Reviewed by Stuart O'Connor
Stars the voices of Billy West, John Kricfalusi,
Bob Camp, Michael Pataki, Vincent Waller
Written by John K, Vincent Waller & Bob Camp
UK recommended retail £29.99
UK Certification 12
Runtime 373 minutes
Directed by John K & Bob Camp
Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi is an angry, bitter man. And he has good reason to be. For it was during the third season of the show that the US childrens’ cable network that aired it, Nickelodeon, kicked him off. Yep, he got sacked from his own creation. That would be like kicking Bob Kane off Batman, or dumping JK Rowling from Harry Potter. And why did Nick give John K the shove? Because they thought his show was too vulgar for their audiences. But when their own animation house, Games, took over from John K’s Spumco, the cartoons actually became cruder. And less funny.
For as John explains in several of his commentaries, what he set out to do was recreate the director-led style of animation from the golden age of the 1940s and 50s. As a director, he wanted to give creative control of animation back to the artists, and take it out of the hands of studio executives. And he wanted to create characters that weren’t there just for laughs, but characters that viewers could also care about. All that changed when production of Ren and Stimpy was taken away from Spumco during this third season.
There are still a few decent episodes among this collection — Ren’s Pecs, Jiminy Lummox, Circus Midgets, Stimpy’s Cartoon Show and Hermit Ren — but sadly, this show’s best days were behind it. Never again would we see Ren and Stimpy cartoons of such brilliance as Space Madness, Stimpy’s Invention, Sven Hoek, and the classic Son of Stimpy — which was banned from broadcast in Australia (it's a cartoon about a fart). This 3-disc DVD set was actually released in the US more than two years ago, so it’s curious as to why it’s taken so long to surface in the UK. Maybe they were busy censoring the cartoons, as was done with the box set of the first two seasons when it came out last year?
EXTRAS** Commentary on several episodes by John K and his original animation team — Eric Bauza, Eddie Fitzgerald, Vincent Waller and Richard Pursel. Plus a commentary on at least one episode by Ren and Stimpy themselves.