'[I]t's handled with all the subtlety and finesse of Edward Scissorhands trying to send a text message.'
I giggled.
Well, is good to see that YOU have to see ALL the show to conclude this. Good opinion about a series made for children and watched by adults.
There are some things I like about Danny Phantom, but I mostly have to agree with you here. ESPECIALLY the romance between Danny and Sam. Good lord, that sucked.
I gotta agree with you on most every point even though I used to watch the show (even though I was always off-put by all of what you pointed out). The bland unfunny humor was the most off-putting things to me. The jokes are incredibly stupid and predictable and repeated to the point where it just gets tiring. I have to wonder if any fans at all laughed and if so if they had brain damage.
And YES Danny and Sam's "romance" didn't have had ANY chemistry at all. I can take a forced canon pairing if the writers actually TRY to show chemistry and don't make it THAT dull and transparent. I watched a bunch of episodes when I was 13 and that bugged me the most. From episode 1 I knew it was inevitable so every time they teased another pairing I was like "God please usurp Dan X Sam as the damn writer's favorite it's too painful and full of suck!"
The point about adults was also something I noticed, his parents were borderline retarded. But really all the characters were really underdeveloped and were just high school stereotypes. It's like it was something that could have worked but actually tried to make it not work by making the characters as dumb as possible for "humor" sake. It had a lot of potential to be compelling and interesting but when it tried to be funny and dramatic it failed in my eyes.
Please, don't write flame bait on TV Tropes. There's a difference between reviewing a show and general meanness :)
Australian, Wiccan, Danny Phantom fan. 'Nuff said.
Am I the only person agrees with this review AT ALL?
In Neo Arcadia, there are no politics. Just Law, Order, and judgement. And violence - LOTS OF F***ING VIOLENCE! YAY, VIOLENCE!!!
Erm... not one, but TWO of the comments above yours say, "I mostly agree with this review". So, I'm going to have to say no, you're not.
Thank God for that, Jack...
In Neo Arcadia, there are no politics. Just Law, Order, and judgement. And violence - LOTS OF F***ING VIOLENCE! YAY, VIOLENCE!!!
It didn't suck! Honestly, if you didn't like it, why did you even watch in the first place? But I agree about the Dannyx Sam thing, I disliked that pairing.
"Honestly, if you didn't like it, why did you even watch in the first place?"
That has got to be the stupdiest thing I have ever read. And I've read My Immortal.
It's actually a reasonable question to ask, but speaking as one who has watched the entire series, I can definitely see where this review is coming from—there's a fair share of promising plot threads that didn't pan out, or of plot threads that did pan out, but maybe not in a satisfying way. So I could easily see watching the show to see how things develop and being disappointed.
Myself, I thought the show was...eh. Had its ups and downs. Some parts were compelling and fun to watch, others were kinda lame, and on the whole I think I would have difficulty getting worked up about it either way.
Rhymes with "Protracted."
@Princess Platypus Fiend - Please read Dont Like Dont Read
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
Ms. Fiend may or may not be able to use that (pointless) arguement depending on things the reviewer wasn't clear about.
At any rate, I liked the show, though that may have been because it looked so much better in comparison to the other tripe on Nickelodeon. I would have to completely disagree about the art style, as art style should have no bearing on the tone of the show. It's basically the same arguement Fan Dumb used against Wind Waker before its release, and I happen to like how stylized it looks. Its concept is quite original too, even if it does boil down to Ghostbuster superhero with ghost-based powers. I apprecitate that.
Am I really the only person who didn't hate Sam x Danny? I wouldn't call it unnatural,I mean c'mon they're still Freshies in High School,did you expect something like Han x Leia? And no,it's nothing like Padme x Anakin who just mope around what can't be. I agree that they should've had the Relationship Upgrade sooner or played a little more into theRomanticFalseLead angle a bit.
And whaddya' mean no personality? Geesh,that's like saying Katara has no personality. All of them have the initial personality and go through hurdles and change.
Can't argue against all the plots dropped and resoled terribly,but that's mostly the fault of Screwed By The Network than anything else,although the firing of Steve Marmel was pretty tough as well.
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter
The biggest problem was that DP tried to be Fairly Odd Parents; it used the same art style and the same kidlike jokes and the same clueless-beyond-reason adults and the same random fantasy-induced plots. That would be fine, except that Fairly Odd Parents is about a child with an incredible imagination and the means to make those thoughts come true. Danny Phantom is about a teen who's gained superpowers, deals with clueless parents and an unforgiving social situation, faces dead apparitions (and is one himself,) and comes to accept responsibility. That's the real reason the artwork and jokes throw everyone off: it just doesn't match the premise. It can make or break a show.
Also, Danny/Sam started out all right but got WAY too blatant in the end.
Review title needs more work. But yeah, too many one note characters, terrible characterization, and stuff that was blatantly obvious and unfunny.
Amen, brother! You hit the nail right on the head! And to all of you who agree with this man, then THANK GOD there is still hope yet.
The problem is definitely that Butch Hartman was not equipped to write a straight up superhero action show. He repeatedly returned to comic relief and a lot of it wasn\'t very funny. This is evident when you see that the very best parts of the show were when it was even a little bit dark like Ultimate Enemy.
Find the Light in the DarkLeave a Comment:
It Sucks.
Danny Phantom is one of Nickelodeon's most obnoxious cartoons. It's a cliche storm of stale, unfunny humor, by-the-numbers fighting, and condescending caricatures of the way adults (of the unhip, totally not down with it variety the show delights in mocking) think children and young teenagers see the world. It has some interesting ideas working for it, but most of them are executed poorly, and many others are left hanging in the ether, without an adequate explanation in a show that very badly needs one.
Its first big problem is the art style. It may seem like I'm judging a book by its cover, but I doubt the person who coined that phrase had conceived of a book with a cover that actually affected its content. Danny Phantom is a show that, like its young protagonist, desperately wants to be taken seriously, but can only ever fail. For the character, this is because he's a little goofy and bad around girls. For the cartoon, it's because it looks like The Fairly Odd Parents, yet still expects us to believe that the predicaments it thrusts onto its characters will have serious consequences. I can't help but roll my eyes at the fact that someone in the design department thought they could circumvent this problem by giving the characters the correct finger-to-hand ratio. "TFOP was the silly show, yes," they seem to say, "but here, they have five fingers! Realistic!"
Danny, Sam, Tucker, and entourage have little personality to speak of. If I were feeling cruel, I could say that they have no personality at all, just a series of traits. Stimulus-and-response, but no soul. The romance between Danny and Sam, for instance, is the most transparently scripted thing since Padmé and Anakin, and it's handled with all the subtlety and finesse of Edward Scissorhands trying to send a text message. To say nothing of that dreadful habit all bad cartoons have, if they think their young (or not-so-young) audience is stupid: at the end of each episode, everyone will just burst into spontaneous laughter, even if there's nothing funny going on. Like a laugh track, basically, but extra condescending.
This show has gathered quite a fan base, so if you like it, good for you. But I was personally very disappointed.