Amy Poehler’s “The Mighty B!”
If you head over to Nick.com you can check out a few full-length episodes (about 12 minutes each) of their new Saturday morning cartoon* The Mighty B!. The reason I took note of the series, about an overachieving Honeybee scout attempting to earn every last Bee Badge, is because of the voice talent involved. Amy Poehler voices Bessie, our fearless heroine, and I believe also writes for the series. In “Sweet Sixteenth,” the episode I checked out, Andy Richter was the voice of her brother and the roller-coaster operator was voiced by Brian Posehn. Now, if countless horrid Dreamworks CGI features have taught us anything it is that an all-start cast does not make good animation. However, The Mighty B! succeeds, in my opinion, because the voice talent, specifically Ms. Poehler’s, is so expressive. The character is essentially her Kaitlin role from SNL (”RICK! RICK! RICK!”), already one dimension shy of cartoon.
I have very little else on which to judge the show as my diet of kiddie-cartoons has seriously ebbed since turning *eh-hem* twenty-seven. Though comparing it to the last adult-icon-meets-kids-show I watched, Class of 3000, I’d have to say it surpasses the latter in terms of laughs but falls considerably short when it comes to creativity (both in the subject matter and in the animation style). In storied history of Warner Brothers, Tex Avery and even Goofy there isn’t a whole lot of ground being broken here — perhaps Andre 3000 set the bar a tad high with the lofty goal of having an original song in each episode. As a comic distraction for the kids (or those of us who sometimes still feel like kids) we could probably do a lot worse.
*Apparently there are still Saturday morning cartoons. Who knew?
