All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! Review: Kyle Mooney brings his weird to Netflix

Netflix’s latest adult animated comedy isn’t all that. By comedian Kyle Mooney, All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! is a mix of live action and animated adult comedy that pays tribute to the Saturday morning cartoon experience of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It’s not just adult, animation, or comedy: it uses live-action segments to frame cartoons that are clearly parodies of old shows, but with more serious adult themes.

As someone whose childhood nostalgia is a decade later, I can appreciate what the show does, but it is clearly not made for my generation of viewers. This is a very specific reminder window. But the special attention to detail and the very specific tributes definitely arouse my interest, even if I only have a faint idea of ​​how they are honored.

[Ed. note: This post contains slight spoilers for Saturday Morning All Star Hits!]

Any sequence of All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! (or SMASHED as it is called in the universe) is framed by the two live-action presenters Skip (Kyle Mooney) and Treybor (also Kyle Mooney), who riffed a little before moving on to the next cartoon segment. Within the episodes, the cartoon segments serve as micro-episodes of series in the universe, each of which appears to reflect a real world show. And between the cartoons and the segments of Skip and Treybor, SMASHED

Also contains fake commercials for movies from the universe, sitcoms, and celebrity gossip.

It’s very detailed – probably more for a specific audience, that was just before my time. not how WandaVisionDrawing on a wider range of inspirations as well as possibly unfamiliar touchstones of pop culture rooted in established characters, All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! Houses in a very specific time frame of television. Since humor comes from seeing something familiar in an unexpected and more mature act, it feels easy not knowing what that familiarity is. I can objectively see how this would be fun for someone who is about 10 years older than me – someone who grew up with the original Thunder cats and Care Bears, and Denver the last dinosaur. But because it’s not a TV era that I have a particular longing for (even if I’m vaguely familiar with the specific genre of the program block they reference), I don’t feel compelled by it.

For example, the Care Bears-inspired cartoon segment follows a graphic designer in a midlife crisis who is grappling with a rocky marriage and a crossroads in his career. It is not

Family Guy-level angularity where it vibrates so much you can giggle even if you don’t get a reference; in fact, the situation is often played out straight and seriously. The big work project is to redesign a single letter, but the characters treat it with overwhelming seriousness, which is doubly surreal when the bulk of the cast is made up of brightly colored bears. The humor feels like taking the hilarious cartoon and contrasting it with adult plot as the characters sell their creativity to corporations or try to fix failed marriages, but with no particular predilection for the show they’re supposed to be suspecting to parody, the cartoon falls flat.

The live action segments are a bit more universal as the teen celebrity culture of the Mickey Mouse club days has still seeped in later children’s program. It’s the live action segments of All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! that feel the strongest, all connected by an overarching narrative. At first the gags are just funny; the commercial for the season finale of Lottie

, a sitcom in the universe reveals a typical coming-of-age story – with a Bigfoot character in the background who is never recognized as out of place. But slowly the live action segments are getting creepier. Treybor’s insecurity grows as Skip catapults to stardom and the light celebrity gossip segments over the Lottie Stars transform into harrowing news of missing persons. This part of the show feels like it’s always on the verge of catapulting into something surreal, but it’s holding back. Instead of this, All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! teases each other with increasingly absurd situations, remaining completely in the gnarled whirlpool of the late 80s and early 90s. For those familiar with the era, it probably resonates more with it.

Ultimately, my biggest disappointment with you All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! is personal – the scope is so limited that it is difficult to see unless you are part of the intended audience. I wish there was a similar show, but I get my money on it Disney Channel era that I grew up with because I love what she does. All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! is a parody but doesn’t ridicule the source material. The humor arises from the loving reinterpretation of old shows and cultural points of contact in completely different scenarios. This nostalgia hit isn’t for me, however All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! does something special for that special audience that it was tailor made for.

All-Star Hits on Saturday Morning! is now available on Netflix.