Unikitty "Spoooooky Game"
All things considered, that was an unmitigated disaster. This will be an unusually in-depth review for an 11 minute cartoon for me, as I describe why that is so, so bear with me.
I can sum up this show in five words: "Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command". It is the exact same show, with the exact same problems. The comic timing seems all right at first glance, and the animation doesn't seem especially terrible to look at, but you just feel like there is something incredibly wrong and "off" with the entire project. With Buzz Lightyear, it was that the characters were literally awful, and stupid, and unfunny, and boring, and somehow made me hate Nicole Sullivan, Stephen Furst, and Neil Flynn. Which is like a crazy impossible thing to do. The whole show was hammy, and there was a cynicism and self-awareness behind a lot of the humor that was NOT present in Toy Story at all. And that is Unikitty. Totally. I would be unsurprised if 10 years from now, LEGO has completely disowned this project. It actually seems likely to me. More than not.
My biggest complaint going in was no Alison Brie as Unikitty. Which is insane. I get that these shows are done on the cheap, but that's like WAAAAYYYY too cheap. I get why Eddie Murphy cannot voice every Shrek TV special. Alison Brie is not Eddie Murphy. No insult intended to Brie, but she is not a huge unaffordable movie star. Her last major project was a creative sitcom that was canceled after five seasons, and had to be finished on Hulu. If they wanted to, they could afford to get Alison Brie. If Rapuznel can get Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, much bigger and more expensive stars than Brie, this show can get Brie. But no, they got Tara Strong instead.
A lot of animation fans believe that Tara Strong is the most overworked woman in voice-over and admire her for that. But if you ask me, she's the most overemployed. She's not that great an actor usually. They hired her for Unikitty because she can do a squeaky bubbly voice, and yet somehow completely missed the entire nuance of the character.
Unikitty is a contradiction. She is both an All Amerian Girl and a Totalitarian Fascist at the same time. She loves life with all of her heart, and appreciates beauty and wonder like no-one else. But if things are not just SO, she'll rip your "end-piece" off. Her character has the emotional range of a toddler, if a toddler was given license to be a politician in Legoland and rule their kingdom with a secretly iron fist. She's Bill Mumy in The Twilight Zone, if Bill Mumy were actually well-intentioned, and at least put up the pretense of trying to control his darker urges. She is sincerely well-meaning and earnest. And frightening for reasons even she doesn't understand. She is two entirely separate people living in one schizophrenic body, with the bad one ready to pop out at a moment's notice. Brie played the conflict there, and played it brilliantly.
Strong's Unikitty is basically Ben 10. An obnoxious, jaded preteen who says hipster cliches like "Can I get a whut whut?" with no realization that such an cynical expression did not exist in Unikitty's corner of Legoland in The Lego Movie. It's not even Unkitty, it's a perversion of what Unikitty stands for. I'm wondering if the creators of the show even watched The Lego Movie. Even once. Because they clearly do not understand it or what made it a success.
What especially disturbs me about Strong's craziness is that she is blending it into the overexcited kid. Unikitty is no longer crazy when she loses control of her emotions and panics. She's just plain crazy all the time, and never shuts it off. The best and most interesting thing about Unikitty is something the producers actually seemed to have completely overlooked. It's Ted Cruz filibustering Green Eggs and Hams without irony, or understanding exactly why that specific book had the complete opposite moral for what he was trying to do. But I don't think Cruz put a lot of time and effort into his book selection. He just thought it would sound funny in sound bites on TV, and his dim-witted aides just never corrected him. Unikitty is an animated television series. It is not ultimately decided by one person. Hundreds of people are involved at least, including script writers, directors, animators, even network and studio heads who greenlit the project. Not a single person as they were writing and animating this show thought for a SINGLE second that this was totally destroying the brand? Not even once? A dumb politician is a dumb politician. An entire TV network and creative team should have higher standards, and actually be aware of the franchise they are dipping into. This is nothing like The Lego Movie or the Unikitty I know and love.
There are probably worse current cartoons on the air than Unikitty. But Unikitty made the worst first impression of a cartoon I've seen since Pac-Man And The Ghostly Adventures. It's not quite that bad (I had to shut off Pac-Man after three minutes, and never watched it again) and I think I could probably continue to watch it for the sake of nitpicking it and trolling its threads (which is always fun). But the thing is that I was actually looking FORWARD to this show. I had nothing invested in the horrible, eyesore Pac-Man cartoon. This sucking actually hurts a little.
Worst cartoon debut in years. 0.
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