Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Lilo and Stitch: The Series"

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.

I remember when Lilo and Stitch came out. I remember seeing it in theaters. I remember the bonus features on the DVD. I remember my sister having a Lilo doll. Lilo and Stitch was one of the only Disney movies of the 2000s to be considered (by the company itself, at least) a box office success. And you know what THAT meant, right?

ANSWER: it meant that they had a new cash cow.

And boy howdy were they going to take advantage of that - ESPECIALLY at the Disney theme parks. Well, at Walt Disney World anyway, I don't know if they did this at Disneyland too. Stitch received his own attraction in 2004 at the Magic Kingdom, Stitch's Great Escape. I never went on it, but apparently it was really bad, and it has since been shut down. Disney, however, was really proud of the attraction, because they promoted it perhaps more than they've promoted any other attraction in the resort's history... there were signs all over the park, Stitch stickers were pasted on the windows of the monorail, they even vandalized Cinderella Castle. Look at this:

And on top of THAT, somehow Stitch became the sixth member of Mickey's group of friends. On merchandise, he'd be included alongside Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto and he stuck out like a sore thumb. Eventually, the company calmed down on Stitch, but he was practically the mascot of Disney for a while.

Outside the parks, Disney kept the Stitch train a-chuggin' along with merchandise and direct-to-video sequels. He received three, the first of which was Stitch! The Movie. Kind of a weird thing to call a film's direct-to-video sequel, seeing as the name of the first movie was Lilo and Stitch. So this one is just Stitch? It's like if they made a sequel to Turner and Hooch and called it Turner! The Movie.

I've heard that the ACTUAL Lilo and Stitch direct-to-video sequel that came after
this one, Lilo and Stitch 2: Stich Has a Glitch, is better. The fourth one, Leroy and Stitch,
is apparently the weakest of the Stitch movies.

The name makes a little more sense if you know that Stitch! The Movie was actually just a feature-length pilot for the Lilo and Stitch TV show that Disney was making, which was going to be called Stitch! The Series at first before they decided to call it Lilo and Stitch: The Series instead.

This show, developed by Bobs Gannaway and Jess Winfield, premiered on September 20th, 2003. It was basically Disney's answer to Pokemon - Stitch's name, before Lilo found him, was Experiment 626, right? So that means that his creator, Dr. Jumbaa Jookiba, made 625 experiments BEFORE he made him, right? Thus, the show had Lilo (once again voiced by Daveigh Chase) and Stitch (once again voiced by Chris Sanders) chasing after all the other experiments that Jumbaa (David Ogden Stiers) created, which were stored in tiny ping pong balls that would free them when contact was made with some sort of liquid. Along for the ride were Lilo's big sister Nani (Tia Carrere), Jumbaa, and the one-eyed former Galactic Federation agent Pleakley (Kevin McDonald). The show received two seasons, making for a total of sixty-five episodes.

I remember watching the show when it was on, but to be honest, I don't think it holds up very well. Apparently, executive meddling resulted in the charm of the film it was based on being tossed out the window in favor of zany, more lighthearted antics. The original film was pretty mellow and laid-back. You're not gonna find any tender moments like Stitch's speech about his family here. Nope, we have episodes about experiments that turn people into babies, crossovers with Kim Possible and American Dragon: Jake Long, and... well, just look at this:

This episode, by the way, has a really heavy-handed moral about healthy eating.
Yes, it's one of THOSE shows...

The characters got Flanderized as well, most notably Pleakley. In the original movie, he was intelligent (he just didn't quite understand humans) and tried his best to keep the bombastic Jumbaa in line. In the show, he's now a massive idiot who exists so that the writers can make jokes at the expense of gay people. I shouldn't have to say this... somebody being gay is not a joke. Making fun of people for not being straight is wrong, okay? In fact, television shows' mockery of gay people is likely a reason why homophobes are still a thing.

All right, all right, let's get on with the actual review. We'll be watching the third episode, "Clip". As they say in Hawaii, E hoʻomaka kākou! Thank goodness for Google Translate...

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "The Little Mermaid"

As you know, The Little Mermaid is the film that pulled Disney out of its slump and got the Disney Renaissance up and running. The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Company helped as well, but The Little Mermaid - THAT was the film that really got theatrical animated movies seen as something worth doing again. If it weren't for The Little Mermaid, we might not have gotten The Lion King. Or Beauty and the Beast. Or Frozen, or Tangled, or maybe even Toy Story.

So let's go back in time to 1992. The Disney Renaissance is going on, Beauty and the Beast was successful, Aladdin is going to be released in November. Disney knows that people love The Little Mermaid, I'm sure Ariel dolls were still flying off the shelves. Surely there's a way to keep the movie's hype going. And Disney was just dipping its toes into making TV shows based on their animated films - The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and TaleSpin were both successful. So why NOT make a cartoon show starring Ariel?

And thus was created The Little Mermaid... the TV show. Premiering on CBS in September 1992, the series was a prequel to the movie, taking place before Ariel met Prince Eric (since, y'know, it wouldn't make sense to call the show The Little MERMAID if the main character had legs). Jodi Benson, Pat Carroll, Samuel E. Wright, and Kenneth Mars reprised their roles as Ariel, Ursula, Sebastian, and King Triton for the show. Flounder was now voiced by Edan Gross, then Bradley Pierce (who you might recall as the voice of Chip in Beauty and the Beast), and Scuttle was now voiced by Maurice LaMarche as opposed to Buddy Hackett. There were songs, there were bad guys for Ariel to fight, there were presumably also increased sales of Ariel dolls and Flounder plushies. They even had an episode where Ariel met Hans Christian Anderson, who for those unaware wrote the original Little Mermaid story. Neat, huh?

