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Original airdate: 2/23/92
Rating: 5/7
This situation is quite frustrating. I enjoy watching Black Hole while it’s on and can’t think of any reason to condemn it, but when I think about the cartoon in retrospect, there’s no reason to praise it. Guess I’ll just take a middle-of-the-road approach and hand out an acceptable rating. It’s essentially a rip-off of Marooned with slicker surface production but with fewer creative ideas – these are easily the weakest drawings in a Spumco/Bob Camp episode. They look like Bob Camp drew them, but they also look like he didn’t give a damn. The strange head-proportions and goofy meek eyes are there, but where’re the expressions?
By John’s account this was part of the ideas for space cartoons he generated with Jim Smith. The idea was to have Ren and Stimpy get progressively weirder and weirder – and it didn’t quite work that way. Ren and Stimpy do mutate into odd shapes, but the morphing is random, and there are times when the two look “normal”. It doesn’t help that the funny shapes aren’t a virtue in-and-of themselves; the character expressions don’t get any better. If anything the expressions get worse due to their distorted shapes, but the shapes are used for some amusing gags (usually when they appear suddenly from off-frame).
Even though some of the intended goals for the cartoon fell through, there are enough redeeming factors to make this watchable and enjoyable – the voices are good as usual, the timing is quite effective, and the atmosphere is nifty. I love watching Ren and Stimpy walk across the weird backgrounds with the creepy sound effects.
Anyway I haven’t mentioned yet that Black Hole is listed on Bob Camp’s page because he directed the post-production and layout (John did the timing and voices), and dominates the title credits anyway. There may have been no true director on this episode, but it’s more Bob Camp than John K. And if you’re wondering who Will McRobb is, he’s a story-editor who suggested the idea for Black Hole to Bob Camp (that’s what Camp said around the time the cartoon first aired anyway) and tried to get Vanessa Coffey to kill Stimpy’s Invention (burn him at the stake). That doesn’t exactly jibe with the notion of John and Jim coming up with the cartoon together, but neither does John’s account of the layouts going unsupervised and frustrating Bob with the results. What the heck…?
Original airdate: 8/15/92
Rating: 6/7
Thanks to this cartoon Camp became the new head of The Ren and Stimpy show. See, it was meant as a schedule filler so John K. could work on the real meat (i.e. Sven Hoek and the ambitious-but-not-as-good Stimpy’s First Fart), and he was so sure Bob’s hilarious drawings would please the Nickelodeon executives they’d forget about their inability to get along with the guy. But no one could have predicted how much Nickelodeon would like the cartoon (it feels like the most rerun episode of the show to me). The ex-hippie suits forgot all about films with cerebral storylines like Stimpy’s Invention and wanted more twisted and inconsequential set-ups like this one.
In the Army may be Bob Camp’s best cartoon, but it still harbors his weakness of sacrificing good build-up and timing in favor of plodding along until something funny happens. And it’s the first hint that John K.’s sense of aesthetics would be left by the wayside in favor of just being gross. But that’s okay, because for the first time at least, there’s enough in here to entertain, and it never becomes boring. Given the right conditions, Bob Camp could have been a decent director. But no one is going to look stellar coming off the heels of John.
At least the drawings do. Besides Stimpy’s Invention, this’ the best place to check out the idiosyncrasies of Camp’s drawing style. Especially the entire sequence starting with Ren going to sleep and ending with the Sarge shouting “ATENNN-HOOO!”. It’s obviously an attempt at swiping the psychodrama of Invention, but even without the awesome posing, it wouldn’t be embarrassingly stupid. How can anyone respond coldly to poor Ren being rudely awaken from his nap? John’s eerie groaning about destroying the bed and Billy West’s HAAHOOHOOHAHAHAHA lifted from Invention’s litter box scene are enough to make this a keeper.
