None of the Crazylegs Crane cartoons did anything for me, the whole series of his being worse than the worst of Tijuana Toads and Blue Racer and that takes some beating. DePatie-Freleng Enterprises did make a lot of cartoons that were good to great, especially in the mid-late-60s, but too much of their 70s output was mixed at best or were complete misfires. All the Crazylegs Crane cartoons being the latter, and this is coming from a saddened lifelong animation fan.
'Flower Power' is every bit as poor as the previous Crazylegs Crane cartoons. For pretty much the same reasons as those cartoons, in fact exactly the same. Everything that made the series so poor is present here in 'Flower Power' and every bit as badly as before. To me their quality are about the same so they are pretty much equal and as bad as each other. This is not being said with pleasure, none of my negative reviews for anything are and never once have been.
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 'Flower Power' 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.
'Flower Power' is every bit as poor as the previous Crazylegs Crane cartoons. For pretty much the same reasons as those cartoons, in fact exactly the same. Everything that made the series so poor is present here in 'Flower Power' and every bit as badly as before. To me their quality are about the same so they are pretty much equal and as bad as each other. This is not being said with pleasure, none of my negative reviews for anything are and never once have been.
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 'Flower Power' 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.