WesternAnimation If you like monkey butts and animal cliches, this show is for you, if not, seek entertainment elsewhere.
Ok, well... MONKEY BUTTS IS FUNNYZ! At least that's what I think went through the creator's heads when they came up with this show. I swear that Jake made a crack (no pun intended) about his butt every five minutes. Like, that's all there was to his character. Butt jokes. This show had to be one of the most ass-centric shows on CN, topped only by Cow and Chicken, the human, Adam, was bland and rather one-note. There is not much to say on him. The supporting cast were pretty meh at best and cringe worthy at worst. Like the female Giraffe, "hur dur, she's a Giraffe so she's really tall", clichés do not make for interesting characters. At boy oh boy did this show love it some animal clichés. Just about anyone you can think of turns up in this show. I mean sure they try to invert some from time to time, but the ones played straight far outnumber them. The shows humor will make you cringe, and the jungle vine-screenwipe and bongo noise gets annoying quick. Voice acting was sub par and the shows animation was very choppy at times. I give the show points for using obscure species, but that's really all it has going for it. I recommend you seek your entertainment elsewhere.
~Emily
WesternAnimation First Episode, First Impressions: "Inoculation Day/Animal Testing"
Hello TV Tropes! This is the first in a series of reviews I'll be doing where I watch the first episode of a show that I don't want to binge-watch to get an idea of it. I'll then give out my first impressions of it based on the episode. As they say, the first impression is the best impression. If it's a poorly-made review, that would be because it's really biased (I'm basing my entire opinion on one episode FFS!) and it's kinda meant to be quick, so take a grain of salt.
For a long time I was curious to why people hated My Gym Partner's A Monkey since I remember enjoying the show when I saw it on occasion. Wikipedia's article on it was quite well done too. So I took to it and here's my verdict.
Inoculation Day: When I saw this, I understood why people didn't like it. The jokes were mostly bland and just cringe-inducing at times. The butt jokes didn't get a single little laugh out of me.We learn see very little about the characters beyond Adam and Jake as the plot was fast-paced and only Nurse Gazelle and Principal Pixiefrog had significant lines. Overall, not very good. Nevertheless, I kept watching.
Animal Testing: I was actually quite impressed with this one. While we still get little about the rest of the cast, this episode was actually funny and had a watchable (if fast-paced) plot. There were no butt jokes in the episode either, so Jake was pretty funny. I enjoyed it more than the previous one to put it simply.
Overall: The premise is pretty interesting. The rapidness of the plots was a little hard to get used to at first. I didn't get much from the secondary characters because of the quickness, so I can't say much about Windsor, Slips, Ingrid, and Lupe. Adam is kinda undetailed in personality, but it fits his "ordinary kid" image. Jake is like Bloo: Funny when done well, but obnoxious when not. The show is just So Okay, It's Average, but would be a lot better if there was A LOT LESS toilet humour. It is definitely the cause of the large hatedom.
I would like to see you guys' opinions and why you think that way too!
WesternAnimation Overall, a Great Show
My Gym Partner's a Monkey is a funny, clever, well-written, Cartoon Network classic, that holds up nicely as something very unique and original and I highly recommend it to any fans of Cartoon Network or any cartoons in general. The show is about a boy named Adam Lyon, who's mistakenly transferred to an animal school called "Charles Darwin Middle School", due to his last name. There, he's forced to become friends with Jake Spidermonkey, his gym partner and cope in such an absurd environment.
The premise of the show, being "A human boy who gets transferred to an animal school." tells stories that can only be told with that concept. Stories like this would be Adam getting injected with monkey DNA, Slips shedding his skin for the first time, and the entire school ganging up on and taking down a famous crocodile hunter. If stuff like that sounds like it could be interesting to you, then you'd definitely like where they go with these stories here.
All the animal characters are made of, generic high school tropes, mixed with animal jingoism. (i.e. a nerd in the body of a gorilla, a pretty girl in the body of a toucan, and a basket case in the body of a giraffe) to name a few of the main characters. Coach Gills, for example, is a tiny goldfish, who's acting like a rough and tough gym teacher, who has a deep, loud, screaming voice, that happens to be applied to a female character.
The casting for the show is excellent, as we have the voice acting celebrity himself, Tom Kenny, playing the titular character, Jake and he doesn't hold back on any of his talent. Then there's also the well known Grey Delisle, voice acting for Ingrid and Lupe, and Maurice Lamarche voicing Principal Pixiefrog. All of which are main/major characters and they capture the talent of these actors beautifully.
The show's worst criticism, regards the low brow jokes about Jake's butt. However, these jokes are cleverly done, gross-out humor, that's really no worse than anything you'd find in shows like Ed, Edd, & Eddy and early Spongebob, They do this just as much as they need to and they've even made several in-universe references to it. They've even taken jabs at the critics, which they refer to as "internet bloggers".
That brings me to the point that "Gym Partner" is actually a bit more meta than one might think, as they've done lots of fourth wall jokes, subtle self-criticisms, cliche subversions, once-in-a-blue-moon changes to the common plot formula, callbacks to previous episodes, sneaky adult humor, and references to outside media, that the older viewers are likely to understand and genuinely enjoy.
In short, wonderful show. It goes deeper than one might imagine, and it's always been and will be a fantastic Cartoon Network classic that every fan of it's genre can enjoy.