried the show much better than Eric would. I dunno, maybe this is one of those shows where things get better after the first season, but I don't think I would recommend watching Sidekick. But like I said, it came closer to being good than other Nelvana shows like Ned's Newt and Scaredy Squirrel did.

Incidentally, when I looked the show up on IMDB, I discovered that the writers of these episodes worked on some interesting projects, some of which I've already looked at on this blog. Joey So, for example, worked on a lot of Disney movies, such as Mulan, Tarzan, The Emperor's New Groove, and The Princess and the Frog. Andrew Harrison was a writer for Scaredy Squirrel and Hotel Transylvania: The Series. Richard Clark's resume includes such shows as Martin Mystery, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That, and more recently, Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years. You might have also recognized some of the voice actors... Tony Daniels is one of the many voice actors who's done the voice of Frosted Flakes mascot Tony the Tiger, and was also characters in Transformers: Cyberverse. Christian Potenza and Stephanie Anne Mills are also Chris and Lindsay respectively in the Total Drama shows. Ron Pardo is the mayor in Paw Patrol, Quest and Graer in World of Quest, and took over for Harland Williams as Newton in a few episodes of Ned's Newt. Patrick McKenna lent his voice to Scaredy Squirrel, Spliced, and even JoJo's Circus. Neat, huh?

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Popeye and Son"

You think that Popeye movie Genndy Tartakovsky wants to make will ever get off the ground? I hope so - Popeye's been sitting dormant for too long.

Anyhow, what is Popeye and Son?

Basically, after they wrapped up production on The All-New Popeye Hour (note to self: review that at some point), Hanna-Barbera and King Features Entertainment came up with the idea of finally having Popeye and Olive Oyl tie the knot and have themselves a kid... even though they technically already did with Swee'pea, didn't they? Was Swee'pea their kid? That's always the vibe I got from him.

Popeye and Son premiered on September 19th, 1987. Thirteen episodes were made, each one consisting of two segments. The show focused on the adventures of Popeye (here voiced by Maurice LaMarche), Olive Oyl (Marilyn Schreffler), and their son Popeye Junior (Josh Rodine), who inherited his father's spinach-inducing super-strength but, like all kids, hated the taste of the stuff. Junior's arch-enemy was Tank (David Markus), the son of Popeye's rival Bluto (Allan "Magilla Gorilla" Melvin)... yes, Bluto was married too, to a woman named Linda (also Marilyn Schreffler). Don't ask me what she was thinking.

Is Popeye and Son any good? I have no idea. Most of the stuff I've heard about the show online is negative, mainly because there isn't as much violence. You see, due to meddling from TV executives, Popeye and his son couldn't beat the crap out of Bluto and his son like in the original shorts (this also applied to the aforementioned All-New Popeye Hour), presumably because they were worried that kids watching the show would imitate it. Whether or not they were afraid that those kids would also assume that spinach gave you super-strength, I don't know. But is it fair to brush off a show as bad just because Popeye doesn't throw and punches? I don't think it is. Still, my expectations are kind of small, mainly because giving iconic cartoon characters kids in 1980s cartoons rarely works out.

But enough of my yammering, let's give the show a watch. We'll be checking out the fifth episode, which consists of the segments "Junior's Genie" and "Mighty Olive at the Bat", to see if Popeye and Son is strong to the finish or a waste of time. Let's set sail!

"Junior's Genie" starts off with Junior and his pal Woody...

No, not THAT Woody...

Not THAT Woody either... THIS Woody is the brown-haired kid in the screencap below:

Junior and Woody (Nancy Cartwright) are racing on their bikes to Wimpy's place. I'm kind of surprised they didn't go all-out on the "all the Popeye characters have kids!" idea and make Woody Wimpy's son. Wimpy does have a nephew here, though.

Anyway, Junior is in desperate need of a new bike, particularly before the big bike race that he's competing in tomorrow. And guess who else is doing the race? Tank, who just so happens to have a really cool, really expensive-looking bike that he's bragging to these other hoodlums about. One of the hoodlums looks a lot like Olive Oyl. Does Junior have a brother? And if so, why isn't the show called "Popeye and SONS", plural?

If that kid is not Junior's brother, methinks Olive Oyl has some explaining to do...

"If you're so tough on that dumb new bike, why don't you PROVE IT?!" Junior asks Tank. So he and Tank have themselves a little pre-bike race bike race, and even though Junior's bike looks like it's in fine condition it's actually pretty crummy, and he goes flying off and sliding down a sand dune.

A new bike, that's what Junior needs. Unfortunately, Popeye and Olive Oyl are apparently too cheap to get him one. Olive Oyl insists that practice and hard work will make Junior beat Tank... gee, I wonder what the moral of this episode is going to be...

"Sorry, Junior, I can't buy ya a new bike. I'm savin' up me money so I can buy more
identical Hawaiian shirts!"

Junior takes a walk on the beach, lamenting that Tank will make him look like a tool at the big race. Then he stumbles upon a bottle sticking out of the sand...

