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Would that be a red panda?

Yup, you've figured out who's voicing Dracula in the last movie man.

I know this is not full animation, but AniMat did go and give his thoughts on Space Jam: A New Legacy.

He does say he does not hate the movie because, what's the point. It's a movie that is based on TV commercial after all. Not the type of movie you'd expect to be an Academy Award winner by any means.

However, he does say he does not care for the movie and gave it a 4/10 and his Seal of Garbage.

At least it scored higher than Tom and Jerry?

What's about as weird was the fact that it was rumored that Jim Carrey was going to star!

Now that we have the new Space Jam, I felt this would be appropriate.

Random Fact #4371:

When the original Space Jam was released in 1996, it got a mixed critical reception. Its original US gross was about $90 million. The movie was ultimately saved thanks to foreign grosses, making a worldwide total of $250 million.

Shortly afterwards, plans were made for a direct sequel, Space Jam 2. This new movie would have again paired Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes against a new alien villain who would be named Berserk-O! and his henchmen. Berserk-O! was going to be designed by Bob Camp and voiced by Mel Brooks.

Space Jam 2 never got far into development reportedly because Michael Jordan refused to return.

With that, spin-off ideas were pitched, including:

-a spy parody called Spy Jam, which paired the Looney Tunes with Jackie Chan
-a racing comedy called Race Jam, which paired the Looney Tunes with Jeff Gordon
-a golf comedy (not titled, but presumably Golf Jam), which paired the Looney Tunes with Tiger Woods
-a skateboarding comedy called Skate Jam, which paired the Looney Tunes with Tony Hawk

All these ideas were thrown out in favor of Looney Tunes: Back in Action. The movie was helmed by Joe Dante as the 'anti-Space Jam', not pleased with how Space Jam handled the Looney Tunes brand and characters. Despite better critical reception, Looney Tunes: Back in Action was a bomb, making only $21 million stateside and $68 million against a budget of $80 million worldwide.

The new Space Jam: A New Legacy was to star LeBron James as he was always a fan of the original movie and marked the Looney Tunes' first return to theatrical feature films since 2003.

I did go and take this movie it on tubi a while ago.

It sucks. It really sucks.

BTW, this is how it went from being a simple B-movie to a full-blown franchise:



Another factor was the fact that CBS decided not to air the Garbage Pail Kids cartoon so Muppet Babies got to run for 90 minutes.

Huh. Looks like the animation was a big saving grace on this one. I'm not going to run out to see this, but it at least it got two points higher than the first.

Also I saw an ad for The Addams Family 2 and I have to say, it looks like we are getting another Hotel Transylvania 3.

The Drawn Together Movie: the Movie! (2010)

Distributor: Paramount/Comedy Central Films/Double Hemm/6 Point Harness
Director: Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein
Cast: Jess Harnell (Captain Hero, additional voices), Cree Summer (Foxxy Love, Suck My Taint Girl, additional voices), James Arnold Taylor (Wooldoor, Jew Producer, additional voices), Adam Carolla (Spanky Hamm), Tara Strong (Princess Clara, Toot Braunstein, additional voices), Abbey DiGregorio (Ling-Ling), Jack Plotnick (Xandir), Vernon Wells (Network Head), Seth MacFarlane (I.S.R.A.E.L.)
Runtime: 71 minutes
MPAA rating: N/A

Returning back to the house where our eight heroes were living for the series, the show’s Jew Producer has them engage in a competition which would horrify the ASPCA. Though it is completed with Superman parody Captain Hero being the winner, 70s mystery-solving musician Foxxy Love notices something is wrong when she can use more explicit profanity with no censor beeping. She learns that Comedy Central has canceled their show and sent the sinister robot called I.S.R.A.E.L. (the acronym for Intelligent Smart Robot Animation Eraser Lady) to eradicate them all from existence. So they, together with their other housemates, including racist Disney-esque Princess Clara, effeminate video game warrior Xandir, obnoxious Internet meme Spanky Hamm, trashy 20s sex symbol Toot Braunstein, wacky kids’ cartoon character Wooldoor Sockbat and sociopathic battle monster Ling-Ling all must band together to get their show back on the air. Seeking the help of the Suck My Taint Girl, can this band of wacky and un-PC parody characters make it to Make-A-Point Land to get a point for all their shenanigans, stop the Network Head and I.S.R.A.E.L. and get their show back on the air?

