ShawnDavidStruck's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Community & Diversity, LLC : Foamy The Squirrel]

When a white dude (with his voice pitch shifted up) talks about how diversity is a meaningless buzzword but then also makes weird claims like "history is offensive, so we can't teach that now", it is conspicuous by omission that what he is trying to do is the same thing he's been doing for the last decade: farm performative outrage for clicks.

And the fact that in the year 2020, Foamy the Squirrel, a minimally animated series featuring J. Mathers' rantsona can still make front page because it tells the userbase what it wants to hear? That's probably the biggest self-own on Newgrounds.

[Potion Shop]

HOI!

I give this animation a TEM out of TEM

[South Park Sketch]

Well, you sure nailed the series' ham-handed defense of the status quo, the "no really butboth sides are wrong" and the quasi-Libertarian humor.

milyfecirca87 responds:

So being accurate results in a 1 star?

[Press Start: Trial&Error]

Pretty funny!

Like Harvey Birdman meetsw the world of video games. Nice.

[Cookie Jar Gone Wrong]

Wasted potential

First off the animation is pretty slick, and the voice acting is spot on. Even the character designs and backgrounds are good.

But the humor is weak, even for a Newgrounds submission, where guns, cursing and violence are part and parcel of the humor landscape. If you're going to use something cliched, it has to be pretty strong to stand out.

If you take out the cursing and tone down the blood, you have something that isn't more inventive then something you'd see as a throwaway guy in Family Guy. With the blood and cursing, you have a joke that is well-trod territory on NG. The "here's a kid's song but now there's cursing and violence" was kind of worn out back when all those Bananaphone parodies hit the scene.

You obviously have lots of artistic talent, so that needs no polish. The concept, setups and jokes though need some morw work.

[Mario's Restaurant]

Aw, so close.

Comedy is tricky. If even one element is off, it can tank the whole sketch.

The animation was fluid. The sprite art direction was genre-perfect, especially the food and food cart. The voice acting was spot on.

But what killed the skit (no pun intended) was how Luigi dealt with every thing. Luigi going bonkers? That can be funny. But whipping out a shotgun? On a site where random blood-n-guns as humor has been done to death? It just doesn't match up, and that lost a lost of humor for me. Violence isn't funny just because it's there-- there has to be a point for it to be funny. Or the violence has to fit the milieu of what you're using.

I mean, you're taking music, animation and overall cues in presentation from the Mario series-- which is fine! But then you're using humor that doesn't fit. I mean, Luigi going nuts and then sending fireballs after Mario could work. Or maybe smacking a toad into the horizon ala Smash Bros. The Mario series has traditionally been one of slap-stick, and if you use something that's too far out of place, the humor is lost, and then it can just look like you're trading on nostalgia ("Look! Beloved characters! Retro graphics!") instead of building on what you chose to make it funny.

I still think you're talented, and I hope to see more from you, dude!

JosephAS1 responds:

HEY DUDE! U HAVE THE GUTS OF A OBSERVATIVE VIEWER! AND THANKS THO... BUT U RATED "6?" HOW RUDE! :C ... HUH.. NEVERMIND!

[BACONUDEN]

What the hell?

so a poorly punctuated, poorly spelled joke with slurs against gay people ("This guy is a freaking faggot"? Seriously? What, are you twelve?) gets a front page because it hops in the Kevin Bacon AFD bandwagon?

[Culture Clubbing]

Mmm... TASTY.

This is an excellent parody of jingoism. The anime opening was a spot-on parody of the expected tropes, too.

I love the VA for Capt. Capitalism, but the other voices were pretty weak. The sounded almost disembodied from the characters.

[Mad Mad Mario]

Er?

Limited Animation? Check.

Misogyny? Check.

Humor is just a long angry rants comprised of shouting and cursing with very little creativity? Check.

I voted a 2.

[Saturday Morning Watchmen]

Fried gold!

The production values and polish were top-notch. Great job of turning the series on its ear AND name-and-style-checking 80-90s cartoon tropes.

Ironically enough, the graphic novel mentions Adrian planning a toy line based on himself, nite owl and rorshach... AND a Saturday Morning cartoon. I can so imaginethis being the "actual" product.