Ain’t gonna make it, folks (IMHO).
It’s like watching Whose Line Is It Anyway? without having to have an imagination. The improv group still does things like they did on WLIIA, but on a big green screen covered stage. Animators later add in scenery (sometimes animated, sometimes not), props, and even costumes.
I’ll pass.
I liked it… I thought it was imaginative and creative. Maybe I’ve been watching too much CSI lately (and there are few if any sitcoms that appeal to me any more), but I laughed nearly the whole episode long. I think the animators have a lot of imagination. It is a lot like Whose Line: Can you imagine the field day the animators would have with Ryan and Colin doing “Sound Effects”, though?
I didn’t think the dirgible section was all that good (Drew was trying too hard), but I loved the horse and tag team part with the surf board and stuff. The looks on the horse’s face when they guys flubbed were great.
Sadly, though, I don’t think it will last. One of the reasons that Whose Line lasted so long on Thursday night is that it’s relatively cheap to produce and only requires five actors an episode. This one has, what, nine?, plus four or five animation teams… and it’s still on a Thursday night, just with the added viewer limitation of being on the WB.
I applaud any show that’s somewhat original.
I thought it had a couple of rather funny moments. The “horse” one was good. The “freeze” one had some funny stuff. Like when the guy on the floor was pretending to be the woman’s shadow, and they were walking down the street.
I also thought some of the people were doing things that the animators didn’t pick up on. Like Drew miming taking a drink or pulling off earrings at one point.
For now it was just “Whose line” with a green screen. If it stays like that, I think it might be doomed, but if they got it together with the animators and learn what works/what doesn’t, I could see it being quite funny.
They might have to come up with different kinds of improv and not focus on the same things they did on “whose line”.
One show is too early to tell. Not super funny, but lots of potential.
Darn, how did I miss hearing about this? I was always a big “Whose Line” fan, so this is right up my ally. Well, I’ll be sure to check out the next episode.
Meanwhile, if anyone (like me) missed this first episode, there are a couple of quick video clips here.
I LOVED it!
Maybe I’m easily amused but I thought it was a riot. The horse section was awesome and the look on the horse’s face when Drew said he had the trots: OH YEAH!
Hey Ponder, fer a quarter I’ll ship you the tape I recorded of it!
I thought it was great, too. The part where Colin was rotating a TV on his head was really funny.
The concept is a lot like the great scenes from Disney’s Aladdin where Robin Williams was improvising characters in his usual rapid succession and the animators drew the genie to match.
Similar things were said about talking movies and television itself. Admittedly, that doesn’t mean it’s a guaranteed long-term hit.
This reminds me of those horrid shorts Comedy Central used to do where they would play a sound clip from a stand-up comic’s routine and provide animated illustrations of whatever the stand-up was saying.
It was really really stupid, and not funny at all, and I could never find anyone who thought they were funny, and I could never figure out what Comedy Central was thinking.
I just watched the video clips from the “Green Screen” website, and… it feels just the same to me. The animations don’t add a thing to the humor, and since they are extraneous, they are therefore distracting, and so the humor value that might have been in the original unanimated version is sapped away as well.
There is an audience laughing, and the other actors are laughing at whoever is performing. But they are laughing at what they see–two men for example pretending to participate in a shoot-out. We see actual (animated) guns and cowboy hats and stuff, so we don’t get to laugh at the pantomime the audience is laughing at!
And I don’t know what there is left for me to laugh at.
It’s a foolish, foolish idea for a show.
Sorry to be so harsh, I know some have said they enjoyed the show. I just don’t get it.
-FrL-
I just saw this show for the first time tonight, perhaps the second week of the debut. I thought it was very imaginative and enjoyable. Obviously an extension of “Who’s Line,” this version gives animators some parts, too, as if they were an additional actor or twenty. And they have expanded the cast from four (to eight? Nine?). Ryan Siles wasn’t in today’s show; was he in the first one?
Certainly the imagination required of “Who’s Line” audiences is lacking here but I’m not sure that is a bad thing. My grandmother was the founding factor of a little theater group in St. Louis over sixty years ago, and her entire career was built on running shows on a shoestring. Imagination and acting had to substitute for the severe lack of prop and costume money, yet it became a highly respected theater outfit, perhaps because of the hardship. Still, I don’t think there is anything wrong with using modern resources when affordable and available. Certainly the use of green screen and computer graphics is an idea whose time has come.
Wow, I never even heard of this! Now I’ll have to look for it. I adore Whose Line; [obligatory old people rant]When I was a whippersnapper, we didn’t have them there ready-made American Whose Line shows; we had to get ours all the way from England; and not on network, either. Only on cable. And we were grateful![/oopr].
Anyway, when I see it, I might not like it (IMHO, Drew is the weakest link in WLIIA), but hey, I’ll give it a shot.
No. He not a cast member. I read somewhere that he may guest star in one or two episodes… but if you couldn’t tell from the last few seasons of WL, I think he was beginning to get tired of the whole improv thing.
Instead, he’s doing Celebrity Poker this Sunday… that’ll be interesting.
Gotta go with frylock on this one. I had the same reaction to Shorties Watching Shorties.
It’s like turning your favorite novel into a picture book. Some things are more effective (read: funnier) when it allows the audience to imagine their own props, backgrounds, etc.