Three seasons, making for a total of thirty-one episodes, were produced of The Little Mermaid. Since its run on CBS, reruns have aired on Disney Channel, Toon Disney, and Disney Junior. A couple episodes were released on VHS and DVD, and now you can find the whole show, except the pilot movie for some reason, on Disney Plus. I've watched the show before - first via reruns (I recall my older sister loved The Little Mermaid at some point, it might have been her favorite Disney movie but don't quote me on that) then at some point in the 2010s I found episodes of the show on YouTube. From what I recall, it's a pretty good show. Since I'm probably going to be looking at all of these Disney shows adapted from their movies at some point on this blog (I already did Aladdin, 101 Dalmatians, and Hercules, you'll recall), I might as well give this show a review too. I'm tempted to do a review of the episode where Sebastian turns into a giant, or the one where Ariel encounters dinosaurs (this show could get pretty out there), but nah, I'll do the seventeenth episode, "Save the Whale", instead. This is The Little Mermaid!

First of all - no, this episode does not focus on Ariel becoming a member of Greenpeace or trying to prevent whales from beaching themselves. A shame, because the more we can do to spread awareness of whale conservation, the better. To learn more about saving the whales, visit this website.

The episode starts off with Ariel, Flounder and Sebastian on the surface of the water... which, as the movie establishes, is a big no-no for Ariel because her father does not want her to get caught by humans, lest she wind up served as an entree at a Red Lobster or mounted to a plaque on somebody's wall singing novelty songs (you're welcome for that mental image). But then a shark fin pops out of the water and comes their way!

Dah-dun, daaaaaaaah-dun, daaaaaaaaaaah-dun...

Oh, wait. It's not a shark fin. It's the fin of an orca. And not just ANY orca - Spot, the orca who Ariel met in the aforementioned pilot movie. One look at his Casper the Friendly Ghost-shaped head and his weird bulbous human-esque nose (which Flounder also has, have you ever noticed?) and Ariel is overjoyed.

Y'know what this reminds me of? Did anyone else have Brother Bear on DVD? I recall there was a game part of the bonus features where you could put together fossils, and then once the fossil was complete, the narrator would tell you about the animal that fossil came from accompanied by clips of a Disney production featuring that animal. One of those animals was an orca, and the clips you'd receive were of Spot from this show. If you also had that DVD and played that game, well, there's your daily dose of nostalgia for the day.

He reminds me of the octopus from that animated Titanic movie.

King Triton shows up, and he says that he hopes they don't have a repeat of the previous time Spot visited. Ariel assures him that this time, Spot will stay outside the palace. "Good. Better make it outside of Atlantica as well," King Triton suggests. Ariel asks why everyone is so afraid of orcas.

Well, Ariel, orcas might look cute - particularly when they have big round heads and bulbous human noses like Spot does - but they are carnivorous. They are sometimes referred to as "wolves of the sea" because they live and hunt together in pods (which is what a group of whales is called) much like a pack of wolves. Among the things an orca can and will eat include fish, walruses, seals, sea lions, penguins (as Happy Feet showed us), sea turtles, sharks, and even other kinds of whales, and the average-sized orca can eat about five hundred pounds of food a day. There. Now you can't say you've never learned anything from one of my reviews.

I don't think orcas eat human beings, but I imagine Ariel's being half-human half-fish makes things
a bit more complicated. Maybe he'd just eat her tailfin?

"I know Spot wouldn't hurt anyone. I'm just not sure Spot knows it," King Triton tells her. Ariel seems pretty sure, though, and starts teaching Spot how to do fancy leaping-out-of-the-water tricks. After this, Spot went on to star in Free Willy.

Boy, that's the chubbiest orca that I've ever seen. He should really lay off the walruses...

While leaping out of the water, Spot is spotted (see what I did there?) by two sailors, one of whom looks very much like Jasper from One Hundred and One Dalmatians. "Just what I've been looking for," the Jasper lookalike says. "Something to make Pettigrew's Penguin Park a real money-maker." Then he lets out an evil chortle, making it pretty clear who the episode's bad guy is going to be.

Dr. Doofenschmirtz, before he went crazy and devoted his life to fighting a platypus.

Ariel wants to introduce all of Atlantica to Spot, but King Triton isn't sure - most of Atlantica's residents are afraid of orcas (since most of Atlantica's residents are sea creatures, and orcas are also sea creatures, would this be considered some sort of underwater racism?). Ariel says that if everyone sees Spot perform tricks, they'll see that they have nothing to fear. "We'll do it out in the Shallows! Away from Atlantica!" she insists. "Oh, it'll be great!" King Triton agrees to let Ariel have her little undersea carnival, with Flounder as a shark-tamer and Sebastian as the ringmaster.

The carnival... well, technically it's more of a circus, but apparently the writers thought circuses and carnivals were the same thing... begins with a kickline of octopuses.

I wonder if they had any difficulty deciding which tentacle to kick.

A squid juggles sea urchins, Flounder attempts to tame a tiger shark (and fails at it), and Spot performs his leaping-out-of-the-water tricks. I'm trying so hard not to make another Free Willy reference... you know what, I'll make a reference to Moby Lick from Street Sharks instead. In hindsight, isn't it kind of funny that Moby was an orca and yet it was another character on that show, the whale shark mutant, who was named "Slammu"? Wouldn't it have made more sense to name the orca "Slammu"?

