Boris e Rufus

Boris e Rufus
Brazil's best buddies-type show.
Genre: Comedy Running Time: 11 minutes Country: Brazil Release Date: January 2, 2018 (season 1) January 4, 2021 (season 2) Network(s): Disney XD TV Cultura Disney Channel (Russia) Created by: Filipe Cargnin Elisa Baasch Distributed by: Belli Studio Starring: Pierre Bittencourt Doug Erholtz Caio Guarnieri Christopher Corey Smith Cedric L. Williams Joel Vieira Marina Santana Seasons: 2 Episodes: 39

Boris e Rufus (Boris and Rufus in English) is a Brazilian animated television series created by Filipe Cargnin and Elisa Baasch, produced by Belli Studio, and developed with the support of BNDES (Brazil's National Bank of Economic and Social Development), via the program Procult. The show is aired on Disney XD and premiered on January 2, 2018, in Brazil.

Plot

Meet Boris, a cranky mixed-breed dog, and Rufus, an excitable ferret who believes himself a dog live together. They belong to Enzo, a teenager in love with his neighbor, Jennifer, who owns an internet-famous cat, the insufferable Leopoldo. When the owners are not around, the animals stop behaving like pets; they use electronic devices, access the "inter-pet-net" (the animals' web), play video games, and get involved in all sorts of shenanigans. The conflicts between Boris' and Rufus' personalities, plus their encounters with fantastic beings and items, lead to great adventures that can go far beyond the "real" world.

