Toonboy

What good came out of the year 2000 short of repeats of Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, and the rock heavy sitcom Generation O?

Honestly I'm drawing a blank.

Yes, the new millennium was a wasteland for cartoons, but I think Jackie Chan Adventures was one of the better ones. I don't remember too much of the later seasons. I think the cartoon was good up to where they were dealing with the Panku Box.

The cartoon, endorsed by Jackie Chan, accurately replicated Chan's trademarked slapstick humor and stunt-filled brand of flying martial arts. I'm not sure if such a thing has what you would call a broad appeal. But then again, perhaps Avatar: The Last Airbender doesn't have what you would call broad appeal.

But whereas Avatar was a martial arts fantasy adventure with some comedy, Jackie Chan is a comedy adventure with some martial arts.

Wow. What a tedious show. If there's anything worse than a movie based on a video game, it's a tv show based on a video game. This cartoon makes My Little Pony and Care Bears seem like masterpieces. Terrible animation and a lot of corny acting. This cartoon usually starts out with some schtick about a "plumber's log" as in a parody of Star Trek. The rest of the show recycles the themes and music ripped straight from the video game series. Then you're treated to an ugly live action version of Super Mario as an ender.

Chuck Jones' version of Alice in Wonderland, The Phantom Tollbooth is an engaging, heady trip that is rife with Chuck Jones' signature touches. Take out Alice in Wonderland's psychedelic nonsense and replace it with teaching material from the middle school of your childhood, and you've got this film. The main character is bored little boy who doesn't want to learn. Then one day he finds himself turned into a cartoon and thrown into a world of concepts. One half is world of words. The other is a world of numbers. But without Rhyme or Reason(these are actual characters), everything is one big stuffy mess.

This movie seems more like something you might see being shown in a school as a teaching opportunity. The atmosphere practically drips with educational content. I'm not too sure about this movie's impact on the emotional level, but Chuck Jones' flair and his trademarked sounds and ways with music keeps things interesting. One song that stands out is a ditty about noise. Strangely enough, it's a well written tune.

This movie is just as much of an oddball movie as Alice in Wonderland and looks like the kind of thing some people would watch while intoxicated on strange substances. One particular scene comes to mind when Milo drives his car into the Doldrums. Milo starts to feel sleepy, everybody in the area is lethargic, and things start to melt into slime, including his car. If the creators weren't drunk when they made this scene, you would certainly feel drunk just watching it. Or maybe somebody somewhere is drunk while watching the movie. Anyway, I digress.

Even during the time frame of the 1970s, you would never confuse this film as having great animation. Even during this period, most of Disney's films were leaps above this terms of animation. However, how often do you see a film where words from a dictionary are also characters in the film and the buildings those characters live in?

One of the most blatantly bizarre and surreal cartoons on tv right now, Chowder will probably divide people into love it/hate it camps. In an age where overeating is a problem for children, Chowder's obsession with food might be seen as a sore point. And that's if you manage to get your teeth around the occasional physical humor. Dust off the dirt, however, and you find a cartoon that lives to have fun with itself.

Chowder is self-reverent to the extreme. Chowder constantly smashes down the fourth wall in ways rarely ever seen. One particular episode comes to mind where Chowder actually scribbles on the television screen. Gazpacho erases the scribbles, but Chowder questions the Cartoon Network screen bug. Gazpacho states "That one doesn't come off." Another episode comes to mind where the first half-episode and the second half-episode actually retell the same events but from a different point of view from each other.

It's this kind of silly nonsense that gives Chowder a fun, lowbrow sheen, kind of on the same level as Family Guy but tailored for kids.

Not sure if the Japanese really have any business touching rock and roll. It's even weirder that they didn't get the real Ami and Yumi to play themselves. Guess they didn't have cute enough voices. Hi Hi is standard Cartoon Network fare. You'd recognize the type just as you'd recognize a standard Nicktoon or a standard Disney show. It's sorta like an updated version of Josie and the Pussycats but with an increased potential to be insulting. Kaz may annoy the heck out of you, but the very basic take on Japanese mannerisms and on band/manager relationships may fire off a nerve somewhere. The animation is nowhere near the level of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends or Ruby Gloom. This show has already been done before too. Several years earlier a less successful but far superior show incorporated the rock element into its episodes to better effect. That show was called Generation O.