The Groovenians
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 Wasted artistic potential. Need we say more?
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The Groovenians is an American adult animated television pilot created by Kenny Scharf and produced by Cartoon Network Studios. It was aired on Cartoon Network's late night programming block Adult Swim on November 10, 2002, but was also re-aired on the network itself during the block "Cartoon Cartoon Fridays" on February 21, 2003. The pilot was panned by critics and audiences, resulting in the series not being picked up by the network.
Plot
The Groovenians follows an adolescent couple, named Jet and Glindy, from a planet named Jeepers. On Jeepers, society is uniform, and artistic qualities are shunned. Jet and Glindy, however, are artists, and performers who often perform on their front lawns. Their parents do not approve, and they tell Jet and Glindy, that art is not everything in life. As Glindy talks to Jet about wanting to leave Jeepers, a boy named Nixon is dropped next door from a spaceship. He had been evicted from a planet, called Groovenia, which he tells Jet and Glindy, is a paradise for artists. He gives them his key, before he is dragged into his house by his grandmother.
After being presented with options for their future, Jet and Glindy decide to leave Jeepers behind, and go to Groovenia. However, Jet's father stops them. He, along with Jet's mother, dictates their future; Glindy is to work at an office job and Jet is to marry Glindy's sister. Glindy manages to stop the wedding, and the two, along with Jet's dog, Looki, are run out by the parents and Glindy's sister.
The three escape to the "jetport" where they board a jet to Groovenia. Upon the plane, they are greeted by the flight attendant, who has a short sequence creating hype for the planet. Upon landing, Jet and Glindy meet a tree that proclaims in rhyme that a key is needed to gain entry to Groovenia, which was earlier given to them by Nixon. They insert the key into the tree's keyhole, and she takes them to their apartment. There they meet the former roommates of Nixon, Swirly, Lalasha, and Suavo, and introduce themselves. They proceed to spend the day partying, but as Glindy proclaims aloud if Groovenia could possibly get any better, they are attacked by a group of robots called "normals", and their king, Norman. The normals and king Norman force them to pay taxes, and Suavo tells Jet and Glindy, the reason why Nixon was evicted. It turns out, that Nixon didn't pay his taxes, and because of this, Jet and Glindy have to pay them for him. The two are attacked by king Norman, scaring Jet. This causes Glindy to become angry, and she expels Norman and the normals with colored paint and disco music, The pilot ends with King Norman swearing revenge as the main characters dance.
Development
The Groovenians became the first television pilot created by Kenny Scharf, a surrealist painter from Brooklyn, New York. The art, animation, and concepts were the result of his long work experience painting pop culture in a science fictional setting; Scharf drew inspiration from Hanna-Barbera's animated sitcom The Jetsons.
The pilot was produced with computer-generated imagery via S4 Studios rather than entirely by Cartoon Network Studios. Scharf wrote the story with Jordan Reichek, the director of the pilot for Invader Zim, who also held the roles of director, producer, and storyboard artist. Several prominent artists of new wave music contributed as composers for the pilot's music: three members of The B-52's (Kate Pierson, Fred Schneider, and Cindy Wilson) for the soundtrack, Mark Mothersbaugh for the background, and finally Bob Casale from Devo working with some musicians of Mutato Muzika (Crash Bandicoot's first games), working on background and additional music. After the pilot was rejected by Cartoon Network, Scharf tried to pitch it to MTV or VH1 but it never materialized.
Why It's Not So Groovy
- Atrocious CGI animation, especially for 2002 standards. Most of the set pieces are poorly detailed, particularly Jet's parents' front yard, which looks like a giant LEGO plate, and it makes it look like it was made in the mid-90s. This is unacceptable since both The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius and Ice Age came out the same year BEFORE The Groovenians aired, and they look miles better than this.
- Heck, even the original Toy Story, the very first Pixar movie to ever be created that was made in 1995, seven years before this was made, looks miles better than The Groovenians.
- The character animation is incredibly stilted, everyone moves robotically without any weight. There is also a lot of clipping, particularly with Jet's mouth movement, Again, both The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron and Ice Age came out the same year, and the character animations look WAY better than this.
- Extremely loathsome characters with little-to-no redeeming qualities.
- Jet and Glindy are obnoxious protagonists, with the former being a nervous coward, and the latter being a poorly written strong female character who mainly cares only about their artistic potential, and their love for each other. That's about it.
- Jet's parents are jerks who don't care about their son and his girlfriend's futures, and care more about putting them in misery, as well as forcing their son to marry his girlfriend’s sister, Yalda, which is illegal in its own right, and randomly out-of-nowhere becomes rage-induce demons after Glindy refused the marriage.
- Yalda is a selfish brat who only cares about marrying Jet, and also randomly out-of-nowhere becomes a rage-induced demon after Glindy refuses the marriage.
