Mighty Mouse: New Adventures C

First of all... This is NOT the Mighty Mouse most people are familiar with. It's not the TerryToons Mighty Mouse you can find on any public domain DVD of "50 classic cartoons", nor is it the 70's Filmation Mighty Mouse that was so bad it was funny... This Mighty Mouse IS funny!

From the depraved mind of Ralph Bakshi and the animation genius of John Kricfalusi, this cartoon remains to be one of the funniest cartoons of the 80's. It featured a satirical approach to the superhero genre blending wackiness, weirdness and often social parody.

This is THE cartoon that was forcibly removed from the airways because an overzealous Kentucky soccer mom accused Mighty Mouse of snorting cocaine (when in reality the morally conscious mouse was simply stopping to smell the flowers).

This cartoon is wild! Classic Mighty Mouse characters such as girlfriend Pearl Pureheart and villain Oil Can Harry return, but not quite as we remember them. The series introduces newcomers Bat-Bat (A take on the Dark Knight), Tick the Bug Wonder, The Cow and Petey Pate.

The set will include all 19 episodes of the series, and if the Ren & Stimpy box sets are any indication then we can likely expect production art galore and interviews with Ralph, John K. and other writers/animators from the show.

From the creators of Ren & Stimpy comes the return of a fantastically funny animated series! Don't Miss it!

I was in middle-school when this show was on TV, and it stuck in my mind long after other cartoons had been forgotten. Thrilled as I was to see it again on DVD, I approached with some trepidation ... after re-watching TinyToons last year and being disappointed at how poorly THOSE had held up, I was ready for the agony of acknowledging my distorted recollection of another favorite from my youth. Thankfully "Mighty Mouse the New Adventures" is every bit as good as I remember. Mostly.

It's an amazing show. The writing is brilliant and it is full of visual gags that were lacking in most Saturday Morning tripe at that time. The animation renaissance of the early 1990s can be traced directly to this show. It shows clearly the origins of the Spumco style .. Here are the strange, retro/cubist character and background designs, the bizarre story and gag ideas, the emphasis on emoting rather than on constant frenetic movement, and the use of voices that don't sound like typical cartoon characters. Although the production values on "Mighty Mouse" were lower than on "Ren and Stimpy," I think the best episodes of "Mighty Mouse" are better than anything John K did in his later career. The stories are more coherent and rely less on "gross-out" gags and psychotic freak-outs. John K probably hates this expression, but "Mighty Mouse" is a lot more relatable than "Ren and Stimpy."

However, not all the episodes were good. Some of them are atrociously written, with no clear sense of plot direction or motivation. Some of them don't make sense, and some of them are actually painful to watch. "Witch Tricks," the second half of episode 2, is the first bad one, followed by "Catastrophe Cat" in episode 4. The third disk has 6 episodes from the aborted second season; the animation on this disk is noticeably worse, Maxi Burger has inexplicably returned to his fat, evil form (and his voice is different) and most of the episodes are bitter jabs at the network and at television in general. Mighty Mouse is savagely mistreated by the writers in this season. The crew must have known the show was getting cancelled when they made these; the feeling is very different from the first season.

Another weakness is the high percentage of recycled animation. Any kid can tell you that "clip shows" always suck, but it has long been Network TV policy to do one cheap show per season that is a collage of recycled clips. Each episode of "Mighty Mouse" consists of two short cartoons. In season one, out of 26 shorts, four of them consist mainly of clips from old Terrytoons cartoons with what is apparently improvised voice-over dubbed in. It's not at all funny and it comes across as the production crew being lazy and needing to fill time. If they were going to re-use old Terrytoons, I would rather they had presented the classic cartoons uncut and without the voices from the new show talking over them. In season two, out of 12 shorts, two of them are cobbled together out of clips from season one, with new dialogue clumsily dubbed in. Again, not funny, and even a kid could tell the show directors were taking shortcuts.

Yet despite its weaknesses, this collection still contains some of the best TV cartoons ever made. I remember in 7th grade my friends and I used to recite Maxi's freak-out monologue from "The Bag Mouse" (episode 5; "A straw with no paper! MUSTARD .. on the counter!!!") and that episode is just as amazing today as it was 23 years ago. Madame Marsupial in "League of Super Rodents" (episode 8) is still smokin' hot. Bat-Bat is a fiendishly clever parody. The Cow is just as off-kilter hilarious as I remember, with one of the most memorable voices on Saturday morning. And Petey Pate (episode 1) is fascinatingly deranged. There's a lot of prize material in this hit-or-miss collection.

The digital transfer looks great. CBS went back to the original show negatives, so the picture quality on these DVDs is possibly even better than the show looked when it was first broadcast. There's an approximately 30-minute interview documentary with members of the Mighty Mouse crew reminiscing about their work on the show. Only two of the episodes have audio commentary. In both cases John K and Tom Minton comment on the first short, and the second one is commented by Minton, Kent Butterworth and Mike Kazaleh. The comments are not really very elucidatory; it's mostly self-congratulation ("we were the first ones do do this on TV...") so I'm not all that disappointed to see only two episodes with commentary.

All in all, a wonderful show and a very significant artifact in the history of animation. It just has too many flaws for me to award a full five stars. Animation enthusiasts should own this, regardless. It is really that good .. well, MOST of it is.

In watching these for the first time in many, many years, I realize that, like a lot of cartoons, much of it is hit and miss. But this is a very fast-paced 'toon, and there are tons of pop culture send-ups and references, sexual innuendos and throw-away lines that need your attention and do, in fact, remain pretty hilarious. Some of it verges on greatness. And also keep in mind that this particular cartoon in large part ushered in the era of Ren and Stimpy, et. al. that has ultimately led to Adult Swim. In that regard, it's influence cannot be overstated.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 15 reviews  4.6 out of 5 stars