Of all the shows airing on Boomerang at the moment, George of the Jungle for me is by far the worst, even more so than the very poor Inspector Gadget reboot. Anybody who is a fan of the original show, which was a childhood favourite and still is a classic, will be disgusted by this show, but films and TV shows do always deserve to be judged on their own merits, strengths and weaknesses. George of the Jungle is one of those shows that fails as a standalone, you don't even need to have seen the original show to judge this as bad.
The animation is very flat and blocky, all the characters are visually unappealing and stiff drawn, it did feel like the animators went for using as many backgrounds as possible in one episode with not enough attention given to colour or detail and the colours are so lacking in vibrancy it hurts the eyes. Sure, George of the Jungle is not the first animated show to use this style of animation but it is one of the laziest uses of it. With the music, the use of the George of the Jungle theme tune in rousing instrumental form in the end credits sequence is the only part worth listening to, the opening credits use is catchy but far too commercialised with some pretty witless rap lyrics. The rest of it is not very memorable and lacks variety.
George of the Jungle's biggest flaw is the writing. None of the original wit survives here, and the dialogue just sounds dumbed-down, horrendously cheesy and juvenile (for both children and adults), while the gags are far too rushed, like with the recent Tom and Jerry Show and with the animation here the writers seemed to pile in as many gags as possible regardless of quality. For this viewer personally, target audience was also an issue, because it struck me as too complicated for children, who will find it hard to keep up with the frenetic pace of the episodes and the execution and the gags, and adults will be embarrassed by how annoyingly juvenile it all is, people will argue that the show and the live action films were silly and they were but they also had wit and charm, with this viewer lacking either the immaturity just felt too much. The stories felt like they were written very hastily and are so lazy and sometimes repetitive it's embarrassing.
Another big failure is the characters, that they're unrecognisable from their original personalities will present a problem (Ape has none of his sophistication or refinement, something that even the live-action sequel got right, one of few things) for many but a bigger problem is that their new personalities are often annoying and are stripped of everything that made them so likable. George is far too much of a wimp and of all the characters of all the shows airing on Boomerang he is a contender for the most irritating, and Magnolia is not much better. The most tolerable of the characters is Ursula and even she's bland. The voice acting sounded shrill and overdone often, mistaking screams and shouting for manic energy, particularly Lee Tockar as George.
In conclusion, one of the few shows on Boomerang at the moment that fails on all counts. 1/10 Bethany Cox
