Netflix’s The Cuphead Show! review: A weak-tea twist on a dazzling game

Inspire by early Disney animations like Fleischer Studios and Disney Rubber Hose limbs, this video game is based on the creepy qualities of Fleischer Studios and Disney. CupheadIts striking artwork and brutal run-and gun gameplay made it a big hit. There aren’t many like it — painstakingly hand drawn with pencil and paper and animated on ones (the full 24 frames of drawings per second, rather than the more common 12), filtered through ’80s style side-scrolling game design of uncompromising difficulty. It was memorable because the boss battles were surrealistic and vintage-feeling monsters created to humiliate players. It now has an animated series, which is perhaps a bit of a surprise. This new Netflix series was created by Time SquadDave Wasson, creator.

Like the video game, so is the story. The Cuphead Show! takes place on the “Inkwell Isles” (the opening song sings in rhyme that it’s “just off the coast,” around 29 miles). Cuphead (Tru Valentino) and Mugman (Frank T. Todaro) are a precocious pair of brothers living under the guardianship of the elderly Kettle, and it doesn’t take them long to fall into debt to The Devil (Luke Millington Drake), who means to collect on what he’s owed: Cuphead’s soul.

After the introduction of this mostly one-sided feud the series remains a mostly disconnected series of vignettes, centralized around problems of the brothers’ own making and whatever new oddball (usually, one of the game’s bosses) that they run into as a result. Every episode sets up the destructive situation in about twenty seconds.

It should, hypothetically, be a lot of chaotic fun: the two mugs head to a malevolent carnival — a “Carn-EVIL?!”, as Mugman realizes in horror — or an equally malevolent gameshow hosted by the slick-talking Dice King (Wayne Brady, having some fun with it). This is something of a more easygoing, wholesome take on Cuphead, without the punishing, uncompromising bullet hell mechanics and boss fights and more about two idiots with New Jersey accents (I may be wrong here but please forgive me, I’m English) hanging out and trying not to piss off their elderly guardian. It makes sense for an adaptation: with the video game’s potentially prohibitive difficulty, it’s a way to access its appeal, without friction.

Image courtesy of Netflix

But instead, the show is punishing in a different way: It’s simply not funny. It Cuphead Show Because its jokes are simple and easy to understand, it makes sense for animated shows aimed at kids. There are some fun visual tricks like Kettle having a Kettle-shaped skeleton, or musical moments with King Dice’s “Minnie the Moocher”-style introductory number, or one real standout set-piece where Devil tries and fail to paint a fence in a sequence riffing on Fantasia. However, these are the only moments that stand out and make it feel like the rest of its episodes can be forgotten.

You can still find some enjoyments even though you are not familiar with the history of cartoons. The upbeat jazz numbers and that specific spring in every character’s step, the elasticity with which their rubber-limbed Mickey Mouse bodies contort and deform in their wild movements is quite fun for a while. It is a beautiful art direction that creates the Inkwell Isles. Their chaos plays out amongst charmantly old-fashioned backdrops, which mix fallal woods with bizarre spins on speakeasies or art deco architecture.

Its use of contemporary animation, as well as 1930s-style aesthetics for sound and grain is perhaps the most important aspect where the series improves upon the original game. This series is reminiscent of Spongebob Squarepants,Both in its casting (Cuphead, Mugman, and Patrick could be replaced with SpongeBob, Patrick, and The Devil with his obsessive failures at hand of idiots), as well its surrealist flirtations and use of sound. Ego Plum, the composer of that series was also involved. You can still feel traced in The Cuphead Show!’s fast-paced big band and jazz numbers. The more people pay attention, the less surprising these connections become. The Cuphead Show!Seems, it is a feeling that rapidly begins to build with every episode.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Image courtesy of Netflix

During its protagonists’ numerous harebrained schemes, The Cuphead Show! sometimes riffs on Looney Tunes-style slapstick — specific body-shaped holes in the walls; at one point the brothers’ open-mouthed screams revealing tonsils which are themselves also screaming. In such moments the animators do good work in bringing the game’s visual charms onto television but the writing allows for very few opportunities for anything more creative than a handful of those simple visual gags. While amusing, it’s not enough to sustain the whole series, especially one that seems to position itself as slapstick. Most people don’t know that most of the characters are slapstick. Cuphead Show’s bigger set pieces come down to a quick song-and-dance from the game’s bosses, which range from cute to honestly quite forgettable.

This makes the animation feel more like an easy translation between medias and a repeat than something moving in new directions. The impression builds that, understandably, this is less for adults who played Cuphead than it is for younger children — beyond capturing a younger audience there’s no particularly strong case it makes for itself as a TV show rather than the video game that already exists.

The Cuphead Show! It is unable to make up for this difference because the interactive nature of gaming requires that you pay attention. The series’ non-sequiturs, meanwhile, are just passing along with few visual details. The series is seemingly content to just be the kind of show where something qualifies as a joke if it’s said loudly enough. Although it’s unfair to lament the show’s lack of complex humor for children, the series is also frustratingly inimaginative.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Being aimed at a younger audience doesn’t have to mean simplification. Shows like Cartoon Network’s vastly influential Adventure TimeBoth revel in the possibility of changing themselves, while using their silliness as a way to ease the pain from more emotional distressing times. The Amazing World of GumballMany animation media are mingled through telling its jokes. Children can be more creative with jokes. SpongebobA perfectly balanced combination of childish silliness and universal humor. The jokes are always funny, but only get better with time. Dark humor and spooky moments are part of the humorous mix. Above The Garden Wall – which manages its own delightfully unhinged homage to Fleischer through the Cloud City Reception Committee — is sorely missed here. The first season is a tribute to an era of subversive animation. The Cuphead Show!You are pleasantly safe. It is easy to overlook the obvious similarities it shares with other TV shows.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with what The Cuphead Show! is doing with its time, though by the end of the series its constant treadmill of harebrained schemes become increasingly predictable in how they’ll unfold. It’s a shame to find so little rewarding in a series that clearly loves this classic era of animation.

It’s hard not to wish it went more elaborate with its visual gags, or in the absence of that, a little deeper into the world of the Inkwell Isles, but The Cuphead Show!It ends up somewhere in the middle, balancing its low-effort humor with its respect for 90-year old animation. There’s little else to find beneath that veneer, beyond its lukewarm blend of various homages. A weak-tea retread of the original game’s aesthetic The Cuphead Show!It does not add anything and is just as common as everything else. This makes it more appealing to kids, who can use it as a distraction while parents go back to their games Cuphead.