Seth MacFarlane is going to revive “The Flintstones”.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment. If you’re not a fan of Seth’s work, you may be gaping at your screen in horror, imagining endless “e-rock-tion” jokes and Dino’s reincarnation as a fey triceratops with a glue addiction. Even I have to admit that I am slightly dubious, given how disappointed I was with the most recent offerings from Family Guy and Cleveland.  However, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I actually think he’ll pull this project off quite well.

After all, American Dad just keeps getting better and better. And for all that Family Guy is rude and crude, it is well written, clever at times, and expertly drawn and acted. You can’t argue with Seth’s track record or successes as a show creator and producer.  I really genuinely do believe that he’ll handle this project – revamping one of America’s most beloved TV series – with tact and sensitivity.

And let’s face it; The Flintstones could do with revamping. Don’t get me wrong, the original series was great (in fact, I have seasons 1 – 3 on DVD), but a few things, which Seth and his team can easily overcome, let it down.

First is the animation. The illustrators were working to the best of their ability with the technology they had at the time, but nowadays it looks clunky if you focus on it. Things like long walks with the same trees and buildings re and re-appearing in the background, the fact that Wilma is frozen solid while Fred is talking, or that only her head moves once she picks up the dialogue all distract (me at least) from the story lines. Seth and his team can bring their expertise (and computer graphics) to the project to resolve this. I do wonder, though, if he’ll continue to use his signature style or if he’ll deviate from it.  If he does choose to use the same style, he already has character designs for quite a few of his new cast – they have appeared in Family Guy cutaway gags on a few occasions.

Secondly, the original series was set in the 60s. The prehistoric animals posing as household appliances were posing as manual can openers and foot pedal sewing machines. Things have moved on a lot since then. “What’s the animal version of the iPod? That’s the kind of thing we have to think about,” said MacFarlane.  So he’s not so much changing the old show as simply bringing it into the modern world, with relevant jokes and appliances.

How he will do this has been the cause of some debate. Critics are afraid that Seth will turn the Flintstones and the Rubbles into sex crazed farting wife beating animals for the sake of reproducing the kind of humour that has served him so well on Family Guy and Cleveland. They fear that modernising the idea means modernising the humour. And it will, to some extent, in the same way that Scrubs was different to Cheers which was different to I Love Lucy. Different eras have their own types of comedy, and what you can say and do on TV changes as the way TV is produced and the way society’s sensibilities adapt. So, yes, the new Flintstones will have modern humour in it.

But I don’t think we should take that to mean that Seth and his team will ruin the essence of the show. I will again take a chance here and say that I suspect he will go the way of American Dad, and opt for clever, quick paced writing, which is only occasionally uncomfortably lewd, and forgo his traditional cutaway gags and celebrity bashing. There’s plenty of material in the world of Bedrock for Seth to sink his teeth into without having to bring those sorts of jokes into it. I don’t think even he wants to produce “Family Guy, but set in the Stone Age” – I think he’ll go for something quite different.

In bringing the show into the modern world, he opens up the possibilities for all new jokes and story lines. I’m not sure how much he intends to change it, but he could give Wilma and Betty jobs (rather than just having then play the doting housewives), for example, or give the appliances starring roles instead of just using them as a punch line. Bear in mind, as well, that even the cheesy old Flintstones had some ground breaking story arcs, including being the first ever show to look at the issue of infertility when Betty and Barney adopted Bamm-Bamm. So there’s plenty for Seth to explore and work with.

Let’s hope that he does it well, and that I don’t have to eat my words two years from now (or seven, by the time it finally gets around to air in Britain!)  I can’t wait to see how it turns out. For now though, I’ll just have to be patient, and hope I can get the theme tune out of my head. Everybody: “Flintstones, meet the Flintstones”…

Back in 2006, when the rumours started flying that the team at Family Guy were planning on doing a feature length Star Wars parody, there must have been a collection of nerds out there who couldn’t believe their luck. Blue Harvest, as the episode came to be known, was one of the most hyped DVD releases of the 2007, despite the fact that it wasn’t a ‘real’ film, but rather an hour-long television special, and ran to only 48 minutes without commercials. Still, a full endorsement from George Lucas and plenty of internet buzz meant that this release was much anticipated.