But oh, about those drawings…they do a perfect job of making Ren look pitiful, creepy, and angry, and Camp twisted his dynamic persona in ways one can not imagine. The animation, while not Carbunkle quality, does a smooth job of sending Ren through one pose after another. You have to watch in slow-motion when he reaches off-frame for the axe, for instance.
Also, there is one scene that comes pretty close to the level of Ren attacking the bed, that’d be his wild double take when confronting the Sarge in the mud. The one instance (and I mean the only one) of a well-timed Bob Camp gag, even if John K. sketched it out for him (and he probably helped out Bob whenever he could). Ren jabbering on and on while the Sarge slowly rises out of the mud should prep you for a knock in the head when the skin melts off his.
Nothing else comes close to these two scenes, but the rest of the cartoon is all good, even if most of the gags have nothing to do with classic Ren and Stimpy: The eye-chart gag, the shots given to the recruits, and the crazy exercises the Sarge makes Ren and Stimpy do are all funny, original gags; something about Bob just makes you wonder where he pulled this weird sh*t even more than John K. The running gag where Ren and Stimpy are sent to the mess tent each time they piss off the Sarge has them peeling more and more outlandish things. And Bob turns out to be a decent voice-actor himself – he does the sarge’s snarling, Southern-influenced voice with buffoonish pronunciation.
At the very end is another psychotic sequence, more half-baked but not as pathetic as Bob’s later fumbles, this one very Space Madness-like. We end with Ren and Stimpy screaming like girls at their promotion and a closing gag taking their new position in the army too literally. Not a cartoon you need on the whole, but you need to see the nap sequence. Since Ren and Stimpy are making a return, this one is bound to air once again.
Original airdate: 9/29/92
Rating: 5/7
When Out West makes me laugh, it really makes me laugh. When it bores me, it really bores me. There are no visual gags in here. Everything comes from the acting. Bob Camp and Carbunkle pushed themselves to make it work, even though this was meant as a cheater cartoon. John and Bob fell so in love with the cartoon after proposing the “Lord Loves A-Hanging” sing-a-long it got the grade-A treatment.
Despite the veeeeery slow timing in a couple of places and an over-reliance on verbal gags (some of which I used to find unfunny, but actually find funny now), it’s a very effective cartoon. The structure actually makes sense and was obviously given a lot of care, and the juxtaposition between shots of Ren and Stimpy as outlaws and the narration are worth the price of admission (which will hopefully be free come next year).
But you’re really watching it for Abner (Jim Smith’s voice) and Ewalt (Bob’s voice). Their dialogue exchanges are well-timed, hilarious (I especially love their lines about hanging), and most importantly, genially-animated. This is some of the best character animation in a Spumco cartoon since Stimpy’s Invention. When the two Sheriff’s throw their giddy, spastic fits, you’ll join along with them.
The “Lord Loves A-Hanging” sequence will really leave you giddy. The jokes about Ren and Stimpy’s anatomy are priceless, the act of Abner and Ewalt hanging each other is amazing in its stupidity, and the song itself is a whimsical, creepy thing, with scenes of random things popping in and on the scene like it were an MTV video, funny group harmonies, and an acoustic melody. It’s actually a better tune than “Happy Happy Joy Joy”. Enjoy it – the glorious days are about to end, but not before one last culmination…
P.S. I just found out that Jim Smith provided some of the posing in here. Seeing as I exclusively credited Camp with the deed, I’d like to rectify the situation. Unfortunately, I can not be correct all the time. Should I ever make a mistake, by all means drop me a line and let me know.
Original airdate: 11/21/92
Rating: 6/7
The Spumco R&S cartoons not directed by John K. are often called "generic" and "cheater" because the production values are cheaper and the stories aren't as high brow. But if this offering from Bob Camp is any indication, that's an injustice. Mad Dog Hoek is one of the least discussed cartoons from the first two seasons yet it easily balances out the heavy-handed John K. material with a frivilous romp through twistedly choreographed animation land.
