Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish

Wakko's wish is a very worthy finale to the series. While some have complained that it isn't like the show at all, I don't really think it is meant to be. Nor should it. Does anyone really want to see 90 minutes of out and out zanyness? Instead, we get a rather touching story that gives all the characters and emotional weight they never really had before. And of course, we still get the zanyness, it's just placed within a larger framework.

Personally, I would love to see more Animaniacs stories done in this exact style (hope hope hope!).

With Wakko's Wish, Animaniacs ends it's run with a solid piece of work, very unlike the show in many ways, and for that I am glad. Nothing could have been worse for it to finish with something that was basically just another episode.

"Animaniacs" was a cartoon that always struck me as good but highly inconsistent. At any given time there were at least two dozen characters on the show. Each of them starred in their own segments. Some of them worked, some of them didn't. And some of them fell flat.

This problem is finally eliminated in "Wakko's Wish". All of the characters, good (the Warners, Pinky and the Brain), bad (the Goodfeathers, the Hip Hippos), and pointless (Chicken Boo) are involved in this one major story. The story is a tad sentimental for an "Animaniacs" movie but they have a lot of fun parodying the expected cliches as they go along. Check it out, it's a lot of fun. And it's got "Tiny Toons: Summer Vacation" beat by miles.

Just saw this on HBO, did anyone catch the not-so-hidden reference to the Time-Warner merger of 1996? In the opening sequence, the town of "Warnerstock" (not-so-subtle) was all happy and prosperous until the king passed away and the evil king of "Ticktocia" (tic-toc...Time maybe?) took control through a hostile takeover. the people of Warnerstock were forced to turn a profit...and so-on and so-on. The show was always full of obscure and adult references cleverly and tastefully hidden and mixed with the kiddie humor. Maybe an expression of some internal riff with the whole merger, 'cleverly' displayed in Animaniac fashion.

I am a huge fan of Animaniacs. I have been hooked ever since the show was introduced to me as a child. I watched the show every day and even owned some of the videos. And yet somehow, I managed to miss Wakko's Wish until very recently. Now, having finally seen it, I must say that I was fairly disappointed that this stands as the brilliant show's swan song.

There is a famous quote that says, "And this above all, to thine own self be true." It would have been nice for the makers of Wakko's Wish to take this into consideration. Most of my problem with the movie was that it tried to make Animaniacs into something it wasn't. Most of the time, Animaniacs (at least, the segments featuring the Warners, who starred in this) was pretty off-the-wall stuff. It was generally pretty zany, and full of jokes that adults would be more likely to understand than kids. There were flashes of that in Wakko's Wish, but overall, it felt like the movie was trying harder to cater to little ones. Also, it didn't feel right that there were so many scenes with *touching moments* in them. They felt out of place for these characters, especially the Warners. And worse, it made the tone of the movie seem uneven when there were scenes that were actually Warner-like, especially the scene with the evil king. That scene *should not* feel out of place in an Animaniacs movie! It should be the norm rather than the exception. And what probably what made me saddest about this movie were the songs. I've always loved the music from Animaniacs, but this was overkill. Even worse, most of the songs weren't fun or funny, which is a crime in the world of Animaniacs. Those songs just made the whole thing come off sounding like a low-rent Disney knock-off. (It's so painful to say that about anything having to do with Animaniacs, but it's true here, sadly.)

Wakko's Wish took the Warners into uncharacteristically dramatic territory, but this was made more palatable by the wonderful vocal cast. They actually did a very good job acting through the more emotional scenes, especially the actors who play Yakko (Rob Paulsen), Wakko (Jess Harnell), and Dot (Tress MacNeille). They were able to make the somewhat corny material have a bit of emotional impact.

Wakko's Wish could have been much better than it was. We could have seen a lot more of the Warners that we've come to know and love, and it would have been nice if there had been fewer songs (and if those few could have been up to par with the music from the TV show!) But overall, Wakko's Wish was a nice little movie, and a nice (if not entirely fitting) farewell to the world of Animaniacs.

Wakko's Wish does what Animaniacs fans have come to expect, and in fact demand. The story is entertaining at multiple levels, from the purely visual, to the slapstick, to clever wordplay, to subtle cultural references that surface on watching for the second or third time.

It may look like it is a Disney-esque thing. If you expect that, you may be uneasy when Wakko's Wish gives it what-for and does what Warner Bros. cartoons have always done: had fun with things and not let anyone or anything off the hook.