- Looki's only defining trait is making random animal noises.
- Nixon is just a stereotypical cool teenage boy who gets abused by his grandmother after singing his song.
- The random tree character is annoying and just serves as filler.
- Suavo, Swirly, and Lalasha cannot decide on whether they are self-absorbed, or voices of reason.
- Norman is an egotistical, money-hungry, and one-dimensional antagonist, and doesn't appear until near the end of the special.
- Bland musical numbers.
- The intro song, while great, essentially wastes the talents of the B-52s, as the instrumentation makes the singing barely audible.
- Nixon's song uses an electric guitar as instrumentation, while he glorifies Groovenia, which goes out of control very fast.
- The lead instrument for Norman's song, in which he glorifies his pursuit of money, is a square synthesizer, whose measures follow no predetermined musical pattern. Making this worse is the fact that Norman only speaks his lines instead of singing.
- Very poor atmosphere, in the first half of the spectrum which takes place at Jet's house in Planet Jeepers, Most of the colors are bland due to the dark and dull tone, and looks like a rejected Disney/Disney's Pixar, Nickelodeon or DreamWorks Animation-like area, with the second half of the spectrum taking place on Groovenia being WAY too bright due to its multiple colors, and looks like something out of Hub Network, PBS Kids, and YTV.
- The moral states that art is the most important part of anyone's life. There's a time and place for everything!
- Poor attempts at humor.
- Poor lip-syncing with the characters' mouths not matching what they’re saying.
- Characters randomly pop up and disappear for no reason, one example is Nixon, who after singing his song and getting taken away by his grandmother, he is never seen or mentioned again, and even Jet's parents and Yalda also just disappear after the chase scene and are never to be heard of again.
- The climax is extremely anticlimactic, Jet and Glindy defeat both Norman and his minions by.... squirting paint at them, which causes Norman and his minions to dance to the music uncontrollably non-stop after Suavo and Swirly pull a leaver that triggers a song, and the villains leave.
- Random out-of-nowhere moments.
- One scene has Jet's parents and Yalda turning into demons, when Jet and Glindy walk out on them en route to Planet Jeepers' airspace after refusing the marriage, which looks completely out-of-place, more on that in a bit.
- Additionally, the special's use of laugh tracks is confusing. It's one thing to use laugh tracks in an animated show, but the fact that it's only used when the characters laugh is another matter entirely.
- Awful voice-acting as most of the voice actors might’ve spoken their lines in the broken audio recorder.
- Jet's father and Norman also share the same voice actor, and as such, they both sound exactly the same, which is very lazy, even for 2002 standards.
- Very confusing on what style of tone The Groovenians wants to be, on one hand, even tho this suppose to be an Adult Swim show, it looks way too child-like in terms of esthetics and some-points of writing to be an adult show, unlike some other shows that aired on Adult Swim(E.G Family Guy, American Dad and The Boondocks), but on the other hand, despite The Groovenians being what supposedly would have been a kids' show, there are a few inappropriate moments and can even get a bit dark/graphical, for example:
- During the "game show" made by Jet's father, the tentacle grabs and sexually wraps Glindy, which looks like something out of an adult-animated anime.
- When Glindy refuses to have Jet marry Yalda, both Yalda and even Jet's parents (for no reason what-so-ever) turn into demons and chase Jet and Glindy in their car as described in pointer 1 of the #11 segment, the tone for this part, in particular, is EXTREMELY horrifying and literary looks like something out of a horror film.
- There's even a moment where the demon Yalda goes up to the camera, and screams like a pig, which could frighten little kids.
- When Jet inserts the key in the slot behind the living female tree's back, she acts all "tickley" in a very sexy way, and in the next scene right after that, it's implied the slot is actually on her rear.
- When Suzvo, one of the owners of Nixon's place, looks at Glindy through the key-hole, he stares up and down at her in a VERY disturbing manner, and most infamously, literary grabs/pulls Glindy into the house while not knowing about Jet, keep in mind that Glindy wears a tank-top, so Suzvo could be staring at...something else.
- Mediocre character designs that look like rejected designs from Jimmy Neutron, Reboot and Gumby combined, for example, the Jeepers aliens, as in Jet, his parents, Glindy, and her sister Yalda, look like humans with colored skins, and a tie between Suavo, Swirly, and Lalasha look like cyclops.
The Only Groovy Quality
- The theme song, despite wasting the B-52s’ talent is actually great and the only good song in the entire special.
Reception
The Groovenians was universally panned by critics and audiences for its animation, characters, musical numbers, and voice acting. It was widely considered to be one of the worst animated pilots ever created. It currently has a 2.7/10 rating on IMDb and because of this, it never picked up as a full series.
Despite the negative reception, it was nominated for the 30th Annie Awards as "Best Animated Short Subject".