The Cuphead Show! Review: Good, Not Yet Great
Netflix’s new animated series, The Cuphead Show!, is the latest in a growing number of video game adaptations.
Like the video game it’s based on, the series is a love letter to classic animation that follows the hijinks of the titular character Cuphead and his brother Mugman in the surreal world of the Inkwell Isles.
The care the series takes to capture the look and feel of the early cartoons that inspire it is impressive. The creators did their research, and it pays off. The animation is fantastic. It seamlessly blends characteristics of animation from the 30s and 40s with a colorful, crisp design resulting in a unique and vibrant visual style.
The character animation is easily one of the best parts of the series. Some of the funniest and most endearing moments are just watching the characters react to what’s happening.
In addition to the stylistic inspiration, there are plenty of easter eggs for classic animation fans to find. Fans of Fleischer Studios — which produced iconic cartoons like Betty Boop and Popeye — will especially have a lot to look forward to.
Even the name of the world Cuphead and Mugman live in — The Inkwell Isles — is a reference to the Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell and Inkwell Imps cartoons. My favorite references are the ones to Cab Calloway, who features heavily in some of Betty Boop’s best shorts.
There is a lot to love about The Cuphead Show! beyond the visual style and fun easter eggs. The Inkwell Isles is an imaginative world full of fun characters ripe for exploration. The musical numbers are delightful, and the relationship between Cuphead and Mugman works really well as the foundation of the show.
It has the potential to be great, yet the first twelve episodes are more potential greatness than actual greatness. To be sure, The Cuphead Show! is a pleasant diversion. It’s an enjoyable and quick watch.
Still, all of those great pieces promising so much don’t quite come together and make you truly fall in love with it.
There are a few reasons the season doesn’t shine quite as brightly as I want it to, none of which suggest it won’t in the future.
First, while the care that went into including elements of classic animation is one of the show’s assets and a big part of what makes its visual style so appealing, those cartoons are a bit like lighting in a bottle. They were a product — for better or worse — of the time and circumstances they were made in.
It is impossible for any cartoon today to fully capture the particular brand chaotic madness that was a hallmark of many of those old studios. After the first episode, the novelty of the show’s style wears off, and there isn’t quite enough substance to compensate.
There are flashes of brilliance. The series is at its best whenever it returns to its one ongoing storyline that pits Cuphead and Mugman against the Devil. In between those episodes, though, the series loses steam and feels flat. Fine, but flat.
The Cuphead Show! would do well to lean further into establishing a gallery of antagonists like Bugs Bunny’s in the Looney Tunes cartoons (which the series draws much of its tonal inspiration from). For that matter, developing other supporting and recurring characters would give the series so much more life.
The more the series can create familiar dynamics and relationships, the easier it is to invest in the characters when the dazzle of the show’s animation isn’t enough to carry it.
Similarly, the series would also benefit from more world-building and a larger emphasis on some simple ongoing stories. That’s not to say the series needs to be serialized to be good, just that establishing the world around the brothers more would make watching the show a fuller experience.
This would be a bit of departure from classic animation, which has no continuity or character development beyond repeat character pairings. But, as already mentioned, the times that the series did this in its first twelve episodes are the high points of the series so far.
If I were to guess, I would say that all of the above is the plan moving forward since the show starts to move more in this direction in the last handful of episodes. The series doesn’t get the chance to get there completely, though, because while Season 1 of The Cuphead Show! is planned for 36 episodes, Netflix is releasing them in batches.
There’s nothing wrong with the streamer choosing that model, but in this instance, it cuts the series off abruptly and just as it starts to hit its stride.
All of this is to say that while the first batch of The Cuphead Show! episodes are underwhelming they are worth checking out. The Cuphead Show! may not be everything viewers are hoping for yet, but there is every reason to believe it will be.
What did you think of The Cuphead Show!? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Cuphead Show! will begin streaming on Netflix on February 18th.
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Sarah Fields
Sarah is an obsessive geek who likes to get into the weeds and over think things. She is passionate about Sci-Fi and comics and is a giant classic film nerd. Sarah cares deeply about media representation and the power of telling diverse stories. When she's not writing or watching her favorite shows she spends her days working in the non-profit world trying to make life a little better for those that need some extra help.