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Big Blue Blah. |
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The pilot was disappointing. I got to say it. Despite being directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, whose track record with bringing cartoons to life includes the superb Addams Family movie, and featuring a cameo by Christopher Lloyd, who's still funny when he's not employed by Disney, I only laughed once. That's one fewer time than I laughed at "Family Guy" (see Other Things). Each Tick universe has its own setup, so here's the one for the series: The Tick has been mysteriously haunting a bus station in the middle of nowhere, fighting evil vending machines and such, until he finally vanquishes the coffee dispenser, and thus can take a bus into town. Arthur, meanwhile, quits his job at the accounting firm (oddly staged like a '40s era bean counting hall ... CPAs still do that whole green visor/row of desks with adding machines thing?) to pursue a career as a flying moth in a bunny suit. The two meet when a Soviet plot to kill Jimmy Carter with a '70s era Communist robot is accidentally thwarted by a drunk Arthur. At the inevitable rooftop meeting, we meet our other main superhero characters: Batmanuel (changed from Die Fledermaus), a perpetually horny Latin guy (funny or racist? You make the call!), and Captain Liberty (nee American Maid), who works for the CIA and has a thing going with Batmanuel. I realize some of this looks quite funny on paper. So what fell flat? To examine that, we must first analyze what made the cartoon series such a sidesplitting riot. 1) Ludicrous villains and supporting characters. The driving force behind the animated version's humor was patently ridiculous characters like Chairface Chippendale, Dr. Mung Mung (and his salivating Tung Tung creation), the Sewer Urchin, and, my personal favorite, Speak (Tick's pet capybara). 2) The self-righteous speeches of The Tick. These usually capped off each episode, twisting the plot into an unrecognizable truth nobody could argue with, but only the Tick could conjure up. The biggest reason these came across funny at all was Townsend Coleman's impeccable comic delivery as the voice of the big blue guy. 3) Spoon!
What the live action series lacked, at least in its first episode, was all three. The replacement characters for Die Fledermaus and American Maid have much less clever names to go with their so-far unfunny characters, and the villains have yet to make a real appearance (despite an allusion to a gigantic creature known as Apocalypse Cow). It's unrealistic to expect an all out assault of nutty characters in the first episode, but they'd better come fast and furious to keep this fan interested. The self-righteous speaking is used as a narrative thread throughout the episode. These outbursts of verbosity are mildly funny, but I was surprised that Warburton's delivery didn't fit the zany bill as well as Coleman's. I was sure, before watching the episode, that the former Puddy was the perfect actor to master the delivery -- somewhere between deadly serious and seriously insane -- but his voice holds the even keel a little too well. After all, The Tick's most hilarious expression is unbridled joy ... unbridled joy at raspberries, unbridled joy at murderous gingerbread men, unbridled joy at discovering a new skyscraper to pounce on ... the joke of The Tick is that he's a gigantic (nigh) indestructible three-year-old with a large vocabulary, or it should be anyway. Played by Warburton, he's more of a stoned philosophy student who has schizophrenic episodes of stupidity. The writing didn't help here. On three occasions in the premiere, The Tick was made to state "I don't get it" or another phrase along those lines. Of course he doesn't get it. That's the joke. Explaining it only calls attention to his normally verbose proclamations on the nature of reality. Luckily, The Tick did get one priceless line in this episode: when eating a fortune cookie whole, he put on a puzzled expression and pulled out the fortune, then exclaimed, "Look! A secret message from my teeth!" Warburton could have played it more over the top, but that's the kind of line his character needs to take from here on out. A ray of hope at least. Finally, no spoon? Spoon come soon?
It's hard to call a series a total flop based on its first episode. And I wouldn't even suggest that this Tick will flop: there's still plenty of potential. As long as they don't keep overdoing the "[thing here] of justice" joke, and the villains start coming fast and furious, and the pacing gets smoother, and Warburton lets go of his low key delivery, and Arthur gains some weight, there's no reason this series can't be great. OTHER STUFF Still Kicking: I might be the only voice on the 'net in consistent favor of "The Family Guy," but watching the season premiere as a lead-in to "The Tick," I've got to stand by my opinion. I watch because I'm still guaranteed to bust up laughing two times every episode, and that's twice more than any other sitcom can guarantee for me right now. One welcome sight this season is that the parody parts are more subtle and woven into the story. Hopefully some more outside voice work will be introduced to give the show a "Simpsons" style backlog of supporting characters. Buy A Mink Car: Commercials bug me because I can't ... not ... watch. They have this hypnotic effect and I'm powerless to look away. In fact, sometimes I'll have a boring show on in the background while I'm reading, and I'll look up only when the show goes to commercial. Sick. But I've found a cure. The new They Might Be Giants album, "Mink Car," has 17 tracks, and each track is about the length of a standard commercial break (2 minutes 50 seconds). Now when a commercial comes on I hit mute on the TV and unpause the CD player, and I'm treated to three minutes of musical goodness while the rest of the world suffers through another explanation of 0% financing. Suckers! Mervyn's Starts With Murder: Speaking of ads, I do have a bitch. Those who don't have local branches of California department store Mervyn's can skip ahead. What is UP with that woman? She has to be the most annoying presence ever to grace the cathode ray emitter. Lady, there's a line between perky and pesky, and you crossed it. Every time her annoying pinched smiling face pops up, my wife shrieks in horror and grabs a sauce pan. I have to restrain her from beating the TV to death. Anyone who's amused by this imp of evil's so-called "act" should be sterilized and relocated to a secure facility in Delaware, where soccer moms can feed on large wide open acres of cheap shoes and linen sales. Videos Worth Catching: To see the future of flashy cinema, check out Coldplay's "Trouble." And Spike Jonze finally told a joke even I don't get with that thing for Tenacious D. I mean, yeah, I see the concept, but what's funny about it, exactly? --Chris J. Magyar Date: 11/4/01 Copyright © 2000 by Chris J. Magyar |
