by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
I’ve always had a soft spot for animation. More years than not, at least a couple of animated features find their way onto my top 10 list. So with Animation Celebration, I’m setting out to shine a light on some films that may have passed you by. The idea here is to take a look at some underseen gems—so no Toy Story or Frozen here.
Let’s get started.
I had planned on basing this month’s column on an actually good Smurfs property (i.e., the ‘80s TV show), since the movies just can’t seem to get their act together. But unfortunately, I don’t speak Spanish. Therefore, a pivot was in order, but with the success of Superman, I’m not exactly mad about it.
When my dad was growing up, one of his favorite shows was Underdog, an experience that was passed on to us kids through some “Best of” VHS tapes. Running on NBC as part of their Saturday morning cartoon slate, it started as a way to advertise General Mills cereal. And, I’ve got to admit, refamiliarizing myself with the show was an absolute joy.* (More on the asterisk later.)
At its core, Underdog (Wally Cox) is literally just Superman in canine form. The powerset’s basically identical. There may not be any kryptonite, but he does have his magic vitamin hidden in his secret ring. He even does the whole, “No one can tell I’m a famous superhero as long as I have these glasses on!” bit. Even the love interest, Sweet Polly Purebred (Norma MacMillan), is a clear Lois Lane ripoff, trading out print reporting for television. With it being the ‘60s, her character is very much more in the damsel in distress mold than the most recent version of Lois Lane.
With that as a basis, the show sort of operates as a mix between Superman and the Adam West Batman TV series (though Underdog did precede the latter). It’s campy and formulaic (complete with dramatic narrator commentary and cliffhanger tension-raising), but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. I’d forgotten that Underdog as a character spoke completely in rhymes, and let me tell you, I was here for it.
It also helps that it sets the tone with an absolute bop of a theme song. I’d forgotten how great it was, and the score littered throughout the episodes is just an easy way to get me smiling again. The theme also had another function — keying me in on the episodes I wanted to refresh my memory on. The two biggest baddies in his rogues gallery, the evil scientist Simon Bar-Sinister (see what they did there), who wants to RUUUUULLLLEEE THE WOOOORLD, and wolf gangster Riff Raff (see what they did there), who sounds like a mix between a noir gangster stereotype and Count Dracula, get their own theme sequences, and were the villains that were a part of the aforementioned “Best of” collection. (Fun fact — also both voiced by Allen Swift.) They really are the episodes you want to see.
When it comes to the animation, it’s super simple, reminiscent of the Loony Tunes style of the time. For both Leonardo Productions and TOTAL Television Productions, this show is basically what they did. Oddly, the same goes for the cast. I was expecting that these roles would be one of many recognizable turns in their credits. However, the narrator voicing Heat Miser in The Year Without a Santa Claus (George S. Irving) is the only LeoPointing.GIF that I got out of our main cast. It’s just odd that they never popped up in any other cartoons of note, particularly since their voices have been running through my head since childhood.
Now it’s time to address the asterisk. As mentioned, I kept my rewatch largely to episodes with our main protagonists. I also kept my watch to the Underdog portions of the roughly 23-minute episodes. It bookends things, with characters like Tennessee Tuxedo getting run in the middle. Not that I want to take work away from our Narrator, but that means Underdog’s 23-minute arcs were spread across two weeks’ worth of episodes. (I’ll have to remember that if I ever hit a stretch of modern TV that feels like it’s taking its sweet time.) As a result, it can feel like half the runtime ends up being spent recapping or setting the scene.
However, it was a different time in television, and I largely enjoyed my nostalgic trip back to the age of the Saturday morning cartoons, and I’ll certainly have the theme song running through my head for the rest of the week.
I’m excited to continue to geek out on some great animated work you may not have had a chance to catch. Next month, I’m contemplating something Genndy Tartakovsky related with the arrival of Fixed.
You can read more from Jake Bourgeois, and follow him on Bluesky and Letterboxd