I had some trepidation about a new Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon but this one is actually fairly solid. The most striking difference between this series is the new animation style which calls to mind the 60s animated work of UPA and Warner Brothers. It's stylish and Rocky and Bullwinkle have never looked better, though the classic Jay Ward cartoons were always about using clever wordplay to overcome low budget animation. Thankfully there's a few howlers in the first episode including a new origin for Boris and Natasha, a great gag involving The Mona Lisa, and a new antagonist that's basically Amanda Waller from DC Comics. Though there's also a few gross-out gags of the Ren & Stimpy variety and the some pop culture jokes I didn't care for.
The real standout of this the excellent voice cast that includes Brad Norman, Tara Strong, Rachel Butera, and Ben Diskin all doing very good homages to the original cast. The biggest problem with the show is pacing. The original Rocky & Bullwinkle serial chapters were fairly short and broken up by the other cartoons. The characters were never particularly deep and in this incarnation Rocky seems to be a little dumber in the name of slapstick (which I don't particularly mind because the gags are mostly funny) but it felt like we spend a little too much time with them. A Fractured Fairy Tales or Dudley Do-Right short to spread things out would have been a nice touch. With that said having sat though three episodes in I'm pleasantly surprised.



