The Atlanticans like Spot - they really, really like Spot.

Hey, look, it's that fish from Pinocchio.

But then a b-b-b-b-BOAT shows up overhead. Sebastian tries to stop Spot from getting too close, but they both wind up getting caught. Ariel and Flounder swim off after the boat.

Is it just me, or does the water look really polluted?

The boat, of course, belongs to the Jasper lookalike, Pettigrew, and the other sailor, Tom... who is revealed to be Pettigrew's son. Pettigrew has a son? So somebody actually married this guy? Boy, and I thought Bluto having a wife was hard to wrap my head around...

They bring Spot (and Sebastian) to Pettigrew's Penguin Park, which is kind of like SeaWorld, except it's EEEEEEEEEE-VIL! They've also captured the penguins from Mary Poppins. Good to know they survived when the rain washed away that chalk drawing...

"I told you guys we should've stayed in the chalk drawing. But NOOOOOOOOOO... 'Let's take
a vacation,' you said. 'We could go to Denmark, I hear it's nice this time of year,' you said..."

"Look on the bright side, David. It could be worse."

"Yeah, we could be forced to appear in a direct-to-video sequel with a walrus who's just Pumbaa
from The Lion King in all but name and species."

"...how do you even know who Pumbaa is? This is 1992. The Lion King hasn't been released yet."

"I'm telling you, Tom, once we get this big fella trained, he'll make my penguin park a WHALE of a show!" Pettigrew declares. Tom thinks that Spot is too young to train, but Pettigrew claims that the younger a whale you capture and try to turn into the next Shamu is, the sooner they forget about the ocean and the sooner you get rich, rich, rich. It should be clear by now what Pettigrew's motivation is...

...aaaaaaaaaand now I wish they'd gotten Eric Idle to do this guy's voice. And given him a musical number.

He doesn't have that whip because he's a fan of Devo.

"Dad, don't you care about anything but making money?" Tom asks. "Of course I do! I care about PENGUINS!" Pettigrew insists. And speaking of penguins, they comfort Spot over the whole "stuck in an evil version of SeaWorld" thing. Isn't it kind of funny how in this show, the crabs and fish can talk, but the whales and penguins can't? Of course, in the movie there was a shark who didn't talk... I wonder why some sea animals are capable of speech but others don't seem to be.

Ariel and Flounder make it to Pettigrew's Penguin Park (I'm tempted to start calling it "PPP") by nightfall. Now they just have to figure out how to get by that big wooden fence... the obvious answer is "just swim under it", but for some reason they don't think of that. Maybe it's because they're too distracted by the fireworks...

Wow, Ariel, that's quite a sunburn you've got there. Even mermaids have to use sunscreen,
ya know.

Fortunately, the gate opens up so a boat full of people can enter the park, allowing Ariel and Flounder to swim inside.

Which is good, because apparently swimming under the gate isn't an option after all...

Pettigrew puts on his show, forcing the penguins to do tricks for a cheering crowd. Ariel finds a glum-looking Spot. Where's Sebastian? Pettigrew decided to make him part of the show as well - as Crabby, the ever-so-creatively-named Tap-Dancing Crustacean. Don't worry, Sebastian, this ISN'T the most humiliating moment of your life. You still have two lousy direct-to-video sequels to appear in.

Sebastian's Michigan J. Frog impression is always a crowd pleaser.

Then it's Spot - or, as Pettigrew calls him, "Gargantua" - to perform. Sebastian is horrified to discover that Ariel and Flounder are there, presumably because he believes that if Pettigrew sees them he'll force THEM to be in the show as well. Or maybe he'll sell Ariel off to a circus sideshow or something.

Fortunately, seeing Tom turn the wheel that opens and closes the door to Spot's corral gives Ariel an idea. They'll wait until they open the gate to let the boats out, then Ariel will somehow get the door to Spot's corral open, then Spot - with Sebastian sitting on his back - will make a swim for it, with Ariel and Flounder right behind him. It all goes off without a hitch, but wouldn't you know it, Pettigrew sees this going on and he's all "THE WHALE, IT IS GETTING AWAY!"

"AND HE'S GOT MAH DENTURES!"

And on top of that, Spot can't bear to just leave those poor penguins behind. Fortunately, Tom decides to let the penguins go.

"So long, Pettigrew! We're going back to our chalk drawing!"

But Pettigrew decides to actually do something instead of just standing there looking agitated in his purple suit and closes the gate. Gee, I wonder if Spot will use one of his leaping-out-of-the-water tricks to just jump over the gate... yep, that's exactly what he does. I don't know if an orca can actually jump that high, but it's a cartoon, just go with it.

Is this supposed to be an E.T. reference? Probably not, since nobody's on a bike...

"That was one WHALE of a LEAP!" Sebastian exclaims. The episode did that joke already, Sebastian. And then guess who shows up? King Triton, making a hilarious facial expression.

"I am not amused."

Fortunately, all it takes for him to calm down is for Ariel to say that she had to save Spot to save him the trouble of doing it. Then they find a pod of orcas, meaning that it's time for Spot to go back to his own kind. The penguins go with him... I sure hope none of those other orcas are hungry. And that's about it.

What's the Verdict?

Like with the other Disney cartoons based on their animated movies, I personally think The Little Mermaid holds up quite well. The animation, while obviously a downgrade from the movie, is still pretty good. Everyone is in-character. The voice actors all do a good job. And the Mary Poppins penguins showing up is a nice touch. If I do have one complaint, it's that the villain is kind of a bore, and Tom's arc isn't given much focus. Does Pettigrew even get any sort of comeuppance? Aside from, y'know, his penguins all leaving. Surely he can find MORE penguins, or another orca for that matter. But those are nitpicks. As a whole, I enjoyed this episode.

