Life With Feather
- Episode aired 1978
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Never gets off the ground
1978's 'Life with Feather' is not the first appearances of Crazylegs Crane. He also featured as a supporting character in eleven cartoons from three theatrical series, six in that for Tijuana Toads, three from The Blue Racer and two from The Dogfather. He never did much for me as a supporting character/adversary in any of the cartoons, with most of the cartoons themselves also not being particularly good, and failed as a lead in his own theatrical series.
Proven here in this first Crazylegs Crane cartoon. To me, the Crazylegs Crane series is the worst of the various DePatie-Freleng Enterprises series and 'Life with Feather' is a very strong example of why. With everything that made the series as consistently poor as it was present and with it being one of the worst cases here. A very poor start to the series and a very poor cartoon overall for anything. Am somebody who hates being negative and who loves animation, but 'Life with Feather' was a big failure just like the rest of the Crazylegs Crane cartoons.
The best aspect, well the only aspect that doesn't fail, is the music, which at least sounds appealing and doesn't feel discordant. It doesn't have much of the memorability factor though, outside of the affectionate singing of pre-existing music, and the opening titles are too short and throwaway to make much of an impression.
Everything else fails. The animation looks rather cheap, have said in other reviews for the various DePatie-Freleng Enterprises theatrical series that the studio had a purposefully abstract visual style, but the Crazylegs Crane fared the worst at taking abstract to simplistic extremes. Everything just looks flatly coloured and like it was made in a rush.
None of 'Life with Feather' is funny, remotely. All the gags, and there are far too few anyway, are stale retreads with no imagination at all and the dialogue lacks any wit. The story wasn't really one at all, all it is is a series of instantly forgettable scenes where Crazylegs is trying to educate his son and a father-son relationship that is neither entertaining, relatable or fresh, and has no energy.
Crazylegs didn't really work as a supporting character in the Tijuana Toads/Blue Racer/Dogfather series, due to his supposed craftiness always coming over as too dim-witted. Here he is very bland from having little personality, there is no craftiness here and he just comes over as stupid. His son is very annoying and there is no chemistry between the two characters, no respect in fact. Even more annoying is the dragonfly, because of his voice primarily and also because he doesn't really do very much.
Voice acting is very poor, Larry D Mann's voice fits a little better here than it did in the Tijuana Toads etc series when Crazylegs was in support, because Mann's oafish voice always jarred with Crazylegs supposedly crafty antics before whereas because Crazylegs is not near as crafty it doesn't jar as much. It is very annoying and one note voice work though that sounds like Mann had just gotten out of bed still half asleep. What also infuriated me about the series was how they made Frank Welker, one of the voice acting gods, irritating, especially as the dragonfly.
In conclusion, not recommended at all. 2/10.
Proven here in this first Crazylegs Crane cartoon. To me, the Crazylegs Crane series is the worst of the various DePatie-Freleng Enterprises series and 'Life with Feather' is a very strong example of why. With everything that made the series as consistently poor as it was present and with it being one of the worst cases here. A very poor start to the series and a very poor cartoon overall for anything. Am somebody who hates being negative and who loves animation, but 'Life with Feather' was a big failure just like the rest of the Crazylegs Crane cartoons.
The best aspect, well the only aspect that doesn't fail, is the music, which at least sounds appealing and doesn't feel discordant. It doesn't have much of the memorability factor though, outside of the affectionate singing of pre-existing music, and the opening titles are too short and throwaway to make much of an impression.
Everything else fails. The animation looks rather cheap, have said in other reviews for the various DePatie-Freleng Enterprises theatrical series that the studio had a purposefully abstract visual style, but the Crazylegs Crane fared the worst at taking abstract to simplistic extremes. Everything just looks flatly coloured and like it was made in a rush.
None of 'Life with Feather' is funny, remotely. All the gags, and there are far too few anyway, are stale retreads with no imagination at all and the dialogue lacks any wit. The story wasn't really one at all, all it is is a series of instantly forgettable scenes where Crazylegs is trying to educate his son and a father-son relationship that is neither entertaining, relatable or fresh, and has no energy.
Crazylegs didn't really work as a supporting character in the Tijuana Toads/Blue Racer/Dogfather series, due to his supposed craftiness always coming over as too dim-witted. Here he is very bland from having little personality, there is no craftiness here and he just comes over as stupid. His son is very annoying and there is no chemistry between the two characters, no respect in fact. Even more annoying is the dragonfly, because of his voice primarily and also because he doesn't really do very much.
Voice acting is very poor, Larry D Mann's voice fits a little better here than it did in the Tijuana Toads etc series when Crazylegs was in support, because Mann's oafish voice always jarred with Crazylegs supposedly crafty antics before whereas because Crazylegs is not near as crafty it doesn't jar as much. It is very annoying and one note voice work though that sounds like Mann had just gotten out of bed still half asleep. What also infuriated me about the series was how they made Frank Welker, one of the voice acting gods, irritating, especially as the dragonfly.
In conclusion, not recommended at all. 2/10.
- TheLittleSongbird
- May 3, 2022
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What is the broadcast (satellite or terrestrial TV) release date of Life With Feather (1978) in Australia?
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