THE CUPHEAD SHOW!, season 1 review - My cup of tea

(Reviewed by Melody Werner)

The Cuphead Show is a 2022 animated series based on Studio MDHR's 2017's boss rush run 'n' gun title, simply Cuphead. Renowned not only for its difficulty, but its visuals as well that are greatly inspired by old school cartoons from the 40's and suchlike—it was only a matter of time til it became a show of its own, as the game was so popular, and the character designs so immediately iconic. I say this as someone who didn't really enjoy what little of Cuphead I'd dabbled in. However, I get on much more with The Cuphead Show, which is a Netflix Original with a first season of 12 episodes between 15 and 20 minutes. It's a surprisingly brilliant little throwback with all of the good bits of the era it's homaging, with substantially less overt racism.

That The Cuphead Show is gorgeous was a known quantity before anyone had ever seen a solitary snippet of it but heard that it was called "The Cuphead Show". If it looked bad, it wouldn't've seen the light of day. What's interesting, however, is how it occasionally distances itself from the game's consistent aesthetic. See, sometimes the backgrounds have a sort of hand-crafted, maybe claymation esque feel to them, that makes the show feel like it is going above and beyond, and doing creative things with the idea of Cuphead beyond what we already knows works for it as a "media enterprise". We know going in that Cuphead looks good with backgrounds of a retro cartoon aesthetic. But the Mugman, and Cuphead, and the Devil, and so on—they all still look incredible over visually dissonant backdrops.

Musical numbers are fairly constant throughout the season, and they're pretty well written and can be pretty fun, but they're typically bite-sized. Which is my first real complaint of the show so far. While the short episodes can at the best moments mean that you're getting all-killer and no filler, there's rarely a moment to breathe, which can lead to musical numbers in particular feeling like a nothingburger as they don't really mark a transition point in any episodes outside of character introductions mostly. That being said, I can't say anything dismissive about the theme song or the opening credits in general. The theme tune is very memorable, and I can't imagine skipping it. Even better is when the Netflix animation is the one with Mugman flying around Cuphead's cup head and making that goofy little "neeeeeyowwwwww" sound. Always makes me grin a lil.

I can't think of a single bad vocal performance in the season. Not only are they all very clearly professional grade voice actors, they put a lot of personality into every line-read—sometimes turning otherwise mundane pieces of dialogue into something worth chuckling over. I particularly enjoy those of Mugman (Frank Todaro), Cuphead (Tru Valentino), and the Devil (Luke Millington). Whose characters also all happen to be very enjoyable, with pretty clearly defined personalities. Also, is it just me, or does Mugman seem to be fairly comfortable being perceived as a woman? Interesting, in a hopefully good way tentatively.

In its best moments, The Cuphead Show can feel like the classic era of The Looney Tunes, but better, modernized, and decidedly less cruel. There's largely a "gag of the week" structure, but there is a consistent thread of the Devil attempting to claim Cuphead's soul that crops up occasionally. And it's the standalone eps that can be the show at its funniest, with joke after joke, but also strong setups and payoffs (in which nothing is left underused to its full potential) and some cleverly subversive story beats. You might expect things to go one way, but the show will throw in a wrinkle that is probably as amusing as it is surprising. "Root Packed" might be the best episode yet, with some witty visual jokes and constant story beats that naturally bleed into each other in a satisfying, and increasingly funnier way.

At its worst, The Cuphead Show either can feel oddly malicious, or like an ad for itself. I don't know if I dislike episode 11 or 12 more. Episode 11, "Dirt Nap", has some cute facial expressions from Elder Kettle, but mostly boils down to random ageism. Haha, the old person got hurt, or something. Which I don't find particularly funny. It actually makes me realize that a lot of the jokes with Elder Kettle in the earlier episodes were also really meanspirited too, but it was less noticeable because those were surrounded on all sides by actually good jokes or visual gags or funny expressions. Whereas episode 12 pretends at first to be a real episode, but turns out it is just an introduction to the new character Chalice and basically an extended trailer for the already-announced season 2. But the dynamic between Chalice and the brothers isn't very well established. Is this not just Pinky & the Brain... and Larry? Tossing some random third wheel in and expecting us to care is something P&TB was mocking in the 90's, correctly so. I don't have a problem with Chalice herself, but as of now, she isn't particularly developed, and it feels like she was just tossed in haphazardly to promote the DLC with her in the game and to justify having her in the intro. Feels like all of that just got crowbarred into the season finale, in a way that is so disappointing. Hopefully Chalice does get more shine in season 2, because otherwise this feels like such a missed opportunity to really go out with a bang.

While the last two episodes of the season felt like a precipitous drop in quality, I still look forward to season 2. Season 1 was, on the whole, a very impressive and consistently amusing shot in the dark, and it is still easily the best video game adaptation I can think of. It has everything I'd want in a cartoon like this: great humor and inventive animation. Which sounds far simpler than it could've been to make such a wonderful example of both. I'll give season 1 of The Cuphead Show a 9/10.

Awesome

Summary:

If The Looney Tunes weren't too busy becoming the stick of WB's attempts to break their way into the soupy multiverse of interconnected IP's game, it'd be this evolution on the classic Tunes formula.