If you're a fan of the movie, give the series a watch. If you haven't seen the movie, watch it first and then check the series out. And remember - places that force aquatic animals to perform are the scum of the earth. Way to make kids feel bad about visiting the aquarium, Disney.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Fievel's American Tails"

Why has it taken me this long to look at something made by Don Bluth? I don't know. It probably stems from the fact that most of his stuff has already been looked at by other reviewers. There's only so much you can say about stuff like Rock-a-Doodle or A Troll In Central Park that hasn't been said already. I do plan on reviewing Titan AE at some point, though.

Anyway, Don Bluth. He's one of those animators you can't help but like no matter how much crap has his name on it. Why? Because for every bad movie he made, he made a good movie as well. If you asked somebody to name an animated movie released in the 1980s that wasn't made by Disney, chances are they'd name something that Don was involved in - The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, what have you. His work, while still relatively obscure nowadays, has a fan following because Don knew what does and what doesn't make an animated film work.

Don is such a respected figure online that I was honestly shocked to find out a lot of animators really, really didn't like working with him. I'd never heard any indication that he's an unpleasant person or anything, but there are several animators who clearly had some sort of axe to grind with Don. Here's what Steve Moore (whose work includes Olive the Other Reindeer, several of Illumination's films, and A Goofy Movie) said about him:

"In the '90s, you couldn't say hello to a former Bluth artist without them going off on a tirade about the studio and how they were screwed by it. This is not an exaggeration. While in their presence, try as you might to steer the conversation to anything but work, a Bluthie would pull out that axe and grind away. Say 'Hey how about them Dodgers?' and they'd reply, 'I'm gonna cut off Bluth's head and [CENSORED] down his neck!!' So what was Don Bluth's crime? Bluth sold himself as the second coming of Walt. Gary Goldman liked to lay this [CENSORED] on too. They played the role of animation saviors and asked artists to work long hours for [CENSORED] wages for the love of the medium. They would be part of a great and lasting legacy and young artists lapped it up. Years later, after following their messiahs to Ireland to animate trolls, they realized they'd been had. And like leaving a cult, it did not end well at all. I can't count how many friends went through that studio and left with a bad head."

…dang.

But what's that? You need more proof that several people in the animation industry have a bone to pick with Don? Well, here's what Ken Cope (an animator who worked with Don on The Secret of NIMH and with Disney on Beauty and the Beast) claimed:

"The difference between Ralph Bakshi and Don Bluth is that Bakshi was an independent iconoclast, while the other was a predator who burned through artists like any other disposable commodity, in order to live out his Walt Disney successor fantasies."

Need more still? Take a listen to what Robin Steele (who worked as a storyboard artist on episodes of Garfield and Friends and The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat) had to say about Don:

"He hijacked the Irish animation industry, opening Phoenix in Dublin. Somehow, he got back-handed legislation passed in the late 1980's to the effect that if you left one animation studio (e.g., Murakami/Wolf), you couldn't be hired at another for two years. It was an obvious threat to the people who'd signed on with Phoenix (Sullivan/Bluth) to stick with the program or perish — but conversely, also prevented a lot of good artists from making the most of careers they had worked and trained hard for. Art, meet commerce."

One more quote. Toniko Pantoja (who's done some work for DreamWorks on films like Trolls and How To Train Your Dragon 3) wasn't quite as hard on Don as the other three animators I've mentioned, but I guess he still warrants a mention (incidentally, this made a lot of people on Twitter mad, which should give you an idea of just how respected Don is):

"What's funny is that when I was still attending Cal Arts, Don Bluth was always considered a joke for cheesy outdated overflowy animation. When his name is mentioned among other classmates or teachers, it starts with a roll of eyes, a sigh, then a rant. There's a lot of reasons really. Some of them aren't just his animation style, which I'd get into why sometime. He also has a lot of history with people he's worked with, some being former mentors of mine. That's not to say he isn't appreciated for what he's done though."

It's so jarring to see such a respected figure online get so much flack from his peers. I mean, it's not like EVERYONE hates Don Bluth. An animator named Jonathan Lyons, who worked with Don on Rock-a-Doodle, said on Twitter that "I worked for Don Bluth. He's a very nice guy." As for me, I personally have nothing against Don, I just find all of this bile from animators thrown his way pretty shocking.

Anyhow, one area that Don surprisingly didn't dip his feet into was cartoon shows for television. I guess he was too focused on movies to try his hand at a television show. That isn't to say there's never been a cartoon show based on his characters - after all, there was a Land Before Time show at some point in the 2000s. But in the 1990s, there was another show based on a Don Bluth film. And that show was Fievel's American Tails.

First of all, to my knowledge Don Bluth himself had no actual involvement with this show (which in hindsight makes this post's big, long introduction about Don Bluth kind of pointless, but eh). It was, however, the creation of David Kirschner, who was the executive producer and writer of An American Tail. Instead of An American Tail, it was based on the recently-released sequel, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West. So instead of taking place in New York, the show had Fievel and his friends going on adventures in the western town of Green River, having to deal with the plans of the evil Cat R. Waul.

The show aired on CBS for one season in 1992, and since then has basically gained a reputation for being one of the crummiest cartoon shows based on an animated movie ever made. Another reviewer, the Hardcore Kid, looked at one episode of the show based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, complete with a "Headless Horsecat". I'll be looking at another episode, one that I personally feel that of the thirteen episodes made has the most potential to make jokes out of. That episode is "A Case of the Hiccups".