Why It Sucks

1. Dissappointing, Monotonous and Unexciting are just a minuscule expression to describe the lackluster experience that Boris e Rufus is. Substandard writing is the major and inevitable to dismiss hassle that this show endlessly echoes. Episodes integrate overused, generic, unoriginal, repetitive & decayed clichés and tropes, which would have been slightly acceptable for a product released during the early 2000s or to a lesser extent early 2010s, yet in this case, forgiving that mistake is impossible, given that it is an early 2020s product that we're talking about. Episodes are entirely devoid of any sort of soul, enthusiasm, or effort, and feel like the writers weren't even trying to assemble an unpredictable or at the very least entertaining show, which wraps up the question: What's the point of telling a story if your audience has already sensed it a plethora of times before, which is the main reason why they got tired of it in the first place?
2. Adding insult to injury, the show's premise shares the same problems mentioned previously. The story of animals having a secret life when their owners aren't around is a completely forgettable and unoriginal premise that was already seen before in countless movies and shows, and on top of that, the best buddies genre was exploded like no other by the time Boris e Rufus premiered. Of course, this makes the wastrel nature of the show even more aggravating. To give you an idea, this show is the equivalent of an attempt at making a series of The Secret Life of Pets, mixed with the weak best buddies-type genre in the same style of Pickle and Peanut & the redundant clichéd writing of Ollie's Pack.
3. Buddy comedies are prone to having one-dimensional characters lacking in depth & charisma, quite a usual thing to be expected from this genre, but not many achieve these truncated brackets of creativity, guaranteeing the removal of score to the genre's established low standards. Having no remarkable personality traits is a mistake that sadly decimates the emotion of spectating a particular character's segments, which only weakens Boris e Rufus' unappealing nature.
   • Boris and Rufus are easy-to-replicate versions of an absurd cartoon duo integrated by the coherent, grumpy & short-tempered guy and the dimwitted, optimistic & cheerful sidekick
   • Leopoldo is the mean, selfish and arrogant guy that always shows off his wealth. He is also an annoying character that loves triggering all the events that happen in each episode just to annoy the eponymous duo
   • Enzo is the nervous and shy boy who always loses his mind when he sees his crush and never has the guts to talk to them like a normal person. For example, in the episode 'Smile For Your Beloved' when he thought that Jennifer got mad at him for making a handsome expression, he jumped to the conclusion that she didn't love him and uploaded a song mourning said event to the internet
   • Jennifer is the sweet and enthusiastic girl that can't supply even the least interesting or memorable lines, and her appearances in the show are only there for the sake of Enzo's character
   • Yuko is the most badly written character out of the main cast, instead of being useful or having memorable moments, all her screen time is reduced to showing off her lusting over Boris and bragging about her eminently distasteful crush on him. That's it. Her entire purpose in the show is acting as a predictable (and truly insipid) love interest to Boris
4. Voice is what gives characters life and partly composes the emotion that comes with their participation. Of course, Boris e Rufus missed the shot once more. Disregarding acceptable performances from the other characters, one in particular, Rufus, was given a voice that goes by the term 'annoying' with every letter, being childish in its ways of sounding needlessly high-pitched & forced, and unimaginative in its attempt to resemble the infamous characters of this category, a la Illumination's Minions & Blue Sky's Crash & Eddie.
5. Blatant falsehood within the premise; Boris e Rufus advertizes the surreal adventures of a duo, leading to the expectation of stories set in a fantastic universe. Viewers will be met with an underwhelming surprise when they find out the show only incorporates generic plots that were already seen in almost every buddy cartoon. The following example should be more than enough; 'Orkpet' is just the typical episode of a character turning haughty and selfish after they become famous in the media, but there's more to this:
   • 'The Adorable Club' is a subpar rehash of the former, as they both derive from the same premise; Boris/Rufus is interested in one of Leopoldo's activities/belongings so Leopoldo decides to introduce them into that world that has him doing said activities/permits him to own the possession, they later discover the animal (in this case, a rooster and a unicorn) behind that organization is in fact a twist villain. It doesn't help how the villain is eventually defeated by their own allies
6. Extending from these recent pointers are the other alternatives when the main characters fail at their delivery; antagonists. The villains are ridiculous and nonsensical with their motivations & behavior, as evinced in the prior examples.
7. Predictable and tiresome jokes & dialogues. How this show fails at its most important attribute doesn't sadden as much as the secondary, which may be dismissible to an extent when writing a story of this genre, yet still, have no right being left aside this hard. The show clearly doesn't try to be funny at all, not hesitating to force colorless comedy by utilizing the stalest jokes one could think of.
8. Being the last aspect you could worry about when visiting this genre, the animation doesn't deserve much analysis, but take into account this show was made in Brazil, the country that's been innovating and guiding Latin American animation as a respectful leader next to México. With this point exposed, the stilted & cheap-looking animation compliments the equally vague character designs flawlessly and results in a total disgrace to Brazilian animation and how it constantly raises its standards to set a good example for its region.
9. Practically the same can be said for the art style; average & bland-looking in all its panoramic divisions given what other Brazilian cartoons made before. Take the humans' designs as an example, they look effortless and way too bland with their big round eyes & proportions designed after shapes.
10. The character designs, while decent, look like Nature Cat rejects, which is not a good sign.
11. Unlike certain cartoons that handle interspecies romances correctly, as they usually take place in worlds that are inhabited by diverse creatures or beings of all sorts (therefore allowing this concept), in this show the interspecies references between Boris (a dog) and Yuko (a fish) are off-putting, disturbing & unpleasant, as these characters live in a real world that's not much different from ours.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Passable and nicely planned background designs that wrap up a fitting atmosphere for a buddy comedy.
2. Surprisingly good soundtrack, which could be considered a partial salvation to the scarce emotion of this comedy. Doubtlessly, the best exemplar is the outro theme and its epic disaster-sci-fi feel.
3. Redundancy disregarded, the simplistic and intentionally stilted animation does look indecent in a positive way and appealing when mixed with the equally vague designs.
4. The Latin American Argentinian dub (mainly thanks to the fantastic performance of Pablo Gandolfo) is better than the original Brazilian Portuguese dub.

Reception

It didn't take long for Boris e Rufus to be rapidly forgotten due to the empty spirit put by its creators. But unexpectedly, it appears to be very popular in its home country to the point of getting merchandise and even stage plays. Like almost any Brazilian animated production regardless of the product's quality it was of course well received and carries a positive score of 8.6/10 on IMDb.

While some of the first seasons are available on Youtube thanks to it being uploaded by the series's official channel, the second season is impossible to watch and is nowadays one of those lost cartoon seasons that are extremely rare to find even in the deepest corners of the internet.

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