When John Kricfalusi creates a show, you know you should expect the grossest yet funniest stuff. The creator of The Ren and Stimpy Show and its myriad supporting cast and offshoots brings us this latest offering in The Ripping Friends. These guys are four foster boys raised by He-Mom, a fanatical female drill sergeant, and are trained to be really ripping (to wit: muscle-clad he-men). With perfect DNA replicated Jimmy as their brain-dead sidekick, they manage to get themselves into all manner of scrapes defending the world from the weird and the surrealist gross.
John K’s fingerprints are indelibly buried up to the elbows in the design of this show, without doubt. The drooling moron Jimmy is a perfect example of his style and his sense of humour. Being inspired by K’s love of Marvel Comics whilst growing up, Ripping Friends is full of action-packed fight scenes between the Friends and their enemies and between themselves (they are after all, just boys).
While giving kids what they want (action and gross) the show also includes veiled references to multiple other influences, sometimes delivered so subtly one could easily miss them. The Matrix, Fantastic Voyage, Independence Day and even animation stalwarts Disney all get parodied, though there is even political humour in place in parodies of the American people and their president George Dubbya (to the point where The Infernal Wedding was pulled before airing after September 11).
Featuring the complete 13 episodes of Season One, this two-disc set is a lot of gross fun that not just kids will enjoy, but any fan of John K’s or funny quality animation. Included here are:
- The Indigestible Wad
- The Infernal Wedding
- Flathead’s Revenge
- Frictor
- Rip’s Shorts
- Stinky Butt
- The Man From Next Thursday Part One
- The Man From Next Thursday Part Two
- The Ovulator
- Man Man and Boy Boy
- The Muscle Magician
- Jimmy’s Kidnapped
- The Ripping Friends Meet Jean Poole
My highlights lay within The Indigestible Wad and Stinky Butt, but maybe that’s just because bum jokes can be incredibly funny when done well. As I said, this is a lot of fun that little guys everywhere will enjoy, while stilll having enough stuff to keep the open-minded adult laughing as well.
Created in 2001, naturally the show looks superb. No dramas regarding colours or artefacts or anything like that – the picture quality is crystal clear, razor-sharp and evenly saturated. There is nothing to fault this 4:3 picture really as the animation has been hand drawn and scanned to digital, removing any of those old-school cel issues we used to complain about. Beautiful.
Delivered in Dolby stereo, there's also nothing to complain about sound-wise. Steve London’s theme and music come across well, and he scores the show well to relate the particular emotion of the moment (usually anger... or rage). Sound effects are effectively comedic for the most part with those surreal sounds being applied to everyday activities. They’re too hard to spell, so I won’t describe them, but you know what I’m talking about.
The dialogue is also overly comedic and emotional to wring every possible laugh out of the script and it works well. Utilising some veterans in the cast is inspired and they fully get into their roles which just adds up to making the show that much more funny.
While being of a vein from John K, this isn’t quite as funny as Ren and Stimpy were. Perhaps because with Ren and Stimpy the gross-out humour was so new in the animated format and we weren’t really expecting it. Don’t misunderstand me though, Ripping Friends had me in tears at some points (I give you Rip with a toilet on his head) and I had to rewind about five minutes worth to see what I missed. It’s good fun on one level, but does have a deeper current of satire behind it that will interest anyone wishing to look a little closer.
Ripping stuff.
