Clerks: The Animated Series

Adult Swim recently picked up this very short-lived series, giving me the chance to see it that I always vaguely wouldn't have minded. In general, it doesn't really live up to the film that preceded it. My memories of it aren't very clear, but I remember it being a simple, funny, vulgar movie that lived off Smith's interesting dialogue. The series has all the main actors from the movie voicing their characters and Alec Baldwin as an evil eccentric billionaire, which is fun, but it just isn't really Clerks. For one thing, why is there an evil eccentric billionaire? Clerks was very low key and realistic, just showing a (very strange) day in the life of a couple convenience store workers. The cartoon would be better if it wasn't trying to tie itself down to the movie and used some new ideas and real voice actors instead of the non-actors Smith could get with his $7000 budget.

The series isn't really bad, though. It has its moments. Remember when I said I respected the Sam and Max cartoon for having a clip show with fake clips? Clerks does the same thing, except it's in the second episode, and mostly features clips from the first two episodes over and over again. It has cute little ideas like that that sustain it like the Chupacabra with goat blood. Usually though, those few good ideas get hammered into the ground for too long and you just wait for them to move on. When your show constantly makes jokes about its writers being lazy and uncreative and you've done fewer than ten episodes, it doesn't really bode well for your future. It was an interesting experiment, but it's probably for the best that it didn't last very long.

The Whitest Kids U' Know - Season 1

Starring mostly the same five guys and filmed on a shoestring budget, Whitest Kids is still some of the best sketch comedy I've seen in a while. A lot of the humor is pretty juvenile, but often enough they pull out something clever enough to make watching the whole episode worthwhile. Some sketches are more in the middle, like one of the first ones about how Lincoln was really killed, that aren't particularly smart but still completely hilarious if you can appreciate over-the-top swearing from one of our finest Presidents. Trevor and Zach are my two favorite cast members, and seem to get the lion's share of the best parts, but all of them contribute to every episode positively. Like other all-male comedy troupes that have come before them like The Kids in the Hall, they cross-dress fairly often and aren't afraid to make themselves look moronic for the sake of comedy. There's also the occasional music number, and while they aren't bad, usually I'm just waiting for them to get back to the normal stuff. Another couple great sketches are one where two Englishmen are at a stalemate when one finds he is peeing on the other's leg, and one where a guy who missed a party with his friends is painfully introduced to the new rules they came up with while he was absent. The first season aired on FUSE originally in a censored format, but for the second was moved to IFC, where the first was also reaired.

30 Rock - Season 2

Season two was shortened by the strike like everything else earlier this year, but still put together a solid story arc and some good comedy. There are a few little storylines that come and go, and provide for some decent laughs over multiple episodes. Jenna becoming more popular when she puts on weight during a hiatus, her feud with Tracy, his quest to make a porn video game, Jack's quest to get a promotion. You know, I always have trouble writing about a comedy show when I already wrote about it fairly recently, so I'm not going to try too hard. I like Scott Adsit. His character usually isn't very important to the story, but he's likable and funny whenever he's on screen. It's not the most glamorous role but it's the kind I appreciate. And I have to like anyone who can act on a sitcom AND do a lot of work on an Adult Swim show my friend hates. Anyway, 30 Rock is a funny show that perhaps goes to the "Hey, here's a big celebrity playing a character against their type" thing a bit too often.

Get Smart

Get Smart wasn't great, but it was enjoyable enough that I don't feel my New Years Eve was completely wasted. I like Steve Carell a lot, and he stars among a great cast of all kinds of people, from recognizable comedic faces to great classical actors. Unfortunately, most of them aren't used to their full potential. There are just too many jokes that fall flat for it to be a good comedy. At times, it really seems more like a spy movie with some goofy jokes than a comedy movie about spies, which I feel is more how it was advertised. I've never seen Mel Brooks' original series, so I have no idea how well it compares or how true it is to the show's spirit, so I'm not sure what exactly it was supposed to be, but judging by the reactions of others it's not really waht it should have been.

I actually sort of feel like it does the spy thing better than the humor thing, maybe understandable considering Peter Segal's record of directing mediocre comedies. But there are some fairly interesting missions and the climax is genuinely pretty exciting. Anne Hathaway is hot enough to be a real Bond girl, and matches up against Carell pretty well, although the romance seemed forced to me. Alan Arkin reunites with Carell after his questionable Oscar-winning performance in Little Miss Sunshine and plays an interesting take on the veteran chief character, and Dwayne Johnson should really be in more movies. There's really not much more to say about the movie - it was mostly okay with a few moments that were pretty great. Definitely less than I hoped for after the teaser trailer.