Now, I have a confession to make. The entire sum of my knowledge of Star Wars at that point came from the referential jokes on Family Guy prior to this making of this trilogy; I have never watched any of the originals.  So I wasn’t one of those anticipating it because I was a Star Wars fan. The entire appeal of this project to me was that it was yet another DVD to spend my money on – yet another Seth MacFarlane project to endorse. I pre-ordered the UK release, and waited.

I was pretty impressed with the final product. It was really funny, even to people like me who hadn’t seen the original, and from what I understand they went out of their way to make the shots etc true to the source material. I now know the basic premise of Star Wars enough to fake knowledge of them at parties. (I still haven’t seen the original movies, but my knowledge of them is much more in-depth thanks to these volumes and their commentaries. Did you know, for example, that “Blue Harvest” was the fake working title for Return of the Jedi? They didn’t want fans to mob the sets while they were filming.)

It was also great to see the Family Guy characters we all know and love transformed into people from an alternative story universe. The six key members of the Griffin family play the leading roles as you would expect (Stewie as Darth Vader, Brian as Chewie, Lois as Leia and so on), with neighbours Quagmire, Cleveland and Mort filling out the cast as C3P0, R2D2 and Lando Calrissian respectively (Meg takes her usual ribbing). The rest of the extended cast fill in the supporting roles, with very few mis-cast or doubled up (more on that later).

Overall, I quite enjoyed this offering. It seemed a great success for the creators, and judging by the commentary and what I’ve read they had great fun doing it too. It was a special project that they all got passionately involved in and devoted extra special effort to.  It was very well received by critics and fans and was even nominated for an Emmy.  Calls began to come in for a sequel…

Something, Something, Something Dark Side

… and in 2009, those calls were answered! The second instalment of the Family Guy trilogy was a straight-to-DVD parody of Empire Strikes Back (later aired as two episodes at the end of the 8^th season on American TV). The title came from a cutaway joke set up by Stewie in “Barely Legal”, an earlier episode of Family Guy, about the Emperor’s prefect formula for Star Wars dialogue.

But, something, something, something was different about this one. It lacked a certain energy, in my humble opinion, both from the production team and the final product. The jokes weren’t as clever or as snappy, and the plot seemed to drag at points, looking for something funny to say in expositional scenes and amid a much more serious story line. If I had seen it, maybe I could compare it to Empire vs A New Hope, but I all I can say is that I was slightly less than impressed with this DVD. It was okay, but not great; amusing but not side splitting. What I can offer by way of observation is that Blue Harvest was the product of the Volume 6 era, when the writing was still solid and the episodes still impressed me, while this one was being written round about the same time as Volume 9, which I didn’t think much of (see the review I wrote recently).

One thing that was impressive about this instalment – and the first one, come to that – was the animation. The graphics of Star Wars were revolutionary at the time; spaceships, believable alien Muppets, costumes, props, and foreign landscapes must have all impressed their viewers visually. And the Family Guy instalment has lived up to that with impressive use of CGI and wide screen format to make their style look as much like Lucas’ as possible. As a side note, this was the last ever episode of Family Guy to use hand-drawn anamatics, before transitioning to computer-designed ones.

Like I said, I’m not sure what Star Wars fans thought of this one in terms of accuracy or telling the story well. You’ll have to ask the sci-fi nerds about that one. All I know is that it relied a lot on the Family Guy nerds knowing their stuff – there were a lot of call-back jokes, bit characters, and inside references that people who aren’t as obsessed with Family Guy as I am might have missed out on.

Maybe it was because they churned this one out faster to please the fans, perhaps they realised that making fun of Star Wars has been done to death, or maybe it was because they’d done it before and it had lost its edge, but this offering just missed something. It’s longer than the first instalment – 52 minutes – and produced to the same high standard, but there was a certain apathy that seemed to come across on the commentary and which was obvious in the footage. They had stopped caring.

It’s a Trap!

And, by the time the third movie rolled around, everyone knew it. The episode opens as the other two did, with a power outage killing the TV, leading to Peter telling the Star Wars story to pass the time; “We have to do Jedi now, don’t we?”, asks Stewie in a defeated tone, and Peter asks him to shut up and just let him get through this. The opening scroll across space also portrays this sense of rushing to the finish line to complete the set: “Luke Skywalker has returned to his home planet of Tatooine in order to—okay, you know what, we don’t care. We were thinking of not even doing this one. Fox made us do it… Look, just do me a huge favour and lower your expectations, okay?”

