Reviews
by Eric J. Smith -- Multichannel News, 1/18/2009 7:00:00 PM
The Powerpuff Girls
(Cartoon Network, Monday, Jan. 19, 8 p.m. ET/PT)
It has been 10 years since Professor Utonium mixed sugar, spice and everything nice with Chemical X and created The Powerpuff Girls. On January 19, Cartoon Network celebrates the anniversary of animator Craig McCracken’s series with a marathon capped with a very special half-hour episode, “The Powerpuff Girls Rule.”
It opens, of course, with a beautiful day in Townsville. The peace and quiet are broken up soon enough and the city is saved once again by the Powerpuff Girls. But it is the arrival of the actual “key to the world,” which grants dominion over the Earth to whomever holds it, that draws out the entire PPG rogues’ gallery. And what kind of anniversary show would it be if everybody’s favorite bad guy and Powerpuff Girls arch-enemy Mojo Jojo didn’t take center stage.
The episode’s frenetic pace positively crackles with energy and wit. The references and homages to other cartoons and pop-culture icons come fast and furious, including nods to Hanna Barbera’s Wacky Races, Charles Schultz’s Peanuts, Spider-Man, video game Mario Kart and George Orwell’s 1984. Not to mention, Mojo Jojo has two brilliant musical numbers.
If there is a complaint about the Powerpuff Girls 10th anniversary episode, it’s that it is far too short — a half-hour is just not enough. Come on, Cartoon Network, you couldn’t have sent the girls on a longer mission and still gotten them home by bedtime?
— Eric J. Smith
Wolverine and the X-Men
(Nicktoons, Friday, Jan. 23, 8 p.m.)
Everybody’s favorite super-team is back on the small screen with Wolverine and the X-Men. Nicktoons is launching its new animated series just in time to whet appetites for the May theatrical X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
The action starts just before an attack on the Xavier Institute scatters the X-Men and leaves Professor X and Jean Grey missing. Fast-forward one year, and Wolverine has taken to the road in an attempt to stay under the radar of the government’s Mutant Response Division. Its function is to round up mutants who are defying the Mutant Registration Act (a storyline familiar to those who grew up with the comic book in the 1980s).
Wolverine returns to the ruined institute at Graymalkin Lane and finds Beast hidden away, trying to find out what exactly happened to the Professor and Jean. Together, Wolverine and Beast try to reassemble the X-Men team.
Unlike some past renderings of the X-Men story, Wolverine and the X-Men seems to stick close to its comic book source. The heroes and villains, including Colossus, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, Storm and Cyclops, as well as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, are all familiar to fans of the title. There isn’t any attempt, at least in the first two episodes, to create new characters for the show (anybody remember Morph from Fox’s animated X-Men series of the early 1990s?). The show also seems to be building up to a storyline about Genosha.
The series softens the image of the X-Men’s poster boy, Wolverine, presumably for the kids, But there is still enough bad ass in him to keep viewers interested. Overall, the series is satisfying for fans of the X-Men — though fans of Beast might be disappointed by his portrayal.
— Eric J. Smith