Yes, this episode focuses on... hiccups. Riveting!

By the way, I should mention that I haven't actually seen An American Tail in years, and I don't think I've ever watched Fievel Goes West in full. Does that matter?

You can tell this character is shady because he's wearing an abnormally large hat. All shady
characters in westerns wear abnormally large hats.

Okay, so the episode begins with a chubby mouse arriving in town on a stagecoach. He unfurls a banner reading "TRAVIS T. HIPPOCRATES: PROVEYOR OF MIRACLE WONDERS AND CURES". He might as well have just added "AND TOTALLY ALSO NOT A SNAKE OIL SALESMOUSE" to that banner while he was at it.

Nearby, inside the general store, Fievel (voiced by Phillip Glasser once again) is reading a comic book about a cowboy named Montana Mouse, who he idiolizes. This should give you a good idea as to what Fievel's main character trait in this show is: he's obsessed with cowboys, and it seems to be driving Mama Mouskewitz  (Susan Silo) bananas. Didn't Fievel become a gunslinger and save the day in Fievel Goes West? With that in mind, you'd think Mama would be a bit more tolerant of his cowboy obsession...

So is Travis just really short (even for a mouse), or is Mama just really tall?

Travis T. Hippocrates shows up and flatters Fievel and Mama, then once Mama heads out to finish her errands tells Fievel that he could use a great cowboy (or would that be cowMOUSE? Nah, probably not... that sounds more like a rejected Wuzzle to me) like him in his business. And Fievel, who's apparently now an idiot, is hooked.

Didn't Fievel's parents teach him about stranger danger? I'm pretty sure "don't talk to strangers" is something kids learn pretty early on. And just to make things even more uncomfortable, Travis gives Fievel a bag of free candy and tells him to give it to everyone in town. Seriously, "if a stranger tries to lure you over with candy, run like heck" is something most parents teach their kids!

Maybe it's time for a Sonic Sez...

Travis also makes it very clear that he wants every mouse in town but Fievel to eat the candy. Now that TOTALLY isn't suspicious, is it?

What next, is Travis gonna convince Fievel to come with him to a place called "Pleasure Island"?

So Fievel gives candy to the stereotypical French baker in town, then comes across my personal favorite character from An American Tail, Tiger. Alas, Tiger has been Flanderized into a massive idiot. Not Yakkity Yak levels of idiot, but still an idiot nonetheless. On the bright side, they got Dom DeLuise back to voice him.

You ever notice that Tiger looks a bit like the Lorax? Orange fur, yellow mustache, kinda
chubby...

Next Fievel gives some candy to his sister Tanya (Cathy Cavadini) and two other mouse kids at play, one of which is Australian, talks about dingoes and wallabies, and is named Jack (as in Kangaroo... that's a teaser for a later review). There are a lot of Ethnic stereotypes in Green Valley, aren't there?

He also looks like the mouse from Once Upon a Forest.

Papa Mouskewitz (Lloyd Battista) seems to be the only sane one in this episode, as he seems concerned that, y'know, a total stranger is having Fievel give out candy to everyone in town. But Mama is all "Oh, he's such a charming and trustworthy fellow!", which seems to convince Papa. So much for him being the same one.

Then Tanya gets the hiccups. Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with that candy Fievel gave her earlier...

"Papa, just once, can't we have something other than cheese for dinner?"

"Nyet, Tanya! We are cartoon mice, and cartoon mice always eat cheese for every meal!
It's just common knowledge!"

Tanya's hiccups prevent her from going to school the next day... wait, does having the hiccups really mean you don't have to go to school? Maybe rules for mouse schools are different than those for human schools... and wouldn't you know it? One of Fievel's classmates has the hiccups too.

And here's an example of just how clumsy the animation is. Here's what the classmate looks like:

And after she hiccups, we cut to the rest of the class laughing at her. Notice anything?

Yeah, that very same classmate (well, half of her, anyway) is on the left. I guess SpongeBob is right - we DO all have to laugh at ourselves sometimes...

Then the fat mole teacher starts hiccupping as well. Wait a minute, Fievel didn't give HIM any of the candy! Or maybe he just gave it to him off-screen? Even so, wouldn't it make more sense if that stereotypical Australian mouse started hiccupping instead, since we actually saw Fievel give HIM the candy?

After school, Fievel runs into Tiger again, who - to paraphrase the Strangeloves - wants candy (boy, remember when Aaron Carter's version of that song was everywhere? Good times...). But Fievel says the candy is only for mice. Upon returning home, he decides that surely Dr. Travis will be able to help Tanya with her hiccups. Yeah, he still apparently hasn't put two and two together and figured out that the candy is the reason for the hiccups. Methinks Fievel is a bit of a dope.

Meanwhile, in another plot...

"Y'know, boss, this show isn't half-bad..."

"You're right, Chula. It's ALL bad!"

"D'OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH-HO-HO-HO-HO!"

I'm not one hundred percent sure why the writers felt the need to include Cat R. Waul in this episode, seeing how we already have a bad guy in the form of the obvious con artist Travis T. Hippocrates. I guess their mindset was that since he's the show's main antagonist, they had to include him in every single episode?

Well, anyway, Cat R. Waul (voiced not by John Cleese like in the film but rather by Gerrit Graham) and his hench-spider T.R. Chula (voiced not by Jon Lovitz like in the film but rather by Dan Castellaneta, so as a result he sounds a lot like Krusty the Clown) overhear Tanya's hiccups and decide that it would be a great idea to eat her and Fievel.