Ren and Stimpy are pro-wrestlers pitted against the superhuman Lug brothers and the result is about sixty-thousand times more entertaining than the real thing. Literally every scene boasts a new and mad bit of animation from either Ren, Stimpy, or the Lug brothers (both voiced by Camp), and Stimpy's stupidity, whether he's glad to meet the two guys who are about to beat him up or seriously feels bad over hogging all the fun from Ren when getting beat up, not only makes for some funny voice-overs but off-hand interaction in the corner of the ring. Ren and Stimpy can't even tag each other between rounds without doing something downright hilarious, like Stimpy poking Ren's eye as he dangles from the hand of the Lug Bro, who proceeds to gently set replace Stimpy in Ren's chair with his fez while grabbing Ren.
More great takes include Stimpy's ball-bearing eyes ping-ponging off his potato sack head (done in a very un-gross manner I might add), the Lug's recovery from Ren's sleephold, after the cool way his head sinks into his flabby neck, in which he proceeds to grab coffee out of a very unexpected place and ingests it in a very surprising manner, the Flying Butt-Pliers (the name should be enough) and some of the incidental gags thrown out of nowhere, like the announcer's sudden crossdressing and the referee's assession of Ren's brutal beating as he lies down looking at him with two big, puzzled eyes.
What amazes me most of all is how this contradicts Bob Camp's entire output and it's so infuriating that he never made another cartoon even approaching this quality. The drawings aren't as outrageous as In the Army or certain other classics, but they do the job and the background colors, drab and dreary, wrap up the whole package in a tasty slab of gelatinous animated orgasm. It's got incredible momentum, tight coordination, an outrageous closing tirade from both Lugs and Stimpy, and basically shows that Bob Camp actually knew how to direct. It's so damn funny that sometimes I feel like giving it a 13 but that would put him in the same league as Friz Freleng, which brings me to my senses.
You might as well move along now because this is the last wholly good cartoon Bob Camp would ever do. And only four of them too, what a shame...
Original airdate: 2/13/93
Rating: 4/7
This is the first Ren and Stimpy cartoon that is truly a pathetic, routine, generic, Nicktoon. Littlest Giant was dangerously close to rote kiddie-fare, but at least that one had characterization. This one has none (Stimpy acts like an idiot and Ren yells at him, that’s the extent of it). The gags range from lacking to non-existent, the plot is neither thought-provoking nor gross; it’s just silly and dumb, and overall there’s a very pathetic and meek atmosphere about the cartoon, as though the people who worked on it forgot they were the savior of modern animation and just wanted to make a cruddy children’s show. Even though it’s not the worst R&S cartoon ever as John thought when he first saw it, it paved the way for far worse (and no doubt he’d agree with that now).
The worst part is that Billy West does the voice of Ren for the first time – honestly, it’s a little strange that most of cartoon fandom and me are so bitter about this, because he was originally going to do Ren’s voice from the beginning – but Nickelodeon didn’t want him starring in two roles, so John K. worked out his best Peter Lorre imitation and did the voice himself. There was talk of finding a replacement for Ren, but Billy was ultimately saddled with both characters for good. Without John, he’s free to come up with his own Peter Lorre imitation, and what results is a raspy, bland try at sounding Mexican with none of the acting prowess John had. I’m sure John had something else in mind when he thought Billy was going to do Ren – and let’s be thankful poor Billy never had to suffer perfecting ANOTHER voice like he did with Stimpy’s.
If only the voice were the only problem – if only the gags were as good and made as much sense as Mad Dog Hoek. But they don’t. The story has Ren and Stimpy dressing up like monkeys to live in a monkey cage hoping the zoo-comers will feed them. Aside from being a very ridiculous plot (going into the army, okay, becoming outlaws, that’s fine, entering the pro wrestling circuit, that’s cool – but disguising themselves to freeload off the zoo???), none of the gags are funny. Most of them are supposed to be detrimental to Ren and Stimpy (getting fed inedible junk, having to pick ticks off the big monkey’s back, being discovered and put in a less pleasant zoo exhibit) but no laugh ever comes out of them, nor do they really make us fear for Ren and Stimpy’s situation (later cartoons would do that but honestly, that’s not what we had in mind). Ren’s out-bursts of anger are also subdued and very bland – where’s the tension? The only gag that resonates even a little is Stimpy’s silly monkey dance with West pulling off a good outburst of glee.
