Far be it from me to harp on an animated series to want a second wind via direct-to-DVD movies. With the success stories of how Family Guy and Futurama got renewed after their DVD movies, you just know Drawn Together is hoping for a similar result. To be perfectly honest: it doesn’t deserve it, and for many reasons, only a few of them having anything to do with the movie itself. For starters, Family Guy and Futurama ended prematurely. The former got yanked because Fox’s execs didn’t quite understand its appeal and the latter got kicked around from one timeslot to the next, its ratings plummeted accordingly. Drawn Together? It started brilliantly and lambasted a ripe part of popular culture. It just couldn’t keep up the laughs. Quickly it devolved into a cheap string of dick and fart jokes and lost all of what made it great to start. By the time the show ended it felt tired and like it needed to be put down.
So why the movie?
There’s really no need. To make matters worse, besides a quick throwaway joke about how it got canceled (a route which both Family Guy and Futurama took), it decided to make the entire movie about the scenario. What could have been funny as a running joke devolves into a trite and tired example of failed comedy writing that just doesn’t have anywhere to go. That’s where the series ending, so it’s only natural that’s where the movie would pick up.
Drawn Together has been canceled, and since the show is somewhat meta in its concept, the characters have gone their separate ways, only to be reunited by Jew Producer who has an idea of how they could get the show back on the air. Unfortunately, it seems that Drawn Together wasn’t just supposed to be canceled; it was supposed to be erased. Forever. (Let it be known, that by the end of the movie, you just might wish they had been erased).
Spanky Ham (Adam Carolla), Captain Hero (Jess Harnell), Ling-Ling (Abbey McBride), Xandir (Jack Plotnick), Toot (Tara Strong), Foxxy (Cree Summer), and Wooldoor (James Arnold Taylor) go off in search of Make A Point Land, where they go on a Wizard of Oz-esque journey of self-discovery. The show’s creators seem dead set on defying the other popular animated shows of today who’ve found steady audiences by being funny while also delivering up heaping helpings of social commentary. Not too surprisingly you’ll see some South Park-ish looking characters in this fantastical place. Should modern cartoons have a point? Or is it enough to be an unending riff on pop culture with little more than a few well-aimed jabs at certain icons? Drawn Together desperately wants the latter to be true, but this effort does nothing to help argue its case.
From a technical standpoint, The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie! has committed an annoying sin. Veering away from the series’ hand-drawn style (y’know, a style that helped the show’s title make sense?), the producers and writers opted instead to render the movie in flash. During the extra features they claim it’s almost entirely unnoticeable – but oh, they’re wrong. Flash animation just can’t compete with the more fluid motion of traditional styles.
The writing is tired and stale. The story is disposable save for a few clever jokes about Israel, courtesy of a killer robot voiced by Seth MacFarlane. And now, even the animation has taken a hit. You can watch any of the Family Guy or Futurama movies and get a fair taste of what the series is – but all you get from The Drawn Together Movie is a painful reminder of why the show ended. It simply stopped being funny.
DVD Bonus Features
Dave Jesser and Matt Silverstein sit down and walk the interested viewer through a few featurettes like “Anatomy of an Animated Sex Scene” and a piece about how they “improved” the movie over the series by using flash. You can tell they still love their baby, but it seems as if they don’t realize the show had degraded to an unsalvageable lowpoint. This movie isn’t the rebirth opportunity they want it to be. This movie won’t save Drawn Together. If it’s the series’ last hurrah, it’s a disappointing one. It’s almost enough to make you wonder whether fans should bother, or if they should attempt to maintain the positive memories they have by just letting it pass by unwatched.
"The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!" is on sale April 20, 2010 and is not rated. Animation, Comedy. Directed by Greg Franklin. Written by Dave Jesser, Matthew Silverstein. Starring Abbey McBride, Adam Carolla, Cree Summer, Jack Plotnick, James Arnold Taylor, Jess Harnell, Seth MacFarlane, Tara Strong.