I'd be freaked out too if I suddenly ran into a spider that was around the same size as me. Even
if that spider had a mustache and sounded like a character from The Simpsons.

So how do Fievel and Tanya get away from Cat R. Waul? Easy - he gets a door slammed on him. That was remarkably easy, wasn't it?

They make it to Dr. Travis, and he says that he just so happens to have a tonic that can cure the hiccups. Zhe odds, vhat are zhey? However, it's not quite ready yet... which gives Fievel and Tanya plenty of time to help Dr. Travis by spreading the word about the cure.

This guy reminds me a lot of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Thus, Fievel goes back to the general store to tell the shopkeeper... who also has the hiccups, even though we never saw Fievel give HIM any of the candy either. They couldn't have at least thrown in a montage of Fievel giving candy to everyone in town? Oh, and just to make things even more complicated, Chula overheard everything because he was hiding in a nearby pickle barrel.

…what the heck was he doing in there? Did he know Fievel was going to be there? Is bathing in pickle brine just a regular thing that he does?

"Don't knock it. It's good for my complexion!"

Fievel then runs into Tiger again, who's still all "I want candy!" and then Fievel just leaves the bag of candy with Tiger as he walks away. For some reason. Which gives Tiger the perfect opportunity to have a piece. And then seven more pieces.

It's a good thing Fievel told everyone in town about the cure, because everyone in town except him and Yasha has the hiccups now. And that includes Tiger, who in addition to the eight pieces he had already polished the whole bag off.

How exactly DID Dr. Travis make candy that gives people hiccups, anyhow? What did he put in it?

"Holy crap, there are people out there watching us right now!"

So Fievel finally puts two and two together and realizes that candy + digestive system = hiccups, and goes to confront Dr. Travis. And what is Dr. Travis' reasoning for doing it? Well...

But does Dr. Travis at least have a cure? Well, apparently the hiccups just go away on their own... but as far as the folks of Green River know, the only cure is the placebo that he's whipped up. And he tells Fievel not to tell anyone or else they'll think he's in cahoots with Dr. Travis. "I won't do it!" Fievel exclaims. Dr. Travis' response is to grab Fievel and say, "Fievel, my boy, I'm afraid that was the wrong answer..."

See, this is why you should teach your kids never to talk to strangers. Especially when those strangers have candy.

This screencap looks even worse out of context.

Dr. Travis traps Fievel in a glass jar and then goes to sell his fake hiccup cure to all the mice in town. But the little gathering is suddenly interrupted by Cat R. Waul, who says that they're all welcome to join him for dinner... HIS dinner, that is, mwah-ha-ha-ha-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

"I have officially become a vampire! And not one of those friendly chocolate-eating ones
like in the cereal commercials!"

As the mice scatter for their lives, only for Cat R. Waul and Chula to trap them all, Dr. Travis escapes back into his wagon and frees Fievel, declaring that it's every mouse for himself. Fievel insists that they have to save the others, but Dr. Travis is too much of a coward to go save them. So it's all up to Fievel.

Fortunately, Cat R. Waul has decided that instead of eating the mice, he's going to auction them all off to another cat who makes the highest bid. Apparently he's not that hungry after all.

"I have an announcement! They're doing a sequel to The Secret of NIMH!"

"HOORAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!"

"But it's going to be a direct-to-video sequel and star Mrs. Brisby's son while she only has
a handful of lines!"

"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"But Eric Idle is in it!"

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!"

"And he's voicing Mrs. Brisby's other son, who's been brainwashed into being evil and wants
to take over Thorn Valley!"

"...WHAT?"

But then Dr. Travis decides not to be such a coward and shows up to warn the cats against eating hiccupping mice, lest they get the hiccups as well... unless, of course, they buy some of his patented anti-hiccup lozenges. Cat R. Waul tells the other cats to ignore him and makes a horrible pun... and then hands out the lozenges to the other cats anyway. But Dr. Travis' distracting the cats allows Fievel to save the trapped mice.

Now, I'll give you one guess what's going to happen next. Will it be that...

A) The lozenges are actually the same candy Dr. Travis tricked the rest of the mice into eating, resulting in the cats getting hiccups?

B) The lozenges are actually the same candy Dr. Travis tricked the rest of the mice into eating, resulting in the cats getting hiccups?

OR C) The lozenges are actually the same candy Dr. Travis tricked the rest of the mice into eating, resulting in the cats getting hiccups?

For those of you who picked A, B, or C, congratulations! You guessed correctly! You get nothing!

And then Tiger shows up, assumes the cats are having a party, and starts dancing. I assume that
this is supposed to be humorous.

As he hops aboard a train out of town, Dr. Travis tells Fievel that he's turned over a new leaf. Or has he? He tries to give one of the hiccup-causing candies to a flute-playing mouse on the train, only to realize that Fievel swiped the bag from him. Fin.

What's the Verdict?

Yeah, this is definitely not the greatest installment of the American Tail franchise. I will say that the voice actors all do a fine job with the script they've been given (Gerrit Graham is actually a pretty good replacement for John Cleese in particular). Aside from that, though, the show suffers from mediocre animation, unfunny jokes, weak plots, and an overall lack of interest. The whole episode runs on the fact that everybody in Green River is apparently a massive idiot - it really takes Fievel until the third act to realize the candy is what's causing the hiccups? Don't get me wrong, it's hardly the worst show based on an animated film that I've ever seen, but I really don't think it's worth your time. You'd be better off re-watching the movies again. But, if you want to watch this show for yourself, you can find it on Universal's streaming service Peacock.