This movie is based on the raunchy and controversial mature cartoon series on Comedy Central. I have a confession to make. Back when I was on the Disney College Program in 2004, the mature animated series Drawn Together would be first broadcast on Comedy Central. Back then it became a favorite for me and my roommates as it was a deliberate parody of both animated characters and reality TV. Back then The Simpsons was starting to become stale, Family Guy was canceled and I never truly liked South Park, so this would be a new favorite for me.

Oddly enough, despite all it’s political incorrectness and college frat-style humor, it was worth watching for good reason. The characters all seemed to have lives, personalities, attitudes, and the show generally seemed to care about them. Sure it wasn’t a show where you would truly care if someone died because death was no sacred cow on the series, but d**n was it funny in its total revelry in drunken debauchery. Sure opinions on it are polarizing, but I fell into the “Love it” camp.

And then… it all fell apart. The hated Season 3, which also turned out to be the show’s final season, had a bunch of reasons for cancellation; at the time it seemed like the staff just quit caring. They stopped with meaningful character interactions and just relied solely on dark humor, shock humor and random pop culture references. The characters also got one real character trait, not to mention they would frequently break character for the sake of jokes. It was that, together with the fact episodes seemed to have such a long production cycle that it was impossible to have episodes finished by deadlines and ratings declined on account of fans hating what they did to the show and the characters. The final episode is a clip show that ultimately just hung on bitterness; the show seemed to hate the fact it was ending after all these issues. It’s like they just can’t get a grip on why they were being canceled when something like South Park could just keep going.

Not being terribly impressed with the South Park movie, no matter what my thoughts were on that movie it will hold some appeal to hardcore fans which was part of the reason I didn’t flunk it. This movie was a last hurrah for the series and holds a special, but not good, place for animation fans. It’s supposed to be so bad even fans of the Drawn Together series hate it! So, with some Bile Fascination having gotten the better of me, I decided to watch this movie and give my honest thoughts on it.

Where do I start? How about at the beginning, that makes sense.

The movie begins in modern day Bedrock where Toot has run up a major bar tab. She’s then called over to a table where Foxxy is sitting when she takes one more shot and a drag on a cigarette before walking over there. Oh yeah and I forgot to say so but she’s pregnant. Now, why just… why would you do that… anyone can tell you this is not advised as drinking and smoking cause birth defects. As it turns out Toot is pregnant due to Barney Rubble’s adultery. The whole time she insists that Barney is the love of her life, flipping back and forth about his sexuality while treating the baby like junk. This sequence, pointless as it is, is appropriate as it helps set up a theme the movie seems to be going for.

For now, I’ll say even for what the series is probably best known for doing, this movie is extremely graphic and tasteless. It revels in so much objectionable content as part of its attitude on why censorship is bad and we should not have it, being they had to deal with censors on TV. There are some issues with this as for all its revelry in controversial content, none of it is funny, and as I once said on the South Park movie, the fact the characters are now actually using stronger profanity without censor beeping does not make it funny. Not to mention if you ever watched the series when it was released on DVD, the episodes were not, nor were they ever, censored. The characters would just wantonly curse without censor beeping and expose gender parts with no pixilation, so it seems weird about why only now would they find the non-censoring cool, it makes no sense in context.

Then there’s another issue I’m going to bring up: the tone. Do you remember how I said the last official episode of the show had a very bitter tone about it? The show got canceled because of a lot of issues that were going on. The show could not keep going if they could not make deadlines and it would go overbudget, that would be like having a friend that always wants money but never pays you back. The fact that this movie was released about three years after the final episode of Season 3 should be an idea of how long they probably needed. But no, they seemed to have a massive ego going, the fact the show was popular and people loved it in its earlier seasons is testament to that. But the nerve of the network for canceling the show! And the fans for declining viewership, we can take these characters and do whatever we want with them! We refuse to take blame for this horrible injustice!

And in this movie? I’ll just say they learned nothing. They took all their rage, bitterness and resentment and amplified it. The movie’s got this relentless… angry tone.

Normally, I would probably tell you about the movie’s story or characters, but for now I’ll just say: what story? They go for a story where the characters learn their animated reality show was canceled and are now trying to get it back on the air, but what it ultimately does is take a lot of character bits with copious amounts of objectionable content with lots of padding in-between. Plus the theme they seem to be going for is why would they need a point for their actions? They clearly make it they should be allowed to just do what they want for reasons because they want to, they enjoy doing this, or it makes them feel good? I liken that as asking why we would need to have things like manners and laws. When you were just a little kid, you needed to be thought and practice manners because it allows society to function; and we have laws because without them the country falls into anarchy. Crimes would just run rampant and no one would ever be punished. Having themes and messages are important because it has people think and we naturally want to be smart. Not wanting to bother with a point seems very counterproductive in my book. The movie wants so hard to make a case against censorship and why we should not have it, but it is hardly effective. If anything, it’s case becomes why we do need censorship, because all that they are doing being so blatant with its objectional content is not even somewhat funny.