What redeems it the most is the artwork – it’s frigging gorgeous. The drawings aren’t as varied in emotion but they’re still creative with really weird facial curves and head poses and funny-looking two-dimensional character designs (the zoo guy for instance). The scenery and colors are also pretty. I thought about upgrading this to an overall ten but only an In the Army-level scene or drawing could pull it out of the “I can force myself to watch it but not really enjoy it” range, and there’s none.
As a piece of Ren and Stimpy history, MSMD is important. Enjoy it while you can – soon every thing gets worse and even the great artwork will vanish.
Original airdate: 11/20/93
Rating: 4/7
Welcome to the third season of Ren and Stimpy. Oh joy. Seeing how Salve and its partner were slated for the previous season their spirit is more in the vein of second-rate post-Spumco/Games (think Monkey See Monkey Don’t) but the production values are already full-on Games – Ren and Stimpy get some poses that are expressive and deranged, sure enough, but are also ugly, ugly stuff John K. never would have allowed. Or maybe they looked better on the drawing board. Either way, the finished art is muddy in tone and that sets the look for the remainder of the Games cartoons.
So it’s around the same quality as MSMD, minus the eye-candy. So why did I give it a 7? Well, it’s a very low 7. Not as boring as Bass Masters, that’s for sure. Besides, Salve does something MSMD did not – Stimpy flashes one facial expression after another during his gleeful tirades, and his spastic actions, even with the lackluster animation, send a rush of giddiness through my organism. And Ren gets his skin as well as most of his organs sucked out of his body by a vacuum but it’s not repulsive for once. The scene is well choreographed and the visuals are unobtrusive – the gag lies in the over-the-top-ness of the vacuum, not in Ren losing his body parts. B’sides, how can I resist the immortal line, “Must…save…the brain!”
Unfortunately, besides the other immortal line (“How dare you take advantage of my blithering idiot?”) everything after the salve salesman shows up is nonstimulating. Not deathly boring, just nothing for me to latch on. The scenes are well-planned, well-staged, and timed just well enough to hold my attention, but that’s it. The gags are lackluster – all of them include the salesman’s demonstration of one of many uses of Salve (particularly suited to Stimpy’s current situation), Stimpy almost giving in and buying the stuff, and Ren coming in to cease the deal. I can’t even remember most of these scenes, but I do remember when Ren was scraping the salesman disguised as a piece of bread and flushing him down the drain, nothing particularly exciting or funny happened – unless animation of somebody going down the sink is automatically hilarious to you. I enjoyed watching Ren throw the piece of toast outside, because of the staging outside their trailer, but then Ren had to do this gratuitous psychotic laugh with one of Billy’s worst laughs ever, plus that background and posing really sucked.
Anyway enough of this cartoon. Let’s move on to bigger and better things. Or not.
Original airdate: 11/20/93
Rating: 4/7
Harrrumph. This might have been good, but the timing is so bad. Camp tends to extend scenes beyond a reasonable length and most gags’ payoffs have little impact coming off their attempted build-up. Example: Mr. Pipe’s speech about getting mauled by your pet baboon is way funnier than the actual result (Ren and Stimpy climbing in the baboon’s mouth and walking out looking very beat up). All of the gags are hit and miss this way, as if Bob didn’t pay attention to how he handled them.
The good ones include Ren and Stimpy’s discussion on how hungry they are, the revelation of the baboon, Ren laughing before sending in Stimpy’s skin to get the hog jowels (revenge for the baboon thing no doubt), and ren feeding himself the “candy” the baboon gives to his girl baboon puppet.
