Tag: H Jon Benjamin

Cinema Dispatch: The Bob’s Burgers Movie

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

The Bob’s Burgers Movie and all the images you see in this review are owned by 20th Century Animation

Directed by Loren Bouchard & Bernard Derriman

When adapting a TV show like this, the question that needs to be answered is why this story needed to be a movie; a question that’s only gotten harder to answer now that we expect even more from TV shows and streaming services. There are of course remakes that I remember being a particularly popular thing around the early 2000s, presumably kicked off by the success of Charlie’s Angels, but really good movies that are an extension of an ongoing TV show? Well, we’ve got those SpongeBob movies, but it gets pretty thin on the ground after that. Can The Blecher family’s first cinematic outing prove to be the exception to the rule, or will they burn their buns flying too close to the sun? Let’s find out!!

Summer is fast approaching and it couldn’t come soon enough because Bob Belcher (H Jon Benjamin) is in dire need to make some money to cover his loans which are dangerously overdue. His wife Linda (John Roberts) is looking on the bright side and throwing in some jazz hands for good measure, but jazz hands will not be enough to save them when a sinkhole opens right in front of their restaurant; blocking all foot traffic and making it impossible for customers to buy burgers which means that next loan payment will be next to impossible to make. If that wasn’t enough, their youngest daughter Louise (Kristen Schaal), in a bid to prove herself as the bravest kid around, goes down the hole only to find a dead body which makes things even more difficult for the Belchers to get back on track; especially when the primary suspect is their landlord Mr. Fischoeder (Kevin Kline) who is the only one who can help them in this financial bind. Wanting to save her family’s business and once again prove everyone wrong about her being a baby, Louise enlists the help of her older siblings Tina and Gene (Dan Mintz and Eugene Mirman) to solve this mystery and prove that Mr. Fischoeder was not the killer! Can the Belcher kids bring the murderer to justice while saving their restaurant in the process? Just how far will Bob and Linda go start selling burgers again, and is it a risk they will ultimately regret taking? Seriously, does Bob radiate bad luck, or is the universe just out to get him; possibly for making a burger recipe with kale in it?

“Oh, GOD! It’s just a soupy clumps on a skeleton!” “Sigh…” “Wait, is it just me or does it look like hamburger meat?” “What!? No! It looks nothing like that!” “OH, now that I’ve said it I can’t unsee it! That’s it! I’m off meat for good!” “Oh jeez…”
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Jumping the Soapbox: Top 20 Episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force – Part 2 (10-1)

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Welcome back to my list of the best Aqua Teen Hunger Force episodes of all time!  We covered some great episodes last time, but the best is yet to come!  Well, at least what I think is the best, but then I’m always right about everything and my opinion should DEFINITELY be taken as fact!  Anyway, let’s get to it!

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10) Space Conflict from Beyond Pluto – S1 E6

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Frylock establishes contact with alien lifeforms and is invited onto their spaceship to barbeque and share a six pack.  However, the nefarious Plutonians have other plans in mind once he arrives!  Not fully thought plans, but they tend to involve melting people!  Frylock, realizing that the life he’s come into contact with may not be intelegent, beams off the ship but not before Master Shake somehow finds his way aboard; giving the Plutonians a much less perceptive target to unleash their evil schemes upon!

As I’ve said before, the incompetent conquerors from Pluto are two of the best characters the show ever came up with and this first appearance of them is one of the high points of the entire series.  It’s not just great for establishing the Plutonians and their shtick with the show concept being the melting room which also serves as some sort of holo-deck for Master Shake to explore the wonders of a sea filled with pizza as well as a horse’s anus, but it’s also a fantastic Master Shake episode on top of that with the scam he tried to pull on Carl being sharply written and laugh out loud funny.  The only thing I can say negatively about this episode is that it is in fact an early episode of the series and is at a point where Carl didn’t quite sound right which is a bit distracting, but other than that it’s a great deal of fun and a wonderful introduction to these villains.

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“Pepperoni!?  I wanted pineapple!!”

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Jumping the Soapbox: Top 20 Episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force – Part 1 (20-11)

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Aqua Teen Hunger Force and all the images you see in this editorial are the property of Adult Swim

If you were growing up right at the turn of the millennium, Cartoon Network was probably as influential to you and your taste in entertainment as YouTube is to everyone else nowadays.  The ingenious thing about that network is how seamlessly it managed to keep its audience intact for YEARS after you’d think they’d drop off simply for having such good transitional programming for those who were getting older.  It started with Toonami which brought anime and somewhat serious drama for those who were getting tired of silly stuff that the likes of Gendy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, and Maxwell Atoms were churning out (not to say those shows weren’t substantive; just that tweens aren’t exactly looking to those kind of shows to feel grown up), and then it led seamlessly to Adult Swim which had the naughty shows on that you craved when you were getting old enough to stay up that late.  The greatness of Adult Swim and its monumental effect on animation really cannot be underestimated, and while it’s shine has faded somewhat in recent years, we’re gonna reach a point where it’ll end up with a whole generation of animators inspired by those shows the same way that many of the creators OF those shows were inspired by Warner Bros, the Fleischers, or even Ralph Bakshi.  I really could go on about Adult Swim and so many of its shows, but today  we’re talking about probably its most enduring creatin; Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  Now sure it wasn’t among the FIRST run of series for Adult Swim (it’s somewhat a spinoff of Space Ghost Coast to Coast), it’s one of the shows that gave the programming block its identity and made it a cultural phenomenon.  In fact, it’s such a massive series with so many great episodes under its belt that I couldn’t simply make a list of the ten best episodes of the series!  No, I had to do TWENTY, and we’re gonna start with the first half that list right now!!

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20) Bible Fruit – S5 E9

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Frylock makes some new friends online and invites them over to the Aqua Teen house.  When they arrive however, he is surprised to learn that not only are they fruits but  that they have a dark past that they are trying (and failing) to overcome.

What better way to start this off than with the most disturbing fruit since those Claymation California Raisins?  In an episode that’s actually quite ahead of its time considering Sausage Party wouldn’t come out for another eight years, this hilarious and often unsettling episode looks at three fruits compensating for their problems with drugs and alcohol by having faith in a higher power.  Now the big guest star here is David Cross (along with Kristen Schaal and H Jon Benjamin) under the pseudonym Sir Willups Brightsly Moore who previously had a guest spot all the way back in season one as Happy Time Harry in the episode Dumber Dolls.  While that episode is really good and was just barely cut from this list, I feel that Cross’s performance as Bert Banana in this one is by far the better of the two.  He may have done a great job as that sad and useless piece of shit Happy Time Harry in Dumber Dolls, but the character didn’t have much depth to him and so Cross’s performance is somewhat one note.  Here, he’s given SO much more material to work with as someone TRYING to hold it together but is quick to succumb to his worst instincts.  Now I’m not sure if Cross himself has a history of alcohol dependence (his first book is called I Drink for a Reason which may just be titled that way for a goof), but his feelings on religion have been made VERY clear in his standup comedy and it almost feels like the role was written with him in mind because of that.  It may not be for everyone as making light of people with SERIOUS addition is not the kind of humor that everyone can enjoy, but it’s easily one of the best episodes with a prominent guest star and manages to find that right balance between tragedy and hilarity.

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“I did THREE of those God Damn chipmunk movies!  I’VE EARNED THIS, right Mr. Wrench!?”     “That’s right Mr. Banana!!”     “Burt, you’re talking to yourself again.”     “You know what will help with that?”     “Is it booze-”     “GET THE BOOZE!!”

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