Charlie

Cartoon is my passion, and this film is a masterpiece when it comes to this subject, a simple yet lively story, suitable for children and also for adults who just want to spend time

I've only seen a select few shows that were so bad I couldn't watch any further than episode 1. El Chavo is one of those shows. The show is so poorly made that I feel sorry for the Mexican audience that expected this to be fun but were met with utter disappointment.

The first red flag of this cartoon calamity was its "tell, not show" intro. In addition to not being the least bit catchy, the intro spoon feeds the description of the characters and what they do rather than let the show naturally show what they're like. This is a critical mistake on the creator's part as it wastes what could've been an upbeat and catchy song that gets the audience hyped for the upcoming program. Not that an upbeat theme song could save this aggravating animated series.

I recognize that this show is for children, but the one thing writers should NEVER do when writing for children specifically is talk down to them as if they were still babies. That is the cardinal sin this show makes as the story is almost nonexistent in favor of unfunny jokes and characters acting like imbeciles. The basic plot of the first episode is Chavo, Junior and Quico pick on each other while playing with confetti and balloons. The episode has no sense of pacing as it takes 5 minutes before we're introduced to the main character and the rest of the episode is nothing but Chavo, Junior, and Quico being nasty to each other. In fact, all the characters are just nasty to each other and not once is it ever funny. This episode also uses the misunderstanding trope a total of 3 times in the episode and each time is more frustrating than the last. But what really makes the writing especially bad is the dialogue. The characters don't talk like normal people and instead talk like aliens who's only exposure to English is from parrots. Chavo says "It's true" 3 times in a row several times throughout the episode and it got annoying immediately after the first.

I'm going to assume the creators thought the characters would be funny and entertaining to watch even if they weren't saints. This backfires however as I couldn't stand any of the characters and the more they were on screen, the more I wanted great balls of fire to rain down upon them. Every single character is an unlikable cretin that's never even heard of reason or understanding. Starting with Chavo, he is one of the stupidest kids I have ever seen. He makes Oscar from Summer Camp Island look like Carmen Sandiego. He doesn't comprehend the simplest instructions, he falls for all the oldest tricks in the book and he never thinks about telling the truth and sparing the audience of another misunderstanding. Junior is literally Snotty Boy from Barnyard. No seriously, he's obnoxious, he's selfish, he's rude, he's greedy; the only difference between these 2 is Junior is from Mexico. Quico the same character as Junior with the only difference is the former is tall and thin while the other is short and round. Mr. Raymond is a crotchety older bum who hates kids (groan), Mr. Beliarge is the same character but short and round (weak), Dona Florinda is the nasty single Mom who shoots first asks questions never (ugh), and Miss Pinster is has the hots for Mr. Raymond and has no personality of her own except not being called a hag or witch (oi). I have no interest in seeing any more episodes, but I have a hunch all the other supporting characters are just as bad (if not worst) than the main characters.

Visually, this animation is horrendous. It looks like it was brought to life using outdated Flash software. The characters have the most basic designs that could be used as the skeletal blueprint for much better looking designs. I also hate the character movements as it feels too stiff and there's no sense of weight to them. Another bad aspect about the visuals is the background. In addition to being poorly rendered, the 2D characters don't blend well at all with the 3D background. Years after this show would are, The Amazing World Of Gumball would use this technique to stupendous results with one simple word: depth Without depth, the characters might as well be flat pieces of paper. The worst aspect of the visuals though is the awful lip syncing. Like with Chuck Chicken, the bad lip syncing makes it painfully obvious this show was NOT made for an audience outside it's native country. If you couldn't afford to do proper lip syncing, why not just have it subtitled? Regardless how you feel about dub vs. sub, one thing we can all agree on is bad lip syncing ruins the whole show.

The one element I though would at least be enjoyable is the voice acting, but they manged to even botch that too. I'm sure the actors are trying their best, but they sound awkward at best and make me wish I was deaf at worst. Mona Marshall's voice for Chavo got on my nerves, particularly when he started to whimper. It's like she was told to make Chavo sound like an annoying little kid on purpose. I hope that wasn't the case, because if it was thanks, I hate it. Doug Erholts sounded like a discount Eddie Deezen as Quico and his voice for Mr. Raymond just didn't fit as it was too raspy. Yuri Lowenthal (yes the same Yuri Lowenthal who voices Sasuke Uchiha and Spider-Man in Insomniac's Spider-Man) gave a pretty lackluster performance as Junior. Most of it came from the material he was given, but the voice he choive to give the character was just grating.