My favorite thing about this cartoon has to be the title card. A darn fine piece of artwork, and that’s a great intro riff played over it. I wonder if that’s Chris Reccardi playing it, because it doesn’t sound like something pulled out of a stock library.
Original airdate: 11/26/93
Rating: 5/7
For a Games cartoon, the material is highly unique and more or less consistent, not to mention a step up from the last three cartoons Bob Camp directed. In fact, this is the first Ren and Stimpy cartoon developed by Games from the ground up (the previous ones were written and/or boarded while Spumco was doing the show) and while it definately shows, since there's less characterization and more base cruelty, not to mention Spumco references and extra ugliness in the artwork, it's also proof that Games Ren and Stimpy wasn't hopeless from the start like most fans believe.
Some of those tightly coordinated close-encounter-type interaction scenes happen here with the midget clowns who pick up a hitchhiking Ren and Stimpy stretching their arms to the other side of the room and some tense if goofy moments where they grimace and rant. This is the only Ren and Stimpy cartoon I can think of where Stephen DeStefano makes a positive impact, giving the clowns some deranged facial expressions, even if they are smeary and walking that line between funny and ugly that DeStefano would trip over again and again. Here though, he's slightly edged on the funny side.
The gags provide a few twists on old WB gags. We've seen exploding cigars before, but what they do to Ren and Stimpy here, if you can get over the fact that they're foils for abuse, is a twist on the gag that has to be seen. They're also burned into a different shape and some other things. The getaway scene is a hoot and the clowns' senseless behavior is amusing. The end dredges up an old Spumco gag and twists it slightly.
Of course the old Spumco magic is gone forever (at least until Onward and Upward) but it's a minor masterpiece in its own right. Still, the degregation from Spumco is well underway and it wouldn't be long until Road Apples, Scotsman in Space, Travelogue...
Original airdate: 1/8/94
Rating: 5/7
Note: John K. and Elinor Blake are listed as writers in the closing credits
It’s times like this I wish to God Spumco were never fired. Oh, to know what John K. had in mind for the cartoon… Well anyway, Camp did a respectable effort by the storyline. Thank the heavens he didn’t come up with it or we’d have another Ren’s Retirement.
Frankly, I don’t think it really deserves to score so high. I just gave it an overall 10 because I’m having a hard time believing anything with Explody the Pup in: I Like Pink should score lower. But some parts of the cartoon are painful to watch. Lemme tell ya – they did not have to make this run across the commercial break. No, let’s broaden that statement – the only Ren and Stimpy cartoons that justify running past the commercial break are Stimpy’s Big Day and Sven Hoek, and maybe Stimpy’s Fan Club. Please people, don’t make half-hour cartoons if you can’t make it interesting the whole way through.
Some of the most uninteresting aspects include, well, most of the first ten minutes of silent footage where Stimpy slaves away under Ren’s abuse to a suite that sounds right out of The Nutcracker. The most entertaining scenes are the ones that satirize the animation biz – Ren actually tears apart a ton of storyboard drawings and walks away with a satisfied smile on his face. From what I hear this happens all the time. Ren by the way is dressed up like John K. in this sequence, and going by the number of jabs at their former boss (the worst being a picture of Mr. Horse with John-esque glasses thrown in the furnace in Space Dogged) I can’t help but wonder if that conspiracy theory holds any water, but I don’t want to go there. I just want to write about cartoons.
My favorite part, early on, is when Ren gets the job of producer. If the animation and posing suck throughout the cartoon that dance he does where he swings his arms back and forth has me rolling on the floor. A cartoon this boring and it has the one gag in a Games cartoon that kills me. Now I just have to give it an overall 10.