Junior's elbow is freaking me out...

He opens the bottle up, and sure enough, out pops a genie - a little turban-wearing guy with a mustache and the voice of Wade from Garfield and Friends.

Not exactly Barbara Eden or Robin Williams, but you can't go wrong with Howard Morris.

The genie (Howard Morris) tells Junior that his wish is his command. He also mentions that it sure is cramped in that bottle (which will give you such a crick in the neck!) and that he sure could use a vacation, hintidy-hint-hint-hint. But Junior isn't going to set him free just yet - he wants a new bike, and here he has a genie that can conjure one up in the blink of an eye. So the genie grants his wish, and presto, Junior's got a new bike.

Maybe next he can wish for some new shorts. The ones he has on now are pretty ugly...

Junior shows off his new bike to everyone at Wimpy's, then wishes for the genie to give them all presents: a milkshake machine, a video game, a surfboard, a football... all this wish-granting is wearing the genie out. "This is gonna be a long day..." he laments.

It could be worse, genie... if Junior wasn't a good guy, he would probably wish for Tank's head to explode or something.

"Come on, guys, I've sung 'Friend Like Me' three times already. Don't you want to hear
another song?"

Junior brings the genie back to his house, suggesting that he stay in the bottle until tomorrow. I guess he doesn't want Popeye and Olive Oyl to find out about the genie? Not sure why... what, does he think Popeye's gonna sell the genie to a bunch of scientists to be dissected or something? I think, if he found a genie, he'd be far more likely to wish for an unlimited supply of spinach (or wish for BLUTO'S head to explode).

The next day, Junior is about to leave for the racetrack when Popeye and Olive Oyl declare that he's gotta finish his chores first. He's gotta clean the boat AND finish painting the boathouse. That seems like a lot to make a kid do by himself. Shouldn't Popeye be helping him with the boathouse-painting at least? Lazy bum...

Geez, look at how dirty the boat and boathouse are... what, did a hurricane hit Sweet Haven
the other day?

It's a good thing Junior has a genie and can WISH for the boat to be clean and the boathouse to be painted. And it's also a good thing that this isn't one of those genies that only grants you THREE wishes. Or one of those mischievous genies that grants wishes in a way that blows up in your face. You know the kind... you wish for a million bucks, you get a gigantic herd of deer instead of currency. You wish for the ability to fly, they turn you into a sparrow. You wish for a chocolate milkshake, they dump it on you because you didn't wish for a chocolate milkshake IN A GLASS. It's those kinds of genies that give genies a bad name.

The genie fixes the boat and boathouse, meaning that Junior can head to the racetrack. But when he gets there, everybody is suddenly not too keen about him and his new bike even though they were going gaga over him sooner. I know this is obviously setting up the "hard work and practice make for better ways to win races than a magic wish-granting being" moral that they're gonna shove down our throats, but it feels kind of forced. They claim that he's acting "different", but... honestly, I'm not seeing what's so WRONG about the way Junior is acting. It'd be one thing if he started acting like a jerk, but he really hasn't - for crying out loud, he just gave one girl a MILKSHAKE MACHINE.

And shouldn't that one girl be wearing a helmet?

The racers take their places at the starting line, and Junior tells the genie he should probably sit this one out, since it'd obviously not be fair to wish for the genie to help him win the race. Oh, yeah, Junior is being soooooooooooooo much of  a tool now that he has that genie. The official waves the checked flag, and away they go-go-go. Just as Junior takes the lead, he suddenly hits a large rock and goes flying off his bike and into a pond of water.

Okay, who the heck set up this racetrack? Wouldn't it be a pretty bad idea to have a racetrack with giant rocks and ponds in it?

And if this is supposed to be Junior's comeuppance or whatever, it falls flat because
A) again, he wasn't acting like a jerk and B) what does hitting a giant rock and falling into
a pond have to do with asking a genie to whip you up a new bike?

So now, and only NOW, does Junior do anything wrong - he tells the genie he wants to be in the lead, and the genie grants that wish. There's a word for that, I believe it's called "cheating".

So Junior wins the race, but his friends are all mad at him and dub him worse than Tank. I dunno, I'd say they're about on par with each other morality-wise. Popeye urges him to make things right and get rid of the genie, so Junior wishes the genie free. And apparently freeing the genie makes him much taller.

Incidentally, why does nobody in this episode react with shock to the presence of a genie? Are there just a lot of genies in Sweet Haven, so everyone's used to them by now?

Hmmm... the main character frees a genie, and the genie dons a Hawaiian shirt and goes on
vacation... were the writers of Aladdin inspired by this episode?

Then a TORNADO shows up out of nowhere because a few seconds ago, Junior said he wanted to "turn the town upside down" (as in, throw a big party) and the genie took that literally. And he can't stop it because freeing the genie robs him of his powers. Popeye tries to fight the twister, but fails miserably at it - especially since the tornado blows away the can of spinach he's about to eat. Looks like it's up to Junior to save the day.

Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-
doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo...

