so a couple of days back i put up a little showcase of the classic british 80s cartoon Danger Mouse, if you didn’t see it HERE it is, and mentioned that this week a reboot of the show was going up on this Monday: this is that reboot… well actually this is sort of a review slash showcase of that series but… you know what i mean.
and to start off the 100 million knickers question: is it good? well it has it’s issues but i say yes, i think they managed to modernise it quite well considering how well TBAG went.
as i mentioned in the original showcase the show was very much a precursor to freakzoid in it’s mix of bizarre, memetic and (in small amounts) meta humour, the remake however seems a lot closer to freakazoid and other modern meta-humour cartoons like shiftylook(RIP)’s bravoman webtoon and while, with one exception which i will get into later, none of the jokes were laugh out loud funny compared to, say, a digital homicide game it was pretty enjoyable to watch.
so what don’t i like?
one of my biggest issues with the reboot is the theme and music, it’s a techno-ey remix of the original and i liked original theme better, i guess they saw Transformers Animated theme(or the energon theme, but probably not cause i am a heathen for liking it and should be sacrificed to primus for my sins) and thought “hey, that’s a great remix of an 80s cartoon theme song, let’s do something similar” without realising that the reason that worked was because Transformers Animated was about giant robots fighting in the future, dangermouse is about a mouse spy with a flying car and although i can’t quite figure out exactly what music would fit that best i can tell you it isn’t techno remixes. and there’s a bit of character dialog in the opening themes, not narration like in storm hawks, they literally have penfold yelling out in the opening credits.
secondly like TBAG everything seems a little rushed, but i suppose that’s just old man 17 year old matt talking.
thirdly: professor squakencluck: in the original series the prof was a german mole (it made sense in context) male scientist side character, in this the professor is about as European as Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez… although i’m not entirely sure she’s scottish either. despite being upgraded to main cast like stupidsoundingnewnamedTinTin from TBAG she hasn’t really shown off her character yet despite playing a major role in the pilot’s climax. oh, and she’s a chick now… in more ways than one… which if the show is in continuity with the original raises a lot of questions, the two plausible answers to which are that she’s the original’s adopted daughter or that science has found a way to turn moles into chickens. or maybe she’s a time lord or even a half alien robot and upon revealing that will loose all of her personality and characterHaveIMentionedHowMuchSeason3SariSucked? why would the shows be in continuity you ask? even though there are huge changes to the series universe such as removing all the silhouetted/tom and jerry’s owner leg humans and just having everyone be anthropomorphic animals at almost human scale (which makes things a whole lot less head scratching) but DM’s car says MKVI, the last series’ car was a MKIII, it’s not much but i kinda like the idea of this being in continuity for a bunch of nods.
but it is still a bit sad we no longer have a mole named after a chicken.
on the subject of retuning characters with confusing accents stiletto is back, and at the moment i can’t tell whether he has his old Italian accent or a mix of that and his US dubbed cockney tongue.
at one point aliens almost invade (no really, and this isn’t even a main plot point) and danger mouse beats them through eating a hellava lotta jalapeños and some SpaceLax
how about the writing? well the first episode plot focuses around DM being a little trigger happy when fighting a panda that he though was baron greenback… who is totally no-longer a villain and is now free to spend his ill gotten gains on charities apparently, then because they “spent all the budget on the opening fight scene” and because he accidentally blew up london over, and this comes out of nowhere, the theft of a chair…. as i said: outta nowhere, he gets fired and replaced by robots made by greenback, who is totally no-longer a villain, literally made of plot-convenientium and despite what i’ve said about greenback being totally no-longer a villain it actually seems for a bit that they may go with the “reformed villain is driven back to villainy by asshole batman” plot…. but he’s totally not a villain so he instead takes over the world with his robots that imprison everyone. then they fight him and steal his already money to rebuild their base… our heroes everyone. the second episode is also up, it’s about penfold going on holiday to try and beat chanticleer hegemony on his rhinox popstation but then kaiju attack.
remember when i said there was one laugh out loud moment in the show so far? well episode 2 about 3 minutes in they actually have a short cutaway visual where a tentacled monster bursts from a couple of lavatories either side of the new professor’s toilets and… THEY JUST IMPLIED TENTACLE HENTAI IN A KIDS SHOW!!!!!, i could not help but laugh at the sheer audaciousness of slipping that one under the radar, i literally had to get up from my computer, go downstairs and get a drink after that one. you have to admit that the sheer… i’m still fucking laughing, it’s just so ridiculous that they’d actually attempt to get this aired on CBBC and somehow succeed. WOW!
yes, i shit you not this image features an anthropomorphic chicken being molested on the bog by the kraken. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!
inflatable hase abs activate… damn it.
in a somewhat less… i’m laughing again note close second for funniest joke has to be inflatable danger trunks, no doubt the best name for anything ever.
the series seems to contain a few of those “reference” things, for example it seems a little conspicuous that colonel k’s hologram is described as “hardlight” considering red dwarf XI and XII are on the way, and that he was knighted to “sir K”, you know as in sir Kay of the arthurian ledgend i like clever and sublte references, some people claim it dates things but as you may be able to tell from some of the verbs i’ve used around here i’m a tad keen on it. oh and also lizard POTUS, it’s nice to know the writers are in touch with their inner internet.
finally: as mentioned the metahumour was dialed up a bit, so if you like metahumour (which seems to be a bit of a fad at the moment) then this is a good series for you.
so yeah that’s the new danger mouse, i like it, i’m gonna keep on watching it, you can try watching it and there’s a re-release of monty python and the holy grail coming out in October…. well i figured since we were doing british things news that that was kinda relevent
end car… wrong series.