Aye yai yai, this cartoon is one of the absolute worst I've ever seen. It fails at every aspect and has nothing redeemable to make it even worth giving a complement to. This show is so bad, it deserves the worst fate one can bestow on any form of entertainment: to be ignored and forgotten. Do NOT watch this show. Don't even entertain the idea of watvhing it out of curiosity. There are a million other shows that are much more worth your time than El Chavo.

I live in the US and my Spanish isn't very good, I took it for two years in High School and failed, but I found some episodes of this on YouTube. Even if you haven't seen or don't know anything the original series, these are very and cute, and a little violent (more Tom and Jerry/slapstick than Sam Peckinpath). The animation was done with flash with CGI backgrounds, but it still looks like a cartoon. I've seen the episodes on YouTube and I really wish someone would dub this into English and show it in the US, maybe on Adult Swim or something and make it like parody-kind of dubbing like the Magic Roundabout or something.

It's A Great Cartoon that was made with affection by Chespirito (and Chespirito's Son Roberto Gomez Fernandez), in the 1rd season he recreates the classic episodes of the show in a very cool way, in the 2rd season he started to create his own episodes even good already in the 3rd to 7rd season I Honestly think it improved even more in the animation that became more colorful and fluid with beautiful scenarios looking like the 3rd season of Turma da Monica, the dubbling although different is still good, the stories of these seasons despite being a bit random are very creative, the comedy both the new and the original comedy is very good, the new caracters are also Fun and the originals are still wonderful (even Donã Florinda improved in seasons 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 being the good mother 👍), I Just don't understand why everyone hates this Cartoon 😕.

Something tastes off.

The voice casting is perfect. Most of the characters sound true to the original. And they also pay homage to the original series with a generous portion of references. The characters all have their original look and costumes in bright animated form. And let me just say that these character designs are brilliant. Each of the original characters are distinctive and more or less timeless.

But the show is not very satisfying and I can't say exactly why. And I don't say it because of the absence of La Chilindrina, one of the central characters of the original show. As I see it, there are three main problems that could be the culprit:

1) It's too long. Each episode is made to fit in a one-hour time slot and the writers really didn't know what to do with it. Each episode is a hectic hodgepodge of vignettes stitched together. If you happen to come in halfway and start watching, you're barely missing anything as nothing more than a thin weak plot provides the stitching for the different parts. It's really just random things happening. Makes it hard to get invested in any episode and also makes it terribly dull to sit through a whole episode from start to finish.

2) Whereas the original was made to appeal to adults and was the best thing on TV at the time for children (I don't think many would be terribly interested in it now in the age of animation and big impressive sets and puppets for live-action children's TV, but back then it was either this or play outside - yuck!), this one is definitely only for the kiddies. The background music NEVER stops, it plays relentlessly. The action is also frantic and the show jumps from random scene to random scene without taking a breath. They expected their target audience to get bored within 30 seconds if there wasn't something frenetic going on.

3) No more social commentary: The original Chavo was a poor orphan who the people in the apartment block felt sorry for. However, seeing as they were themselves barely making ends meet, their pity was left jaded and rarely, if ever, was transformed into satisfaction as they could never really help him.

Case in point - the thing El Chavo always dreamed of was a sandwich, but he only very rarely got to indulge in one. It wasn't uncommon for an episode to end with him crying in the barrel he made his home.

Aside from Chavo himself, most of the people who lived in the block could barely stand each other but had to do so because they were so poor and couldn't live alone. In that environment, they begrudgingly would come to care about each other to some extent.

Some romantic relationships were apparent but they were usually unrequited or did not manifest themselves completely because of apparent shyness or formality. The whole show was an ode to human limitations and dashed hopes.

There's none of that here. Everyone is friends, El Chavo always gets what he wants at the end of the episode, and the romances become quite well-developed.

Honourable Mentions: Batman: The Animated Series (1992). A cartoon for children that had serious, if simplistic, plots memorable characters, and consumable social commentary. Just about the highest echelon of children's programming.