"The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" starts out with a cool idea: what if two kids gain control of the Grim Reaper? In the right hands, hilarity would ensue, right? Well, unfortunately, not here.
The shows strengths and weaknesses are obvious from the start: You can't get much cooler than the Grim Reaper, and having him out of his element and actually living with two kids should be hilarious.
Then you see the people he's stuck with, and the humor dies. The kids who own Grim, Billy and Mandy, are, to say the least, uninspired and lame. Billy's the typical happy idiot and Mandy's the dark humorless cynic. These archetypes have been done to death. That doesn't mean they can't be done well though: Look at "Gir" and "Gaz" from "Invader Zim"! (of course, Gir is funnier than Billy because he's insane, not annoying, and Gaz is better than Mandy because the archetype of the character would naturally be a loner who people wouldn't want to spend a lot of time around, so why does Mandy hang out with Billy, even if it is for someone to manipulate, and get a half hour of show time?) Of course, the creators of Zim realized that Gir and Gaz work better as supporting characters, which is another problem. Who wants to spent half an hour watching an annoying idiot and mean jerk hang around? Well, with "Ren and Stimpy" I would, and with Zim i would too, but that's because they had chemistry. Billy and Mandy seem to hang out just because the story needs them to.
Then there's Grim, a big batch of unrealized potential. He tries to be dark and evil, but often gets stopped by the kids or those around him. This would, and should, be funny, but it usually just falls flat. There are times when the cool, dark ideas of sick, twisted humor show up through him or characters like Nergal and Aeris or the great musical brain-eating meteorite, but they're few and far between, and end up getting dragged down by boring writing and settings.
The thing is, the show has no real creative or unique spark to bring it to life. It's mostly just running the characters through different situations, which again, can be funny, but isn't here, because of the lack of that said spark. What spark? Well, look at "Invader Zim" or "Ren and Stimpy": Zim had dark, sci-fi edge and insanity, and R&S had great chemistry and gross-out humor. "Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" has a humdrum design and style that looks like a dozen other generic cartoons: it looks like it could have been drawn by anyone! It seems that the show wants to stay in the confines of a normal cartoon and still do weird things. And again, that could work great, but just not here. Here the two don't meld or play off each other in cool ways, and things fall flat. It's about as much fun as watching the idiot, jerk, and goth people you went to high school with hang around and act like themselves, but not react to each other. And even when they get into cool settings, like Nergal's amusement park or Father Time's house, it's done like any and every other cartoon would do it and has done it! In fact, take the musical meteorite episode, one of the shows better ones: It's pretty good, but imagine how much better it would be done on Zim or R&S.
And that's really the show's problem: it can't take the leap to fulfill it's potential, and it has a mucky base to begin with. It's better than some tamed-down Nicktoons, but that's not saying Much. The show's original companion, now its own show, "Evil Con Carne", is much better, in that it uses the generic cartoon setting for unique, likable characters. Until this cartoon can embrace the darkness and evil within, and make us like it, it will just be mediocre.
The shows strengths and weaknesses are obvious from the start: You can't get much cooler than the Grim Reaper, and having him out of his element and actually living with two kids should be hilarious.
Then you see the people he's stuck with, and the humor dies. The kids who own Grim, Billy and Mandy, are, to say the least, uninspired and lame. Billy's the typical happy idiot and Mandy's the dark humorless cynic. These archetypes have been done to death. That doesn't mean they can't be done well though: Look at "Gir" and "Gaz" from "Invader Zim"! (of course, Gir is funnier than Billy because he's insane, not annoying, and Gaz is better than Mandy because the archetype of the character would naturally be a loner who people wouldn't want to spend a lot of time around, so why does Mandy hang out with Billy, even if it is for someone to manipulate, and get a half hour of show time?) Of course, the creators of Zim realized that Gir and Gaz work better as supporting characters, which is another problem. Who wants to spent half an hour watching an annoying idiot and mean jerk hang around? Well, with "Ren and Stimpy" I would, and with Zim i would too, but that's because they had chemistry. Billy and Mandy seem to hang out just because the story needs them to.
Then there's Grim, a big batch of unrealized potential. He tries to be dark and evil, but often gets stopped by the kids or those around him. This would, and should, be funny, but it usually just falls flat. There are times when the cool, dark ideas of sick, twisted humor show up through him or characters like Nergal and Aeris or the great musical brain-eating meteorite, but they're few and far between, and end up getting dragged down by boring writing and settings.
The thing is, the show has no real creative or unique spark to bring it to life. It's mostly just running the characters through different situations, which again, can be funny, but isn't here, because of the lack of that said spark. What spark? Well, look at "Invader Zim" or "Ren and Stimpy": Zim had dark, sci-fi edge and insanity, and R&S had great chemistry and gross-out humor. "Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" has a humdrum design and style that looks like a dozen other generic cartoons: it looks like it could have been drawn by anyone! It seems that the show wants to stay in the confines of a normal cartoon and still do weird things. And again, that could work great, but just not here. Here the two don't meld or play off each other in cool ways, and things fall flat. It's about as much fun as watching the idiot, jerk, and goth people you went to high school with hang around and act like themselves, but not react to each other. And even when they get into cool settings, like Nergal's amusement park or Father Time's house, it's done like any and every other cartoon would do it and has done it! In fact, take the musical meteorite episode, one of the shows better ones: It's pretty good, but imagine how much better it would be done on Zim or R&S.
And that's really the show's problem: it can't take the leap to fulfill it's potential, and it has a mucky base to begin with. It's better than some tamed-down Nicktoons, but that's not saying Much. The show's original companion, now its own show, "Evil Con Carne", is much better, in that it uses the generic cartoon setting for unique, likable characters. Until this cartoon can embrace the darkness and evil within, and make us like it, it will just be mediocre.