With the creators even admitting to not believing in their own product anymore, there’s not really anywhere else to go but disappointment. Don’t get me wrong – this is, once again, a vaguely entertaining and funny movie. It’s still visually brilliant, and it rounds off the trilogy well. But there’s no passion any more, and it followed the slow steady slope of decline in quality that Family Guy has offered me of late. Oddly however, given that they have apparently tired of the project, it is the longest of the three episodes, and the DVD features a good six minutes of footage not seen when it was aired on TV, again as a two-parter.

This offering is the most complex and fast paced of the three. I am told that Return of the Jedi is the best out of the original movies, so perhaps the few remaining fans on the production team wanted to do it justice. Sadly, all the additional new characters posed a problem for the writers: they were out ofFamily Guy stock characters to fill the roles. So, they fell back on cameos from Roger and Klaus from American Dad (the highlight of the hour for me, which says something) and Rollo and Tim the Bear from The Cleveland Show. They also re-cast some of their lesser characters into second roles.

Which is my one big complaint about this offering: one of the most talked about things on the net was who “was going to play Jabba the Hutt?” Most people speculated Meg as the obvious choice, but she had already been cast as two different space monsters and ended up playing a third in this film. Who did they go with? Joe Swanson.

Completely mis-cast in my humble opinion – it seems the only reason he got the part was because he was the only main character who hadn’t been used (except for two bit parts) already. I’ll give them credit that they got almost all the other characters down pretty well, as far as I can tell, but this one casting decision seemed to make little sense to me. I don’t know who else I would have gone with, (perhaps Stan from American Dad, if you’re looking for the real enemy of the Family Guy universe) but Joe is one of my favourites, and casting him as the bad guy sullied the rest of this film for me.

Overall, I would recommend this box set. It’s a part of the Family Guy canon now, and it’s not bad. Maybe a Star Wars fan would love (or hate) it more than I do, but all I can offer is that it’s a quick and humorous way to educate yourself about Star Wars without actually having to sit down and watch all three full-length originals. And it does justice to the cast and style of Family Guy too. But lower your expectations if you’ve read the hype surrounding this series and are expecting something groundbreaking.

It was recently released it as a complete trilogy, and that is how it will stay. They have stated emphatically that they will not be doing the prequels. “Maybe Cleveland can do those” says Peter, as we fade to the Family Guy credits done in George Lucas style, and fans of Family Guy and Star Wars alike breathe a sigh of relief that it’s over.

I actually didn’t think it was all that good.

There. I said it. And I think Seth MacFarlane would be proud of me for doing so: after all, he was the man who famously said (via Stewie) that he wanted to hurt “The guys who watched the Simpson’s back in 1994, and won’t admit the damn thing isn’t funny anymore”. As someone who still has a huge amount of respect and admiration for the earlier canon of the series, I am just being honest and true to their own lessons by not remaining a slavishly adoring fan when they have ceased producing work which entertains and amuses me as much as it used to. I tried to be loyal and stick out the slump (in fact, Seasons 7 & 8 impressed me more with subsequent viewings than they did at first), but it’s now looking like that confidence was misplaced. It’s been, in my humble opinion, a downwards slope since about midway through Season 6, and I don’t see it being back on the way up any time soon.

I’ll still be watching to see what happens, of course. Like I said, I’m still madly in love with the earlier offerings (and their creators), and I still LIKE the show enough to keep coming back for more. It’s not bad television, per se. It just doesn’t leave me as satisfied as it used to, and that’s a disappointment. The jokes aren’t clever (insult, insult, fart, bowel movement, fart, mock the Jews…); the plots are getting more and more far fetched, and I miss the days when Stewie was evil and subtle instead of just overtly gay.