Things pick up once Ren and Stimpy go see animation idol Wilbur Cobb (evidence that they didn’t follow the Spumco story to the letter-most of the humor is more Bob Camp than John K. John would never use such grotesque close-ups of Stimpy like when he visits Ren by the pool in the second half). Cobb is infamous for being the most overused concept in Games R&S but he works well here – you can enjoy watching his body parts deform while he rants away, but did they have to make it so grotesque-looking? Anyway after he rants a bit we get to…
Ron Hauge’s cartoon Explody the Pup in: I Like Pink. Obviously not the cartoon-within-a-cartoon John K. had planned but a good try nevertheless, and it accounts for two points of the rating. The very crude artwork recounts early 30’s WB cartoons crossed between a third-rate studio during animation’s Golden Age like say Walter Lantz or Terrytoons. The plot is a typical boy/girl/villain thing with a very absent-minded plot-structure and inane ramblings. The humor relies too much on dialogue a little (well what do you want? Hauge is a writer, not an artist) but it works so well within the whacked-out narrative I can not only excuse it but enjoy it. So there you are.
Original airdate: 2/19/94
Rating: 3/7
This is no Ren and Stimpy cartoon: It's a friggin' Rocko's Modern Life episode (Doesn't that huge bass look like he's from that show?). It’s a better role at least, than attempting to be the funniest goddamn thing around by making everything excessively stupid and gross (liiiiike Road Apples! The Scotsman in Space!). But it's still so plain and unaffecting it's like staring at a blank wall for ten minutes.
I should mention this is a premise by Richard Pursel, so this could’ve been good. But instead the cartoon plays it safe, slugging from one scene to the next until the supposed pay-off of a gag. Ren dives underwater so he can take the role of the fish. Stimpy catches more fish than Ren does by using crackerjacks. Ren yells at Stimpy and Wilbur Cobb (Yep, he's back) because they are distracting him by trying to point out where there's lots of fish. The characters act like automatons.
I just gave it a score this high because it’s a watchable cartoon – it’s never confusing, convoluted, or particularly stupid. But there’s no real reason for you to watch it. Of course I could say that about most Games episodes, but at least some of them are worth it for the curiosity factor.
Original airdate: 4/2/94
Rating: 3/7
Well, this cartoon is fascinating. I would dub it Camp’s own Son of Stimpy - it’s ambitious, with a lot of good material, but there was no reason to extend it past the commercial break. The rating might have grown had this been the standard length (although that’s not a promise), but there’s no way I can watch it from beginning to end without getting fidgety, and I’m just not willing to extend the good will I did for the Fart cartoon.
However, although the rating does indicate my overall feeling towards the cartoon, there’s some prime material in here that could have been elaborated into something better. Stimpy’s incredibly gay display of affection towards Ren at the beginning (“I just looooo-uh-uuuuuhve making things for Ren!”) is a promising set-up, and it’s neat in a way that Ren can accomplish all these feats of athleticism only abruptly degrade into a sagging old man (Hey! A meta-commentary on the show itself! How many does that make now?). But like most of the sequences here, Ren’s sudden aging mixes a lot of interesting material with a lot of crappy execution: Stimpy gets sick from eating the cake and pukes on Ren while he’s going insane over aging, two sequences that are awkwardly juxtaposed. Not to mention Ren’s screams of agony are abrasive and ugly (Where’s John K. when you need him? Heck, I’ll even take Gabe Swarr’s direction at this point).
Speaking of ugly, that’s a butt-ugly painted close-up of Ren looking at himself in the mirror with the snot dangling from his nose. I’m not sure if it was done by Bob or Bill or somebody else, but that looks like a lot of work only to be totally wasted. Look at the close-up of the fat lady in Firedogs - she may be ugly but she’s used for a gag with a punchline – whoever did that portrait of Ren as an old man just wanted to get as gross as possible. Well he succeeded, but did I have know about it?