Junior takes out the tornado, then goes to apologize to Woody. Woody forgives him, mainly because Junior buys him a giant milkshake. So the moral here is that using a genie to win a bike race is bad, but bribery is okay? Not to mention this whole mess could've been avoided if Popeye hadn't been such a cheapskate and bought Junior a new bike. I'm not quite sure what we've learned here.

Ah well. Maybe "Olive at the Bat" will be better...

Popeye, Junior, and their friends are practicing their baseball for the big father/son baseball game that they're participating in, and Popeye's the pitcher... until one pitch winds up turning his arm into a Slinky. This is something that should be funny but really just looks rather painful.

"It's a good thing I'm made of Silly Putty, or I'd be in horrible pain right now!
Ugh-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug! Ow..."

Popeye and Junior go to Olive Oyl for her opinion, and she wraps Popeye's arm up in a cast. Now Popeye can't play in the game. "Baseball doesn't look so hard. If it's so important, why don't I take his place?" Olive Oyl suggests. Junior says she can't play in the game because it's a father/son tournament and she's a guuuuuuuuuuurl. Hmmm, I wonder if this episode's moral is going to be that girls are just as good at sports as boys are...

Also, hello, Fat Albert.

"Hey, hey, hey!"

Olive Oyl demonstrates that she's quite possibly the lousiest baseball player since Lucy Van Pelt, and just to make things worse, Bluto and Tank show up to mock them and demonstrate how much better THEIR team is. If only there was a genie nearby (then they could wish for Bluto's head to explode).

Later, Olive Oyl overhears Junior and Popeye talking about what a crappy baseball player she is. Popeye encourages Junior to give her a chance, she's doing the best she can, blah-blah-blah. "I didn't know this meant so much to him," Olive Oyl says to herself. "Well, if we lose tomorrow, it won't be because we didn't try!"

Olive Oyl was horrified to discover what Popeye does when he thinks no one's looking...







PICKING HIS NOSE.

(And you thought it was going to be something far dirtier, didn't you?)

She spends all night practicing with Eugene the Jeep. Yep, he's in this show too.

Doesn't his presence in the show make the genie kind of redundant? Then again, I don't think
Jeeps can grant wishes...

So now it's the day of the big baseball game, and Junior is sure they can take down Bluto and Tank... just as soon as Olive Oyl wakes up. Junior's team is good, but they can't top Tank's team, and soon the score is 3-2. But then Olive Oyl turns into Elastigirl and catches a fly ball that Bluto just hit, then throws it to Woody, who throws it to Fat Albert, who throws it to Woody's dad, who throws it to a bespectacled kid with glasses. "A quadruple-play!" Junior exclaims.

But now it's Bluto's turn to pitch, and he's a really, really, really, really good pitcher. A baseball pitcher, that is, not a pitcher of water... though that's a pretty amusing mental image.

Fortunately, Junior manages to hit the ball when he's up to bat. Unfortunately, it's Olive Oyl's turn to bat next. But after failing to hit the ball the first two times, she gets a home run. Junior's team wins, Olive Oyl's a hero, and Popeye's arm heals as soon as he guzzles down some spinach.

Wait, if that's all it took, why didn't he do that before?!

Fin.

What's the Verdict?

I went into Popeye and Son expecting another generic "gang of kids" show that just so happened to have Popeye's name attached to it. So in some ways, the show exceeded my expectations - I was pleasantly surprised to see Popeye and Olive Oyl actually given things to do, as opposed to Potato Head Kids' reducing Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head to minor characters or Pink Panther and Sons' having the Pink Panther show up briefly at the beginning and then drive off and leave the episode. The voice actors all do a fine job, Maurice LaMarche is an alright Popeye (not as good as Billy West's or Jeff Bergman's, but better than Floyd Buckley's if nothing else) and it's hard to go wrong with Howard Morris.

Now, what DON'T I like about it? Well, honestly, Popeye Junior isn't that interesting of a character, and as a whole the show just lacks that fun, energetic feeling that makes Popeye shorts fun to watch. I feel like most of that is on the animation... Hanna-Barbera must not have had the budget to do more fluid, rapid-moving animation like in the shorts that would've really brought this to life. I also think the moral of "Junior's Genie" could've been pulled off better - instead, I'm not sure WHAT the moral was supposed to be. Everyone was giving Junior a hard time BEFORE he started acting like a tool, which makes their reactions to him actually acting like a tool lack impact. But as a whole, Popeye and Sons is okay. If you want to watch it yourself, you can find every episode on YouTube.

Nowadays, Popeye is one of those cartoon characters nobody seems to want to do anything with. Genndy Tartakovsky's movie has been cancelled TWICE. I can't remember the last time the character's appeared in a commercial (there was a Bank of America ad with Popeye in 2014, but that was years ago). The closest he's come to getting a new TV show is that Popeye's Island Adventures webseries, but I don't even know if that's still going on. We have to keep characters like Popeye alive for new generations to enjoy. Hopefully kids are at least seeing the reruns of his cartoons on Boomerang and MeTV and rediscovering the character themselves...