But don’t you worry, money crunchers at FOX; you can still count on my £20 for Volume 10. I just hope it’s a better collection than this last one – and that dear old Seth and his team have the courage, before there’s a volume 11 to pull them further into the pit, to put their own hands up and admit that enough is enough when it comes to the adventures of the Griffin Family. (Have you seen what’s happened with Scrubs? It’s much better to just let something die, with dignity. Think of shows like Friends, Frasier and MASH. They all stopped before they got to the point of flogging a dead horse, and they’re still respected and admired today for a good long run and a graceful exit on a high.)

Yes, I really just said that: I don’t want to see Family Guy go on forever and ever, not if it’s going to keep being more of the same that we’ve seen lately. It’s a historic, and kind of sad, day. But admitting it is the first step, and I know that I’m not the only one out there who shares that sentiment. A lot of fans feel let down. I personally think that they should write the show a fitting ending, and then leave it at that. I might even be excited about the odd Family Guy feature length release, if they did it like the older stuff. But I wasn’t overly impressed with this latest offering on the whole.

So, that’s the reason for the delay in the review, and pretty much the gist of my feelings about the new offerings. But don’t let that put you off borrowing a copy off someone or watching some episodes on TV; they’re not awful, just they’re not as good as they used to be. The plots are solid, if relying a bit heavily on the same transparent structure over and over again. The characters are all those you know and love (plus a few new B characters that are enjoyable in small doses). They’re still funny, they’re just not ‘laugh out loud, holding my sides, quote it to your friends for the next six months’ funny.

I would add one addendum to the above: the sequence where Stewie and Brian go into an alternative universe where everything is Disney-fied is pure comedy genius. (In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that the whole Road to the Multiverse episode is almost as good as any in Season 5.) Worth the price of the DVD on its own, seeing the Family Guy cast beautifully animated, bright eyed and busy-tailed, and singing about pie almost makes up for the less brilliant moments across the rest of the episodes. If only they hadn’t ruined it by ending on a Jew joke, it might have made it into my Top 20 favourite moments. I cannot even begin to describe this joyous scene, so do please find a way to view it if you’ve been feeling as jaded with the show as I have of late: it will restore your faith in the franchise.

I sincerely hope that either things improve/revert to their original state, or that the team accept that it’s past its peak, and end it on their own terms while the fans are still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t mean to say that this latest poorer offering sullies any of the genius of the previous ones, or that there’s nothing redeeming about the entire volume, but just rather that the whole thing left me with a taste of “Oh, was that it?” on this occasion. I expected more. This is also why I don’t want Seth MacFarlane to stop altogether. American Dad is still consistently strong, and his other projects are admirable. And Family Guy will always be my favourite of his offerings, and I do feel he’s made his mark on history with it. But perhaps it’s time to try something new folks.

This film follows the plot of the fourth book (chronologically) in the series, and also incorporates some elements from the fifth. It’s a clever screenplay, which flows together well and has just enough suspense to keep you guessing. This time, as ‘foretold’ at the ending of the third novel/second movie, Susan and Peter do not join their younger siblings on their adventures. Instead they are accompanied by their cousin Eustace. Susan does have a small part and some screen time, but poor Peter is reduced to a cameo appearance less than a minute long, and is then promptly forgotten for the rest of the movie. The elder-brother-oppressing-the-younger role is then taken on by Prince Caspian. (That’s okay though, I always much more of a crush on young Edmund!)

In fact, the only real disappointment that this film contained for me was that Ben Barnes appears to have somehow become un-sexy between this film and the last. Maybe it was the loss of the accent, maybe he just had to grow into his face or something, but he looks and sounds so different in this episode that at first I was convinced they had replaced him with another actor! While this doesn’t ruin the film as a whole, it is somewhat distracting, and means less swooning for the females in the audience, which is a shame.

Though he puts in a wonderful performance, the actor who plays Eustace doesn’t add much to the onscreen eye candy. He does however provide a wonderful new character (one we should warm to, as he comes back next time), and some excellent comic relief. He is also the focus of one of the main plot points and character development; and it’s always entertaining to watch someone freaking out when they first enter a new world!

