Ren & Stimpy 'Adult Party Cartoon'

First off, I want to say that I bought the DVD because it looked GOOD. But the second after opening the case, popping in the sucker, and pressing play, I was in shock! purely because John K creator off one of the funniest shows ever on nick, destroyed his own work.

What really shocked me was that he actually wanted to make an adult version of ren and stimpy! No longer was the show subtle, no loner was the show slightly INNOCENT! Without those two things, all the humor is gone.

You may say, how could John K pull a george lucas! well he did, he really DID! Who knows, maybe he agreed to this because nobody in town is giving him a job! The adult party cartoon only had SIX episodes. Because he was fired, just like on the original version.

Well, the cartoon isn't the only thing on the DVD. There's some bonus interviews. Most of them containing EDDIE FITZGERALD who has nothing to say but "this cartoon the best cartoon ever made." YA they actually put something on the DVD that almost pisses you off more than the actual cartoon.

I just want to go on the record saying, I love ren and stimpy. I loved it ever since I first saw space madness when I was a kid. But this is not the show I LOVED

Well, it's funny, but... ... it's gross. The old Ren and Stimpy's were funny because they had little gross things here and there, but this is just awful... living in a spitoon, and eating boogers for dinner, and using vomit as gravy is funny, but it was abused. Ren and Stimpy being homo-sexuals, I think, was also a big mistake. In the originals, Ren gets pectoral implants to show off the girls, and he finds a female chiuaha on another planet. Stimpy rides in a limo with a bunch of girls in the originals, too. The episode I saw, I hope, was just one of the bad ones... I expect the others to be better. On a scale of 1 - 10, 5.5.

This cartoon has not improved with age like fine wines do. No, it has grown green disgusting fungus mold like the nacho cheese I left under my bed since the show left Nick. That could be a good thing. The cartoon that got booted off Nick for Ren going inside Stimpy's colon more than once has found an "Adult" audience on TNN. Now Ren can pound anything he likes into Stimpy's lower digestive track like baseballs and say catchy phrases like, "Who's the pitcher and who's catcher!?". Tonight's show we saw the Horse acting as Ren's PSYCHOtheripist and gave us some insight into the twisted brain of Ren. (Like we needed to see that!) TNN has purchased only six new episodes and I think that was to play it safe and see how the public reviewed them. I think the time slot of 10pm is early enough and I won't have a problem with twisted humor as long as this cartoon doesn't air in the morning/afternoon or rerun on a "kids network" as it had before. The only backlash I would expect is the other networks will compete for viewers with more adult shows like Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" which appears on a network geared toward children.

Ren and Stimpy were two of the most cherished icons from my childhood. "Were" is the operative word in that sentence after I saw the premiere of their new "Adult Party Cartoon" on the National Network (TNN). Anyone who grew up with Ren and Stimpy remembers the psychological drama of "Space Madness," the harebrained schemes of "The Boy Who Cried Rat," and the inspired nonsense of "Robin Hoek." None of those classic cartoons' qualities were present last night. Instead, we got crude sound effects and raunchy jokes about homoeroticism and consumption of human waste.

Now, I have absolutely nothing against people with alternative sexual orientations, but I believe there's a right way and a wrong way to present them in the media, and Ren and Stimpy's new show failed miserably at it. Sure, there were various hints at the two title characters' relationship scattered throughout the old show (like Ren's job as a romance novelist), but seriously, didn't Kricfalusi and Co. have any second thoughts about the whole "pitcher and catcher" thing? I seriously doubt that "Queer as Folk," the award-winning HBO show that presents homosexuals as believable people instead of walking stereotypes, would ever resort to that kind of humor. Seriously, it felt less like a Ren and Stimpy cartoon and more like a piece of perverted fanfiction from a disturbed 12-year-old girl.

The premiere episode was the first sign of the show's inevitable downfall. TNN marketed the show as a "Cartoon for F***ing Adults," gave it a TV-MA rating, and put it in the same block of programming with a foul-mouthed anthropomorphic rat lawyer and a crimefighter named Stripperella. All this, presumably, to compete with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and Comedy Central's "South Park." And for what? "Ren And Stimpy's Adult Party Cartoon" lacks the heart of "South Park" and the wit of "Home Movies." Not to mention how the show's TV-MA rating makes it unfit for children, although children are the only people who might find the show even remotely funny. "Ha ha ha, they're eating boogers! I can eat boogers too! When I grow up, I wanna live in a spittoon just like Ren and Stimpy!"

In closing, Billy West made the right decision after he read the script and refused to lend his voice acting talent to the show.

[1 star out of 5]

Now, this isn't just another review that says that the new Ren and Stimpy is nothing like the OLD Ren and Stimpy. I can tell that when John K. was given the OK to once again recreate R&S, he wanted to steer as far away as possible from the Nickelodeon version (after all, he was fired from his own show). But THIS version of the show is just unsettling.

Let me do a quick comparison of a few other cartoons. Now, a little bit of "bathroom humor" can be seen on The Simpsons from time to time, and even MORE can be seen on South Park. But calling the new Ren and Stimpy bathroom humor would be an understatement. The stuff seen on this show is just disgusting for no reason. Ren and Stimpy living in a spittoon eating people's snot and vomit -- I'm sorry, HOW is that funny? If you're going to be gross, shouldn't it at least remotely make sense?

I was looking at the R&S page at IMDb's affiliate site, TV Tome, and of course it had the different synopses for the episodes. When I read some of them, I said, "Holy living F!" Stimpy getting pregnant by Ren? Okay, last time I checked, Stimpy was a guy. I know this is a cartoon, but that's just stupid. And there were a few episodes that showed Ren and Stimpy having oral sex or something, and I'm not homophobic or anything, but I agree with the reviewer that said that that's not exactly the kind of thing that people want to see on "the first network for men."

A lot of Adult Party Cartoon lovers say that the show needs to find its niche, as do the other Spike TV cartoons (Striperella and the hilarious Gary the Rat), which is why only three episodes were shown and the rest held back until sometime this summer (supposedly). But these people are overlooking an important point: there were more than three episodes of Striperella and Gary the Rat shown. In fact, some of the Ren and Stimpy episodes they showed came from the Nickelodeon years (and no, all of them were NOT first parts of sequels, as some fans will probably argue).

I know this is hard to do, but the new Ren and Stimpy is even more disturbing than the OLD Ren and Stimpy. I'm not 100% sure if it's actually coming back, but it's not like I care, either.

Anthony Rupert