Friday, June 17, 2016

Toons After Dark: Boo Boo Runs Wild (1999)

Yogi Bear is up against it this time.

His BFF and cave-mate, Boo-Boo, has reached the edges of his tolerance for rules, and decides to return to the wilds of the forest. The second of two satirical Yogi Bear specials (carded as a Ranger Smith cartoon) from maverick animator John Kricfalusi (Ren & Stimpy) bowed in 1999 on Cartoon Network, and has aired periodically on [adult swim] since that time.

Kricfalusi himself voices Boo Boo, while Stephen Worth nails a perfect mimic of Daws Butler's characterization of Yogi. Unfortunately, aside from a promising script, this has all the usual Spumco hallmarks.



The biggest problem is that Boo-Boo was miscolored. He's usually a brown bear, just like Yogi, not grey.

Two years later, Kricfalusi brought his failed Fox series, The Ripping Friends, to [adult swim], but, as documented previously, it flopped after dark, too. Undaunted, Kricfalusi brought Ren & Stimpy back two years after that, only for that to fail also.

Rating: C.

4 comments:

Steven Dolce said...

Speaking of Ren & Stimpy, Ren & Stimpy is going to turn 25 on August 11, 2016, along with Rugrats and Doug.

Goldstar said...

Eh, I didn't care for this short, myself. John Kkricfalusi at least got the look of the H-B characters down, but the humor was very much "Ren & Stimpy-fied". The short making fun of how Ranger Smith's look in the original shorts was constantly changing was the only thing that I laughed at while watching those.

hobbyfan said...

In better hands, it probably comes across better. Team Spumco's handling of the Jetsons and Yogi might've turned off enough people, such that when [adult swim] decided to abuse other H-B properties, they did it themselves......

MichaelSar12 said...

Am I the only one who thinks John does a lousy Boo-Boo? Sounds way too much like Ren...