As for the rest of the artwork, it’s a mix of traditional cartooniness with the cheaper Nickelodeon look (I swear the scenery at the beginning would look at home in an Angry Beavers cartoon), but no matter what they do it all looks ugly, or it just doesn’t have any impact within the storyline. Some of the backgrounds attempt to look wild and crazy like in the classic days, but you’re just left thinking “so what.” The only place where the artwork gets remotely interesting is at the funeral-parlor sequence, which manages to recapture the dreary-yet-giddy aesthetic of Mad Dog Hoek.
The sequence where Stimpy feeds Ren in a high chair is really tedious – nothing happens gag-wise and Ren just throws his mush at Stimpy thinking he’s the Kaiser. The golf-sequence is also somewhat boring, but it does end with a funny gag where Ren gets used as a golf-bag. However, good though the gag may be, its payoff is telegraphed by keeping Ren off-frame while Stimpy acts ignorant until they decide to pan out and show the clubs stuffed down his throat.
My favorite parts are the neck-muscle-tensing slap-happiness of Stimpy’s ignorance playing off the sleazy coffin salesman, and the scene’s colorful at least. Plus, the coffin they buy is so absurd it’s actually funny. Ren’s funeral is a hoot as well – he’s “alive” in the coffin (though he’s metaphorically dead – geez, better not start), and there are some interesting non-sequiturs in here: People drag their butt across Ren’s grave (you’ll never guess what the headstone reads, then), and some of them are characters seen before, like the coffin salesman and the reverend who conducted Ren’s funeral. Also, notice how at the very end, Ren looks normal (for himself), and not so hideously aged like at the beginning, even though he’s living dead in the coffin. Whether this was intended as a gag or just lazy cartooning, I don’t know, but if it’s the latter, talk about lack of regard for continuity. It ends on a lame note with Fred the Worm eating Ren and Stimpy, leaving their hollow skin to close out the cartoon:
"Such a nice worm"
"S-shut up"
Ren’s Retirement is bookended by two bumpers, one called Dog Water (not a bad idea – dog slobber is less filthy than human spit), and You are what you eat, directed by Lynn Naylor. Both have interesting art styles (Dog Water was designed by a Bob Staake, as you can find out here ), but they’re veeery tedious. Anyway, with all the problems these cartoons have, you gotta give ‘em credit for trying such weird ideas. Pity they forgot (or didn’t have time, or whatever) to elaborate the gags and put some in some actual timing.
Original airdate: 7/30/94
Rating: 4/7
Note: Jim Smith is listed as writer in the closing credits
The sequel to Untamed World (which I underrated by the way, look for a rewritten review in a few years), it shows the main difference between Bob’s direction and John’s direction. I wanted so much to like it, but compared to the original this entry is going through the motions. I know Bob worked hard on the cartoon – it was delayed long enough. But that just makes its failure all the more tragic.
The problem is that the timing is so ineffective – there is no subtlety or surprises. We had the Blind Albino Cave Hoek’s tongue, the soft-shelled Stimpy’s head, the Crocostimpy’s Bus, and the Horny-Bill Chihuahua’s manner of eating the walnut. Is anything like that in Lair of the Lummox? Nadah.
What we have is a lengthy, detailed explanation of the gross habits of lummoxes. I for one can relate to the disgusting lifestyle of the Lummox. I especially enjoy Stimpy’s explanations on its anatomy at the beginning. But it’s not so much a good gag as it is an intriguing lifestyle. Suffice it to say, the events unfold with the most basic timing and cutting. It all just…happens. This can not be anything like what John K. and Jim Smith had in mind. Jim Smith’s drawings don’t look anywhere near as good as in Untamed World (or Sven Hoek and Space Madness for that matter), and it’s more than likely due to the layouts. The end result, while preferable to most Games cartoons, is a disappointment that just doesn’t look good in the shadow of its predecessor.
It's still a bit worthwhile. The gross jokes make plenty of sense and there’s still some Spumco-looking artwork that wasn’t Gamesified or anything like that (gratuitous vein shots, hideousness for its own sake, etc.). But I doubt I’ll be putting this on often, if ever again.