Friday, September 19, 2014

Looney Tunes Retrospective

I don't care what the Nostalgia Critic said in his review. I respectfully disagree.
As it says in the Tiny Toons theme song, "Our teachers have been getting laughs since 1933." A lot has changed in that time, the cartoons themselves especially. Each incarnation is a product of its time, but some have gotten it right and some wrong. Which do I think was the best? Let's take a look.
I remember some of the early cartoons well, like the one about Tweety in which two cats either played by or at least imitating Abbott and Costello were trying to get him. Then of course there was the one everyone knows - the hour-long cartoon show. To me, that era was the best example of what the cartoon had to offer. My favorite character was Speedy Gonzales, and it was his segments I liked the most. When Tiny Toons aired, my favorite character became Babs Bunny. However, there was one episode in which the youngsters teamed up with a mentor that was their counterpart - and Babs realized she had no one (except for this character of old she finally sought out named Honey, who resembled Dot from Animaniacs). That was fine, since Tress MacNeill plays both Babs and Dot, but I had to wonder...what if there was a female bunny that could be her role model?
Then Space Jam came out when I was in the fourth grade, making basketball even more popular than ever. It also added the character Lola, who was voiced by Kath Soucie. While she wasn't funny like Babs, she was a strong female character who had a temper whenever someone called her "doll." My best friend at the time and I both liked her, but her reception among others doesn't seem to have been all that kind. She made a re-appearance in a show called Baby Looney Tunes (the Looney Tunes version of Muppet Babies, only you can see that Granny is clearly their caretaker rather than a faceless Nanny with green striped socks). It wasn't a bad show (Samuel Vincent voiced several of the characters, including Baby Marvin who was shockingly adorable and not actually plotting to blow up the world), but it was for babies. The WB then released a different take on Looney Tunes called Loonatics Unleashed, which only lasted two seasons of thirteen episodes each. The goal was to make them more edgy and possibly in competition with the TMNT series 4Kids was running at the time. Sorry, guys, nice try though.
That brings us to the new Looney Tunes cartoon, The Looney Tunes Show. It's funny, well-written, but I don't like it as much as the old show. I just don't. I don't care that they put Lola in it because they turned her into a spastic stalker when that's not her character at all! It's not funny (even though some people think it is and hated her in Space Jam), and she's certainly never going to be as funny as Babs was. Speedy's kind of annoying too, so now I have no one to root for. The CGI bit at the end with Wyle E. Coyote and the Road Runner used to bother me, but now I don't really even care. It's not entirely unwatchable, but I can't really watch it (if I want to see Daffy Duck-like antics, I'll just watch the Nostalgia Critic Doug Walker do his thing).

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