Of course, we all know by now that there are many references to Christianity and Biblical lore in the CS Lewis books, and these come through absolutely in the movies, if you are looking out for them (as any good English student would.)  While the first was about the Resurrection, and the second about the return of the true religion after corruption, this film ponders the question of the spiritual world and the seven deadly sins/temptations. The voyagers are hoping to sail safely through a series of islands, each one offering their own challenges, to find seven swords (symbolic of the seven virtues) to end an evil curse. Along the way they are tempted by greed (Edmund finds a pool that turns anything dipped into it to gold), vanity (Lucy casts a spell to make her as pretty as her sister, and learns a valuable lesson about her own worth), pride (the two ‘Kings’ of Narnia, Edmund and Caspian, fight over who’s really in charge) etc. Even lust makes a brief appearance, subtle though it may be. As I say in so many of my reviews, maybe I’m over analysing, but the Christian message was painfully obvious, did somewhat override the plot at some points. (For those who don’t quite ‘get’ it: basically, Aslan = Jesus. I’m sure you’ll figure the rest out for yourself.)

The final scene of the movie shows the victorious voyagers finally reaching the lands of Aslan, having just survived a fight with a gigantic sea serpent (read, “the Devil”). Prince Caspian toys with the idea of journeying there to find his father. “Once you enter my lands” says the mighty lion (voiced, deeply as ever, by Liam Neeson) “There is no return.” Prince Caspian opts to stay a little longer, but the mouse Reepicheep valiantly lays down his sword and goes forth. It would have been a touching moment if my brain hadn’t been screaming “Just like heaven…”  And then the waters part (you get the idea by now, I’m sure) and the Pevensie children and their cousin return home. Lucy and Edmund know that they will never be back, but Eustace is told that Narnia might yet have need of him.

Once again, the sequel is set up, just in case. Finances willing, the production studios and actors will probably jump at the chance to return once again to Narnia. And, if the fourth movie is anything like the first three, so will the audience. This is a great way to spend time at the cinema, and its well worth the price of a ticket and some popcorn if you have a spare afternoon over the holidays. It’s also family friendly, and will probably do quite well for itself. Or, you could just go read the book!

In my usual formula, before I start bashing, let’s get the good points out of the way. This film is entertaining, very funny and is definitely going to stand out as one of the better films offered up by the summer of 2010 (Piranah 3D? Uh, no thanks!)  It is also, or so I am told, pretty loyal to the original show in terms of tone, character and story. Liam Neeson is the only instantly recognisable actor among the ensemble, but the others hold their own and probably do the original characters justice. In fact, I think I probably enjoyed this movie more than my cinema-going companion who had seen the TV shows, as I wasn’t comparing the two.

What I was doing was predicting what would happen about half an hour before it did. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer and so I know the ‘tricks’, or maybe it was pretty transparent to everyone, but I saw nothing unfolding on the screen that I hadn’t already anticipated in kind. Or maybe that was the point – think like Hannibal, always be one step ahead, have an idea, a plan?  I’m willing to give the writers of the film the benefit of the doubt on this one, because it was actually really well written in the grand scheme of things. It just wasn’t clever; the ‘twists’ were about as twisty as MacDonald’s fries. (Hint/spoiler alert: if you don’t actually SEE a character die onscreen, he ain’t dead; and there is NO reason for a two minute long movie kiss, no matter how much you wanted the couple to finally lock lips, except to facilitate the ending the way they did. (Conveniently, the ending, as with most movies these days, seems to facilitate a sequel, should the money crunchers down in Hollywood deem that a good idea. But I digress.)

This film won’t hurt your head like an Inception (which I’ve actually yet to see) or an Ocean’s 11, and second viewings probably won’t yield anything that you didn’t catch at the first. But maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe that was the point of television shows like The A-Team – they were fast paced and macho and there were lots of explosions and shoot outs, but you could still tune out for 50 minutes and not have to use your head very much. It’s the antidote, which funnily enough actually existed before the affliction, to shows like Lost, which definitely have to be followed and paid attention to. Forget the physics, forget the improbability (or impossibility)of the events unfolding before you; suspend your disbelief for a while, and enjoy. I know I’ve dedicated a while to doing so, but I don’t think this is a film that is meant to be analysed too much. Though, if you ever want to know how to fly a tank…

While it’s definitely a ‘bloke’s film’, don’t think the girlfriend won’t enjoy it just as much. Face is just handsome enough to get us thinking, and we’ll enjoy the personal development of BA as he faces his fear of flying and discovers that it’s okay to “pity the fool”, so long as you do it with compassion (or, “it’s okay to murder, Ghandi said so”, if you choose to take a more cynical approach to that particular message). Heck, some of us might even warm to the female Army agent working against them, thrown in specifically to keep our interest. Those of us who hadn’t already pegged her as exactly such a device that is…

(As a sidetrack, the Family Guy spoof got the flavour and the characters down pretty well, though I personally am not that attracted to Quagmire, and don’t think Peter could give (or take) a good butt whooping as well as Hannibal.)

