Cartoon fans we're taking a trip back to the nineties for this review and this was a show that alot of us myself included grew up with. I will say that after watching a bunch of episodes of this show i've come to the conclusion that this show wouldn't be made today and i'll go into the reasons why later and let us prey that none of us use the pick up tactics used in this show and so here we go with me review of the one and only the legend that is Johnny Bravo.
The premise of this show is Johnny Bravo is a simple man who just wants to get a girlfriend and the show follows his exploits as he tries to get a date with a girl. Yeah there really isn't a plot to the show outside of that premise and with a premise as strong as that you don't really need a plot. At the same time tho I would have been good if there was a small plot running through some of the episodes but at the same time if that was the case then this show wouldn't be the same.
Starring in the show was Jeff Bennett as Johnny Bravo , Brenda Vaccaro as Momma , Mae Whitman as Little Suzy , Tom Kenny as Carl and Larry Drake as Pops. In all honesty the acting isn't that bad at least for a nineties show Jeff really does kill it is the title character and in my opinion all of the characters are perfectly cast. I only wish that the actors were given alot more to work with but sadly there not.
Now every famous person had to get there start somewhere and well this show was the start for a pair of animation legends and they are Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane and Butch Hartman. It's honestly really weird to see where these two legends got there start but at the same time you can really see that they had a lot of talent and you can see that even back then they had a lot of potential.
Now i'll admit that I couldn't find who did the animation for this show but knowing that Hanna-Barbera worked on the show then chances are it was them. I could however be wrong so don't hold me to it in terms of what I thought about the animation tho it's honestly really good at least in terms of early Cartoon Network and for once there's no repeating backgrounds and the animation isn't cheap which is new for Hanna-Barbera.
Now I said at the start of the review that this show wouldn't be made today and to be honest all of that is due to the fact that Johnny can act a little bit sexist towards the females. I'll admit it's not much sexism it's only a little bit here and there but when you see it it makes you see the show in a whole new light and I have to admit when I saw the sexism present in the show it really shocked me because I never saw it as a kid.
This amazed me as a little kid but I loved the Johnny Bravo / Scooby-Doo crossover episode to me what made that episode standout was the fact that they poked alot of fun of the Scooby-Doo formula and even some of the rumours surrounding the characters. That to me made the episode so much funnier just due to all of the in jokes plus it hopes that it was a really good episode in it's own right as well as a good crossover episode.
This show started airing in 1997 and it lasted until 2004 but even with that long air time there was only four seasons of the show aired and that's because the show was put on hiatus and with no warning was picked up for a second season in 1999. It didn't stop there tho as the creator of the show Van Partible left production after the second season and for the rest of the show's run the production was overseen by Kirk Tingblad who retooled pretty much everything about the show from it's humour to it's tone and characters.
I'm not going to name what network this show aired on just because the show was so well known and still is well known that pretty much everyone knows which network this show was broadcast on. I will say that for airing on this network they got away with alot of stuff some of which i've already mentioned but on the lighter side of things they also included cameo's from really obscure HB characters like Speed Buggy shows up at one point for no reason.
One of the things that I think that this show became known for was it's use of slapstick humour and if you don't like that kind of humour then don't even bother watching this show because it's like the only joke in this show. That's not always a bad thing but it would have been nice if they mixed it up every once in a while but no they stuck to the same type of humour for alot of the episodes and if i'm being honest that made me crave some other kind of joke.
Overall this is a classic CN series and it's not hard to see why it has great humour for the first few episodes and it gets away with a lot more stuff then today's shows do/. That said however it's not a great show by any means and so it gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.