VeggieTales in the City

Being from the UK, I've never heard of VeggieTales before. I put VeggieTales In The City on Netflix for my 4 year old thinking it was just a funny cartoon. Turns out each episode is full of religious nonsense with one episode ending "Remember, God loves you". It was swiftly turned off.

I grew up loving the original VeggieTales, but VeggieTales in the City is a huge disappointment. The new designs are just plain ugly - the characters look off, lifeless, and almost unrecognizable. The charm and warmth of the original animation are completely gone. It feels like the heart and soul of the show were stripped away in favor of something flat and overly modernized. Kids might not notice, but longtime fans definitely will. This is not the VeggieTales we remember - and it's honestly hard to watch.

So many people seem to be expecting so much more out of it, and I think that's an expectation set by other children's shows that nowadays target an adult audience too - but if you look at this for what it is, a perfectly harmless show about silly vegetables doing silly things.

And yes, like the original Veggie Tales this show quotes Christian scripture and makes mention of God after each episode, but it isn't trying to preach to children, it's just using scripture to teach morals alongside a goofy cartoon show. It's actually *less* religious than the original show.

That being said, I wouldn't call it phenomenal or remarkable in any really distinct way - but it really isn't offensive of bad either, and I think it deserves a rating higher than it currently has.

I hate VeggieTales in the City because it makes all of the characters look and sound too different. The casting department was too cheap to cast more than one replacement male and female actor for all the original characters not voiced by Mike or Phil! You can hear that problem in almost all of Tress MacNeille's female character voices, for example. Junior Asparagus, a young boy character, sounds too boyish, and not girly enough like the way Lisa's Junior originally sounded, Laura sounds uncomfortably high-pitched, and Madame Blueberry's new voice doesn't even try to have a French accent. The only female veggie whom Tress MacNeille can have sound close to her original voice is Petunia Rhubarb. Even with Phil and Mike voicing their own characters again, you can tell VeggieTales in the House has terrible voice direction, particularly in Archibald's voice. I liked having Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki reprise most of their characters in this series because that at least gave VeggieTales in the House some of the same identity that the original VeggieTales had, but it is very sad that, while they still get a credit for VeggieTales in the City being based on characters created by them, they don't write any VeggieTales in the City episodes of their own. However, Tim Hodge and Brian K. Roberts still got to direct some episodes, so they might be decent and resemble the spirit of the original film series more.

Like many VeggieTales fans who dislike in the House & City, and possibly Noah's Ark, we believe VeggieTales in the House/City takes place in an alternate universe from the veggies who acted out or experienced all of the stories in the original video series. From Where's God When I'm S-Scared up to Beauty and the Beet, as well as The VeggieTales Show, because all of the veggies have different designs and live in a little city below the countertop, which was only used to host Noah's Ark in this new world. Even if you can get past the bizarre new cheap animation style and different character voices, the writing is just not there. VeggieTales in the House & City has the bizarre energy of Fanboy & Chum Chum, which does not bode well with the original VeggieTales, and most of the time, Larry is an idiot and the stories are very uncreative and it is easy to guess what the lesson will be by the third minute of eleven. Furthermore, I feel very bad for Phil Vischer with VeggieTales in the House being more "de-Goded" than the qubo TV broadcasts of stories from VeggieTales videos in 23-minute episodes. Occasionally, a Bible verse will be read, but in an off-the-walls show like this that purged the religious aspects of VeggieTales, it doesn't feel the same to end every episode with the same "God made you special and He loves you very much" closing line from the original show.

Still, there are some things that I do enjoy and miss about VeggieTales in the City. It is much more watchable than the Japanese and Chinese spin-offs of Lilo & Stitch, The 2016 Powerpuff Girls, and My Little Pony: Pony Life, which are all bad spinoffs or reboots that butcher their Intellectual Property's predecessor very hard. I realized that there are some salvageable aspects of VeggieTales in the House since Callie Flower was good enough to come into the prime VeggieTales universe in The VeggieTales Show. Motato, Gary Garlic, Mr. & Tiny Pea, Shem, Granny Asparagus, Officer Wedge, and Ichabeezer are all other entertaining characters I may like to see redesigned one day in The VeggieTales Show. I still have a bit of respect for VeggieTales in the City for trying some new things. Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki definitely did not like Dreamworks and Netflix butchering their property with less intelligent writing, but maybe they enjoyed the new experience it gave them because, they had never voice acted in a half-hour Nickelodeon-type series. Phil Vischer pitched VeggieTales to Nickelodeon in 1991, but Nick was not interested in early computer animation one decade before Jimmy Neutron. I liked hearing their classic character voices in a slice-of-life setting, but in the House certainly could have used some better writing that felt more like VeggieTales even in their weird wacky city. VTitC is also worth watching because Phil and Mike also both voice a new recurring character, Phil Vischer is Granny Asparagus and Mike Nawrocki is Officer Wedge. I also liked having Rob Paulsen, who voiced Finnegan J. Beet from Beauty and the Beet, use the same voice for Ichabeezer in VeggieTales in the City because the same grouchy voice suited both characters. I was also surprised at how much I liked some of this show's new characters, like Motato, Tiny Pea and Callie Flower.

This is a weird show. A weird show bordering on creepy. The vegetables do not have visible hands. Or visible legs. Yet they move like they have legs. And the objects levitate around the characters as if they have hands. The stories are as well as aberrant as the vegetables.

But nice touch with the vegetable characters. It's a nice variation from killer robots.

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