So, if you don’t expect too much from your films, and want to enjoy two hours of explosions, testosterone and Liam Neeson’s deep deep voice, (and don’t mind painfully cheesy dialogue) then the A-Team is definitely worth the price of a cinema ticket. It will definitely do well at the box office, and will probably hit the shelves just in time for Dad’s Xmas stocking. Watch out for the box sets of the show on special offer too, because these sorts of films inevitably inspire nostalgia in people. I might even give them a look in myself.

Being a big fan of the ‘old school’ Disney hits that all kids of our generation were raised on, I have been looking forward to this film for a while. I knew they had been working hard on giving another classic fairy tale that good old Disney revision, and that every department had been pulling out all the stops to make The Princess and the Frog a classic that would stand up next to the likes of ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Aladdin’. And they succeeded, sort of.

All of the things we’ve come to expect from Disney films are there in spades. The animation and voice talent is first rate. The characters are bold, likable and memorable. The moral message is clearly spelt out and followed through. The ending is happy and the songs are sing-along-able to a fault.

What is great about this film is its classic Disney twist. Instead of the ‘Princess’ kissing the frog and him becoming human again, the girl gets turned into a frog by accident. They then have to journey through the swamps of New Orleans to find a way to become human again, making plenty of friends and enemies and learning something along the way, of course.

Little boys will love the hick lightning bug (and his subtle bodily function jokes), while little girls will just adore, of course, the ‘Princess’. The Prince is hot enough that those of us who are so inclined can add him to our list of “Animated Men We Would Crush on If They Came to Life” (next to Shang from ‘Mulan’ and the Beast when he turns human). The bad guy is creep-ily bad enough without being overly scary, and his sidekick is, as usual, fat and downtrodden. For the ‘tween’ crowd, there is a brilliant spoilt brat character and her pushed around rich ‘Daddykins’ to enjoy, while there is just enough innuendo to make it worth viewing as an adult as well.

I foresee success. I foresee merchandise. I foresee a ‘Bug Bayou’ ride at Disneyland. I forsee a crappy, straight to DVD sequel (or twelve…). In fact, Disney will do very well by this release.

So, where does it fail? Well, perhaps this is just me, and maybe this is because I was watching for the first time as an adult, but the characters were all a bit too ‘stock’; we’ve seen them in a thousand films before, and we’ll see them again. As far as villains, heroes and sidekicks go, none of the ones in this film will be joining my list of particular favourites. The big sad scene near the end – no spoilers, honest – didn’t make me cry (not like ‘Fox and the Hound’ anyways…) and, in fact, had me rolling with laughter at the cheesiness of it, which is probably not what the writers wanted. The romantic moments were cliché, and the ‘hate becoming understanding becoming love’ motif is one that’s been done to death, not just by Disney. But then, we knew going in that they end up together, so it was really just a case of filling time until they did. And sure enough, in the space of just a few short days, these two amphibians had decided that they just couldn’t live without each other! Aww, bless…

I also personally found the backdrop of 1920’s America (with all the subtle race and class issues that that implies) a tad dark for a kids’ film at times, thought they did do a wonderful job of glossing over those issues that weren’t important without removing them from the film entirely. What was worse was when the characters found themselves “Down the Bayou”, and a veritable parade of quasi offensive Southerners (with their accents, stupidity and inbreeding implications intact) crossed the screen. Negative Stereotype Police on line one!

I was going to bash them for their use of Voodoo, thinking it was perhaps a bit spooky for a kid’s film, until I remembered Ursula the sea witch from the ‘The Little Mermaid’, but the references to the Devil are perhaps that one step too far. But then kids probably won’t pick up on them. Maybe I’m over analysing – it is a Disney film after all!