Amusingly, according to the third American Tail, the events of Fievel Goes West and this series were all just a dream. That makes it much easier for fans of the film ignore the series.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Hotel Transylvania: The Series"

It took me years to actually sit down and watch the first Hotel Transylvania movie. I thought it was okay, but that it could've been much better. Too much stunt-casting, not taking enough advantage of the "spooky" setting, a bit too cliched... it wasn't awful, though. I've seen far worse animated movies.

But despite its being one of those "you love it or you hate it" franchises (see also Cars, Ice Age, Despicable Me... geez, there are a LOT of animated movie franchises like that), it was successful enough to warrant a sequel. And then another sequel. And then another that Adam Sandler didn't come back for. And in between the second and third movies, a TV show.

Hotel Transylvania: The Series, a coproduction between Sony Pictures Animation and Nelvana, premiered on June 25th, 2017 on Disney Channel in the United States. Odd, seeing as Disney had nothing to do with the Hotel Transylvania movies, but eh. It received two seasons, making for a total of ninety-seven episodes (well, technically fifty-two, but each episode actually has two "segments" so...).

Now, I will say that the movie WOULD make for a great TV series - you've got all sorts of monsters running around the hotel, there's definite comedic potential there. There are a lot of storylines you could do about Dracula running the hotel, maybe with episodes about Mavis and Johnny exploring the world or the monsters teaching Johnny about their way of life. And what did we get? A show with barely any Dracula, very little of his friends, and no Johnny because the show is actually a prequel to the first movie. Here, Mavis (voiced by Bryn McAuley as opposed to Selena Gomez) is 114, which is the vampire equivalent of a fourteen-year-old. Dracula (David Berni) has to leave the hotel to do some business at the "Vampire Council", so now his sister Lydia (Dan Chameroy) is in charge of the hotel. Mavis and Lydia don't quite get along. Replacing Dracula's friends are Frankenstein's son Hank (Gage Munroe), Blobby [the green JELL-O guy]'s daughter Wendy (Evany Rosen), and a mummy named Pedro (Joseph Motiki) who I don't think is supposed to be Murray [the mummy voiced by Cee-Lo Green]'s son but still looks a lot like him. None of these characters were in any of the movies... which I guess means Frankenstein and his wife just abandon their son at home while they vacation at the hotel? That seems like lousy parenting.

Is the show any good? I don't know. Let's watch an episode and see if it's worth a watch or a pile of, as Dracula would say, bat poop. We'll be watching the sixth episode. Segment 1 is called...

How many times have we seen that pun in a cartoon before? With a cliched pun like that for a title, I'm not egg-specting much substance here.

We start off with Mavis and her friends talking about how her father is apparently the worst gardener ever, because none of his plants are alive. Well, actually, it's not Dracula's fault - Mavis promised him that she'd take care of his plants while he was away. Problem is, she waters them with ACID RAIN. Apparently Mavis is a few sodas short of a six-pack.

"I don't get it. I totally have a green thumb!" she complains. Hank does too... which is likely the result of gangrene. And yes, we get a close-up shot of it.

Eugh...

Mavis comes up with a scheme to prevent her dad from finding out that she can't take care of a plant to save her life - get new plants from Quasimodo's garden. Then we're suddenly treated to CHATTERING SKULLS IN OUR FACE! No, really. Suddenly chattering skulls. I'm guessing that was meant to be a transition, because after that we see Mavis and Wendy in Quasi's kitchen.

"Les poissons, les poissons, how I love les poissons!"

Mavis' "get new plants to replace the ones my father trusted me with" plan is interrupted by the discovery that Quasi plans on smashing a giant egg with a hammer. She's all "You can't smash that egg!" and declares that she'll raise it to prove that she is responsible. And the "prevent father from knowing that she's failed epically at taking care of his plants" thing that was her initial plan? Never brought up again.

What an egg-cellent plan you've got there, Mavis.
(See, I can make cliched egg puns, too. It's not hard)

Quasi warns Mavis that the egg is rotten and will eat her when it hatches. But Mavis insists that eggs don't eat vampires and takes it back to her room. We get some shenanigans involving Quasi trying to poach the egg, none of which are particularly funny.

I'm a little unsure as to whether or not Mavis knows how eggs work. One minute she's claiming that Quasi didn't give it the chance to "be an egg" and insisting that eggs don't eat anything, which seems to imply that she doesn't know eggs hatch into living animals. But now she's sitting on it like a chicken to keep it warm...

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. A vampire's faithful, one hundred percent."

Then Lydia's pet chicken... yes, she has a pet chicken. Because, hey, chickens are funny, right? …enters the room and shows Mavis the proper way to sit on an egg. After that, Mavis starts pushing it around in a stroller and her friends suggest playing a game called "Egg-Sport" which consists of kicking the egg around until it smashes. Predictably, Mavis is not fond of that idea.

Question: how does a being made of green slime grow hair?

But then the egg hatches, revealing itself to be... an egg with dragon feet. Sort of a prehistoric version of Sheldon from US Acres.

Well, this is a letdown. I was expecting something far more monstrous.

How exactly is that thing supposed to eat Mavis? Y'know, like Quasi said it would
when it hatched? It doesn't even have a mouth...

We get a montage of Mavis teaching the egg (who she's calling "W-egg-sley" now, by the way) how to swim, write, etc. But eventually the egg leads Mavis into Quasi's kitchen, lures her into a gigantic soup pot, and begins to make stew out of her. Wow, we went from "Mavis thinks she's now a mother" to "Prehistoric Sheldon wants to eat Mavis" pretty quickly, didn't we?

