DVD Review: Darkwing Duck - Volume 2 - Page 2

Why, then, should we worry for Darkwing’s safety at all? In other episodes he’s comically zapped into dust then appears fine in the very next shot. The fact that the show insists on trying to keep a sense of peril with an anything-goes-in-a-cartoon attitude makes it hard for an adult to get into. It didn’t seem to bother me as a kid, but I was probably just too happy to be at home watching TV instead of at school to care, now that I think about it.

DuckTales was the first of Disney’s syndicated afternoon cartoon shows, followed by Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers and Tale Spin each year afterwards, eventually being paired with Disney’s Gummi Bears as a two-hour block of children’s entertainment dubbed “The Disney Afternoon.” Darkwing Duck and each following year’s successive cartoon series being churned out by Disney’s TV cartoon unit began to skew much more towards loony “cartoons” than the previous, distinctly old-school Disney animated efforts. The shows went from honest-to-goodness adventure tales that incorporated humor to jokey, hokey ‘toons that tried only for cheap laughs. Darkwing Duck was the turning point.

Overall, the writing in Darkwing Duck is sloppy and inconsistent. The episodes featured in Volume 2 already reek of end-of-the-series, we’re-running-out-of-ideas storylines and plot twists. Only a couple of episodes, such as “Life, the Negaverse and Everything” (in which Darkwing is sucked into a parallel, “negative” dimension where he must team up with his now-good arch enemies to tackle his now-evil friends) and “Twin Beaks” (an amusing parody of Twin Peaks that surrounds a mysterious alien invasion) seem to rise above and remain entertaining to my adult sensibilities.

“Planet of the Capes” starts out with a promising storyline: a superhero from another planet comes to Earth to ask for Darkwing Duck’s help. Thinking that he’s being called upon to save an entire planet with his own hero skills, Darkwing gladly agrees, only to find once he gets there that the entire planet is populated by citizens with superpowers who need Darkwing to be their “Ordinary Guy,” the one that they continually are saving. When the previous “Ordinary Guy” returns, however, things take a turn for the dumber as the action escalates to Darkwing and the original “O.G.” start growing until they are larger than the planet itself. Then they start duking it out with the very stars and moons of the galaxy.

Article Author: Sombrero Grande

This writer is a member of The Masked Movie Snobs, a collective that fights a never-ending battle against bad entertainment.

Visit Sombrero Grande's author page — Sombrero Grande's Blog