And a good one at that. It probably won’t join the ‘Classics’ in my heart, but it deserves its place in the Disney canon far more than some of their previous releases. Definitely worth the price of a cinema ticket, and enjoy the traditional animation while it lasts, because the next one, ‘King of the Elves’, isn’t due out until 2012.

You can buy The Princess and the Frog here.

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I am about to do something I thought I would never do – bash the genius of Seth MacFarlane! (I justify this in my head by arguing that technically The Cleveland Show is actually very little to do with Seth, and is more the brainchild of Mike Henry; Seth is only implicated by involvement and association, rather than being the creator of the show.) But I am indeed about to do it, so brace yourselves folks!

The much talked about Cleveland Show finally comes to the UK on E4 this week. I have to confess that I cheated and watched the first five episodes of Season 1 on the internet a while ago, so I know what’s coming. And I have to say that I wasn’t much impressed.

Aside from the first five minutes of the Pilot (which was television gold, and included the cast of Family Guy and Cleveland’s farewell to them all), The Cleveland Show just didn’t do anything for me. Sure, it has a catchy theme tune which gets stuck in your head for days, but the characters are stock cliches, and the jokes are utterly forgettable. Even Seth’s character, Tim the Bear, didn’t bring enough to the show to make it worth going back for more. And when I don’t want more of Seth, something somewhere has gone horribly wrong!

Don’t misunderstand me; The Cleveland Show is a decent way to kill half an hour. It’s not bad, it makes you smile at times and it’s solid in terms of animation and writing quality. But I expected more. It’s not groundbreaking. Without the association with the Family Guy crew, and the curious fanbase like myself that that could promise, it probably wouldn’t have been picked up by the networks; and it probably won’t hold its own that long. It’s just not Frasier. It is, in fact, effectively, Family Guy again.

Which is what some people have said about American Dad – but they’re wrong. American Dad is much more political, it has a different tone; it has a set of truly unique and individual characters and stories to tell. It doesn’t reference pop culture as much, and it has done away with all the cutaways, segways and flashbacks that are Family Guy’s signature. It is it’s own show, and it stands alone without leaning on Family Guy at all.

But The Cleveland Show is the same format and style as Family Guy; cutaways, celebrity insults, rude jokes. (Ruder jokes, even, if possible – the town where Cleveland and co live is called ‘Stoolbend’ and all that that implies.) But while Family Guy makes this work by having an awesome collection of characters and story lines interwoven around these, Cleveland lacks those elements. The characters are American cardboard cut outs – the spunky grown up before her time teenager, the ‘redneck’ judgmental hick, the slow talking neighbour next door – and the plots are sitcom staples that are so over worn that there are holes in the elbows and knees.

There is even a bar in Stoolbend where the four male characters on the show go to hang out and shoot the breeze. ‘Ext. establishing shot of bar, with amusing neon sign and pub name; cut to booth inside where Cleveland, a fat bear, a skinny White Guy and a short, well-built White guy are sitting, drinking beer from glass mugs.’ Sound familiar? I thought so. But while I don’t really miss Cleveland too much when I watch such scenes in Family Guy now, I do miss Peter, Joe and Quagmire when I watch The Cleveland Show.

And that’s the rub I guess; it’s Family Guy, but without the elements and people of Family Guy that we know and love. Of all the characters they could have given a spin off too, I don’t see why Cleveland was the one to get it – aside from obvious career aspirations on the part of Mike Henry, who created the character and happens to be one of Seth’s best friends as well.. I don’t really see why a spin off was necessary at all. Fox did pick it up for a second season before the first one had even aired though, so they must see a financial potential for it. But I personally don’t see this one lasting long. I certainly won’t be watching, and if you can’t even get a hard core fan like me to tune in to your ‘other show’, you’re probably better off directing your efforts into the original.

2/5

So, feeling pretty neutral about the whole thing, I entered the cinema looking forward to two hours of handsome-men-admiring and perhaps something to talk to my fellow English students about the next time we mentioned Oscar Wilde, at best. And I, sort of, got what I expected. It was, in short, a unique kind of disaster. Not a bad film per se, just a bad take on a literary classic. As with most modern takes on Wilde, all the subtlety has been removed and the homoerotic element is played to the hilt. Whether this is how I think Wilde meant us to interpret his text is a discours I will save for my seminars, but let  just say that this screenwriter clearly believed he did.