Again, how is that thing supposed to eat Mavis when it doesn't have a mouth? Has it
just not finished hatching yet or something?

Because Mavis is a moron, it takes her a few minutes to realize that the egg is, y'know, trying to cook her. Mavis turns into a bat and flees, but the egg sprouts wings and takes off after her. Blah blah blah, chase scene, yadda yadda yadda… this entire episode has basically revolved around one joke. That Mavis is a moron. Not only is it not funny, but I don't remember her being this ditzy in the movie.

Fortunately, Mavis is saved by a giant Venus Flytrap that she knocked off the ledge at the beginning of the episode.

"FEED ME, MAVIS!"

"I guess he WAS a bad egg after all. If only somebody had warned me!" Mavis laments, giving us Unfunny "Mavis is an Idiot" Joke #51. But won't Dracula be proud of Mavis for taking such good care of his venus flytrap... which promptly dies. I guess because it ate a rotten egg. Wah wah wah wah waaaaaaaaaah...

I would like to point out that Futurama, Back at the Barnyard, and The Penguins of Madagascar all did the "dimwitted character tries to hatch an egg" plot much better than this.

Okay, next segment.

"Hotel Pennsylvania" begins with Mavis setting up gigantic cables to a nearby house's satellite TV, allowing her and her friends to watch "human TV" again. I guess monsters have their own TV shows as well, then? Are there monster TV channels that they're somehow able to prevent humans from watching? I'm curious now...

Anyhow, Mavis admits that her aunt Lydia will probably be really mad if she finds out that Mavis and her friends have been watching human TV. But because she's an idiot, she's willing to take the risk.

You've probably noticed the logo for Descendants 2 on the left-hand corner of the screen there.
Just ignore it, please. The less attention we give those movies, the better.

And what show do Mavis and her friends love to watch? Hotel Pennsylvania! Which stars humans who look a lot like Mavis and her friends. Who apparently live at a hotel. Predictably, this is lampshaded.

Plot twist - the guy who looks like Mavis is actually Mavis' half-brother!

But alas, Lydia's pet chicken... again, chickens are not automatically funny... spots them watching TV and tells Lydia. She is not pleased and forces Mavis to watch all of Adam Sandler's worst movies as punishment.

I mean, she's even voiced by somebody doing an Adam Sandler impression. The showrunners
were clearly inspired by Jack and Jill when they created this character.

Lydia declares that she got rid of every TV in the hotel, which means that they won't be able to watch the final episode of Hotel Pennsylvania. Pedro claims that if you don't watch every episode of a show, you get a sickness called the "Don't See-z Disease". Mavis claims that there's no such thing, but the hotel doctor vouches for Pedro.

Boy, the Missing Link from Monsters vs. Aliens has really let himself go...

According to the doctor, if a monster doesn't watch every episode of a TV show, they'll melt into a puddle. And apparently they can't just tell this to Lydia because... I don't know why. Then again, maybe she wouldn't believe them. The doctor straight-up admits that he's a quack, after all.

The good news is, the humans who live in that house from before are watching Hotel Pennsylvania at the moment, so Mavis and her friends sneak over and watch along from inside their car. But guess who's been following them?

Why didn't they just give Lydia a pet MONKEY, too, while they were at it? Monkeys
are the OTHER animal that people think are automatically funny but aren't, after all...

The chicken blabs to Lydia, who forces Mavis, Pedro, Wendy, and Hank to clean up after the Ceberus heads. Mavis figures out that the chicken WASN'T spying on them... perhaps it was already there for another reason? So they follow her as she sneaks over to the humans' house, discovering that she visits the humans to provide them with fresh eggs. How evil of her!

They tell Lydia about this, and she punishes the chicken. Surprisingly, however, Mavis and her friends feel bad about getting the chicken in trouble. But at least now they can sneak over to the humans' house to watch their stupid show, right?

Wrong-o, Chongo.

"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

After that, Mavis apologizes to the chicken for getting her in trouble and says that if they work together, they can both get what they want. But how will they get past Ceberus? Answer: by digging a tunnel. Well, THAT was remarkably easy...

So the chicken gets to hang out with the humans, and Mavis and her friends get to watch their show.

And it turns out that Lydia secretly loves Hotel Pennsylvania too. In the words of M. Night Shamalayn, WHAT A TWIST!

What's the Verdict?

Yeah, honestly, there's not much worthwhile here. They basically took everything that was good about the movie out and left everything that was bad about it in. No Dracula, none of his friends, no wit, no fun, no creativity... the fact that the show is set in a hotel for monsters is barely brought up at all, and we're just left with a generic show about a teenager and her goofy friends getting into hijinks. Mavis is not a very interesting character... well, maybe she was in the movies, but here she's just so flat and uninteresting. It doesn't help that they seemingly tried to turn her into Star Butterfly, reducing her intelligence to about five percent and making her constantly perky and annoying. Her friends are dull. They have no individual personalities and are basically just there to be replacements for Dracula's friends from the movie. Very few of the jokes land. The animation is mediocre. Even if you're a fan of the movies, I wouldn't recommend checking this out.

It's too bad, because like I said I think the films do have the potential to make a good spin-off TV series. Had they gone another route, this could've been... well, maybe not an AMAZING show, but at least watchable. Ah well...

I don't want this post to end on a negative note, so here's Goofy singing "Monster Mash". See you next time!