Mother Up's premise sounds like it could work as a funny and heartfelt cartoon about a mother trying to be a better parent. What we have instead is an aggravating unfunny show about a dimwitted parent who makes Peter Griffin look like Greg Universe.
The show has some pretty awful writing as it follows very formulaic plotlines and adds in the typical content found in "adult" cartoons. Violence, sex, nudity, swearing, drug use, drinking, and not a single one of those elements is used to progress the story. In addition to its poor writing, the attempts at humor really fall flat, being both predictable in set up and lousy in punchline.
The characters themselves offer absolutely nothing to like. Most of them are either one note archetypes or just really aggravating. The children, Dick and Apple, offer very little in terms of personality, Jenny is a snobbish prude, 2Bit is an annoyance and Suzi is a stereotypical Chinese mothef who puts way to much pressure on her daughter. The worst character though is Rudi, who might as well be given a mug that says "World's Worst Mother." She's bossy, she's rude, she's selfish, she's egotistical, she is completely unfit to be a parent and her attempts at trying make her worst. She spoils her kids with trendy toys, she gave her daughter drugs, she was completely oblivious to that fact that her son went to jail, and she allowed a naked man to stay at her place with her children. And that was just in the first 6 episodes.
Visual, the show looks rather bland. The character design is adequate, but the show has basic colors that don't pop, the backgrounds look minimalistic and the character animation looks stiff and choppy. This is one of those shows that could've been made in live action and nothing about it would change.
The voice acting is fine for the most part. Eva Longoria seems to be enjoying playing Rudi, Rebecca Husian gives an alright performance as a little girls and Gabrielle Miller gives Sarah a sweet voice reminiscent of Betty Rubble. That said, most of the other voice actors sound rather grating. Jesse Camacho sounds less like a little boy and more like a full grown man pretending to be a boy. Grace Lynn Kung doesn't do Suzi any favors by giving her a very stereotypical Chinese accent. And Cle Bennet just sounds like he's imitating Samuel L. Jackson and it's really distracting. The worst voice in the bunch though is Scott McCord as Travis. He screams all his lines and it's so annoying, it hurts my ears.
So, yeah, another day, another "adult" cartoon. Mother Up is a lousy show with unlikable characters, bad animation, terrible writing and lackluster humor. The voice acting is adequate at best, but that's nowhere near enough to give this show a recommendation. If you've seen Family Guy on its worst days, you've already seen this show.