Of course, a large part of the book’s charm is the phsycological element; getting to slowly witness Dorian’s descent into madness as his picture ages and withers and he doesn’t. Parts of this came across very well in the film, but obviously it wasn’t sustainable for two hours – the time was filled in with an extra character and plot twist (Dorian falls for Lord Harry’s daughter) and a LOT of gratuitous sex scenes. And when I say a lot, I mean bordering on soft porn at times – I know that it’s all about the effects of opium and being a forever virile playboy who cannot scar, but really… (Not one to take the parents to guys, unless you want a few awkward glances, and that’s not something you’d expect given the source material.)

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised – after all, Victorian novels are hardly making the best seller lists, nor are they particularly fast paced or racy. But is so much sex, drugs and rock & roll necessary Did the portrait really have to take on a life of its own, like a bad slasher movie villain, to convey what was happening to an audience who might not have picked up on the premise? And, why not give poor artist Basil, who barely appeared in this version except to paint Dorian and die by his hands later, a little more screen time instead?

Perhaps as a Lit student who has read the book in depth, this film was ruined for me from the start due to my perspective. Maybe other people can appreciate it as an individual movie rather than an adaptation, but personally I just kept comparing it to the original. And, while Ben Barnes was fantastic as Dorian and beautiful throughout and I can’t fault Colin’s acting one bit, I was very disappointed by the age spots, bad hairdo and truly awful handlebar moustache he sported for most of the film!

Laura Patricia is the editor of the Pugwash News and the Editor of Pugwash Magazine and Pugwash online.

And I liked it. It was hilarious. But it didn’t quite meet my expectations. Firstly, it failed to inspire me visually as much as, for example, Cars or Wall-E had done in the past. Granted, it was the first time I’d seen it so I was focussing on the story, but the characters were blocky and awkwardly designed and the backgrounds were bog standard. The animation is clever, detailed and pretty, but it’s very obviously a cartoon, and it’s not stunning – at least not on the surface to the untrained eye. Pixar can do better, and I don’t know why they didn’t.

As for the story – well that didn’t meet my high standards either if I’m honest. Maybe it’s because I really couldn’t get past the illogical physics of the whole thing (an old man flies his house to South America by attaching it to thousands of helium balloons, and then spends the rest of the film dragging it along behind him…) Or maybe it was the fact that they had typical ‘bad guy’ dogs of a Rottweiler, a Doberman and a Bulldog, which is a massive pet peeve of mine (pardon the pun) and that bothered me every time they appeared. But for whatever reason, I couldn’t get as behind the story or the writing as much as I would have liked to. It started out promisingly, seemingly building to a spectacular climax, then it sort of, well, deflated.

This is the production company that brought us the likes of Buzz Lightyear, Mike Wazowski and Dory; but while Russell was endearingly chubby and eager and Carl was curmudgeonly and adventurous, I just couldn’t love them. They were funny and served their purpose, but I won’t be running to MacDonald’s for the free cuddly toy in the happy meal, if you know what I mean. (And I was astonished at just how fit a seemingly very elderly character was at times!) Meanwhile, the daft multi-coloured bird was amusing, but I couldn’t relate to why everyone made such a big effort to protect him.

The one exception to all this negativity is Dug, the literal shaggy dog character, who made the film for me. Whichever geniuses wrote his dialogue and animated his movements both got it spot on perfect in my humble opinion. He IS a Golden Retriever; a bit dim but well meaning, keen in every single thing he does, bouncy, bright and brave and totally devoted to making his masters happy. He’s the best canine character I’ve seen on the screen since Pongo and Shadow, and the people responsible clearly did their research and spent a lot of time around dogs while developing him. If only they were aware of the distance between small town USA and the heart of South America, and just how many balloons it would actually take to lift a house…

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a good film. It’s got an interesting plot, side-splitting humour both clever and slapstick-y and a heart warming depiction of an old man trying to finally live his dreams. If it were Dreamworks I would be giving it rave reviews. But I expect certain things from the Pixar studios, and I didn’t get them. I’m disappointed, and am now waiting for Toy Story 3…

Laura Patricia is the editor of the Pugwash News and the Editor of Pugwash Magazine and Pugwash online.