The animation is like that on the series, which is limited. The movie uses the series’ animation models, which were varied as they were all supposed to be characters from different shows/movies/games from various eras/genres. Here it seems even more limited than normal. There is a reason for this as the movie was make for only $350,000. There are episodes of a show that have bigger budgets. You can tell too, because the characters many have sequences with just two animation frames and there’s even a several minute sequence where the characters are in danger of being submerged underwater and they figure they can solve the problem by listening to the DVD commentary. You get the feeling they may have blown the budget on the introductory credits?

I would tell you about the characters too, but like the story, I don’t have much to go on. The characters, or rather what’s left of these characters, by this point on the show’s run, were Flanderized to the point they are now just parodies of themselves. As well, the characters don’t all get equal weight here; only a few of which are meaningful. I guess I should start with Foxxy Love, who’s probably the one thing the movie has closest to a character with relevance to a plot. She’s under the suspicion that something is wrong on account of the fact she can now go right out and use more objectional material. After that… she goes for more sexual stuff and that’s it. For who else? Captain Hero, the series’ own Wesley Crusher, has a character beat where he is nothing more than an idiotic necrophile. I’m serious, he kidnaps a corpse from her funeral and then drags her around having made her his new girlfriend. He even goes so far as to tongue-kiss it. Xandir, the show’s straight character who is ironically gay, is just that; he is jealous that Captain Hero now has a girlfriend and wants his pal back. It has to say something if Princess Clara seems more developed and she dies halfway through the movie! I suppose Spanky Hamm has relevance too, being that he acts like the writers’ mouthpiece, something I never once saw as being good. For the others? Toot doesn’t get to be anything more than a pregnant barfly, Wooldoor seems important for just making wiener jokes, and Ling-Ling is largely ignored. The Jew Producer… I guess his faith is really supposed to be relevant? Moving on. These characters are no longer interesting or funny, they are just sickos we no longer care about. Now, for the villains? Oh. Boy. So much bile is directed at them. They are making no secret as to who we are supposed to hate. The villain is the Network Head, who bears a hate for the show blaming them for his family’s deaths. Not joking, his family was killed on account of the show. Was it because of an incident that it caused? No, they were distracted by a poster and then got in a car accident. It’s a really lame motif, there are Captain Planet villains more subtle than this. I.S.R.A.E.L., the robot sent to erase them all from existence, probably did not need a voice, I don’t think Seth MacFarlane really needed the money with the gravy train he was on. And then, there is the Suck My Taint Girl, the movie’s clear parody of South Park. Clearly a lot of bird-flipping is being directed at South Park, however, the parody they are doing is so shallow and so surface-level it is not even slightly effective or funny. What they are doing is making their bosses at Comedy Central the villains because they canceled the show, and South Park the co-villain because that show gets to run while Drawn Together is not still running. Guys, you’re passing the blame here. All this acrid revulsion you have is on the same level as a little kid who’s angry because they were having problems with their best friend following a play date. You could have saved money if instead of making this movie you could have just sent your bosses, plus Trey Parker and Matt Stone, a poison pen letter.

The last thing I’m going to say is, do you think this movie really goes anywhere? Nope, it turns out to be a Shaggy Dog Story. The characters’ efforts to get their show back on the air not only proves futile, it effectively sends these characters on their very final adventure. It really does leave absolutely no room for a sequel. Without saying exactly how, what was that iconic Red Dwarf phrase?

“Everybody’s Dead, Dave.”

This movie is not a good way to get introduced to the Drawn Together series; it will instead likely scare people away, or if they are already fans, alienate them from admitting they like the series at all. Adding insult to injury? I had to actually buy this movie. That’s right, since video rental stores are a thing of the past, and no streaming service was carrying it, I had to go on my iTunes account to buy this dead movie; I did not have the option to rent it. I suppose calling it a movie is stretching it, it might be more accurate to call this the Drawn Together Viking funeral. It’s so bitter, angry, pointless, hated by its own fans, refuses to do its job and it's highway robbery on top of that; this is one of the worst animated films I’ve ever seen. Do yourself a favor, skip this fiasco.



The Drawn Together Movie: the Movie! (2010)
TreyVore rates it: F