When I was in junior high school in the early to mid-1990s, nobody loved "Animaniacs" more than I did. It was tough getting picked on for liking a "kiddie" show, but I listened to my heart. Yakko Warner was one of my heroes, and I even dressed up as him for Halloween one year: white face, red nose, inky black bodysuit, the whole megillah. I adored him for having the wit, wisdom, and sassy attitude of Groucho Marx (who was also one of my heroes, and whom I likewise dressed up as). Well, Yakko's back now, and I'm happy to say that he's (mostly) still as lovable as I remember him. Unfortunately, "Animaniacs" is a package deal, and most of the stuff that has returned with Yakko just isn't as good as it used to be.
I've noticed an unfortunate trend with most of these remakes, reboots, and "next-generation" updatings. The people resurrecting the shows and movies obviously love them, but they also seem to feel a bit ashamed of having been fans, and they sublimate this shame beneath a sort of smug, superior attitude. These conflicting feelings on the part of the (re)creators mean that the original property must be "improved" in some way: it must be made more flashy, more high-tech, more socially and politically relevant, more "adult." And if those options turn out to be unworkable, then the original version of the entertainment must be meta-analyzed - which is to say, dissected and brutally mocked. Of course, they'll often have the characters mock THEMSELVES (as Yakko, Wakko and Dot do here) in order to ease the pain of the sting, but sting it still does.
The new "Animaniacs" gets most things wrong. It still delivers enough laughs to make it worth my while, and here and there I do see flashes of the old magic returning. But even so, too much has changed. I'm glad they've pared the cast back to just Yakko and his siblings, as well as Pinky and the Brain, but for the most part they're not using these characters correctly. The Warner Brothers (and their sister Dot) were always supposed to be 60-year-old (and now, 90-year-old) bratty man-children, but now their faux-innocence and faux-obnoxious cuteness have been buried beneath a crushing load of snarky self-deprecation; the writers have run away with the "precocious" part and forgotten the "child" part. It's a bit like finding out your local girl-next-door type, whom you used to swoon over for her adorable nerdiness, grew up to be a vulgar insult comic.
And the rest of the Warners' universe has grown up too. The humor is no longer as kid-friendly as it used to be, with undercurrents of grime and cynicism. The characters spend so much time reminiscing - and thus, indulging in presentist snobbery and "we-were-such-dorks-back-then" jocular smugness - that they often forget to charge forward, which is supposed to be the essence of what they are. And even the artwork is not what it should be; I really loved the "cutesy" pastel shades and soft-focus glow of 1980s and early '90s animation, but these new adventures have been shot in a photography style as crisp and "up-to-date" as any episode of "The Simpsons" or "Family Guy."
Tom Wolfe was right when he said, "You can't go home again." At least, where popular entertainment is concerned. I pity today's children, who are naturally going to be drawn to this "cool" and "new" show and whose parents will inevitably let them watch it (despite it being rated TV-PG instead of the TV-G of the original incarnation). Even sadder is that the paleo-"Animaniacs" is right there on the Hulu menu next to the neo-"Animaniacs" - and yet, if today's kids do happen to watch some of that classic material, most of them are sure to dismiss it as "old-fashioned," and I think it will be their loss.
