(6/10)
This is an odd special. The animation is great as ever, but it's pretty wild and wierd, even for me.
PLOT:The greedy Wilshire Pig and his shy companion, Sheldon the Snail, are trying to make money through a Halloween carnival ride until they stumble upon the diary of Frankenswine, the mad scientist. By retrieving the dairy, the two get a map to Frankenswine's castle and an opportunity to find his monster. Wilshire takes this as an opportunity to make money and drags Sheldon (who has the map on his tongue) with him to the castle. However, once they find it and get in, they should be begging to get out! A Halloween party of monsters, zombies, and non-mortals gather there every year, and now Wilshire and Sheldon must find their way out of it while searching for the monster! It's a decent plot executed fairly well.
VOICES:The voices are actually pretty annoying to me. I don't know who did the voice acting, but Wilshire Pig's voice really annoyed me, and Sheldon barely even spoke! Most of the other voices were pretty annoying as well, but I'd say I liked the voice best for Famine, one of the skeleton warriors of the apocalypse. It was pretty comedic.
SCORE:The score wasn't really important, but the theme was done in a pretty fun way. It wasn't anything spectacular, but just a fun theme with an annoying song near the end sung by Wilshire.
ANIMATION:The animation is what really sold this special for me. The animation is composed by the great Will Vinton, who gave us the same for his delightful Claymation Christmas Special and his underrated film, The Adventures of Mark Twain. The animation was very detailed and expressed emotion in every character as well as animate certain aspects of the creatures.
OTHER CONTENT:This special was actually a weird one; it just didn't seem to do the job well for me. It was a wild and fun Halloween celebration, but at the end it just came off as empty. It didn't have the true Halloween spirit that it should've had. The humor was mainly hit-or-miss in here. There were a couple of humorous moments, such as meeting the horsemen of the apocalypse and seeing the monster revealed to the audience, but a lot of it was just basic, such as "Dr. Jekyl's experiment" or the ending. I'd usually like something like this because of its wild, Halloween nature, but it just left me feeling empty at the end. It's definitely a unique feature, but it borrows so much that it can't be anything more than JUST a TV special. Also, I really didn't care for the persona of Wilshire Pig or Sheldon the Snail; they are not lovable characters! It makes me miss the Christmas special more.
OVERALL,an ok Halloween special with a decent plot, annoying voices, a fun theme, great Vinton animation, an empty feeling, hit-or-miss humor, and unlikeable characters, but it did have its moments, and it is unique.
No comments:
Post a Comment