Aug 11, 2020

'Happy Happy Joy Joy' REVIEW: A Confusing Portrait of 'Ren & Stimpy' and Their Disgraced Creators

The creators of "Happy Happy Joy Joy - The Ren & Stimpy Story," a new documentary about Nickelodeon's iconic series, could not have timed their project any worse. To their misfortune, just days after they first completed it, Buzzfeed published a report detailing allegations of sexual abuse against the show's creator, John Crickfalusi, forcing them to resume production. And a week after Comedy Central announced a revival of the show, a revised version of the documentary was to be released.

The news of the accusations and reboot will greatly affect how "Happy Happy Joy Joy" is received, whether the producers, first-time feature directors Ron Cicero and Kim Easterwood, like it or not. Although Crickfalusi will not be involved in the new "Ren & Stimpy," the ethics of reviving his show are still hotly debated. In the most specific terms, Comedy Central's decision posed the age-old conundrum: "Can art be divorced from the artist?"

The first 85 minutes of "Ren & Stimpy" were a bit of a mixed bag. The first 85 minutes of the film, perhaps the kind of film Cicero and Easterwood set out to make, deals with the genesis and production of the show. The filmmakers do an excellent job of unraveling the gross-out, bludgeoning sensibility that kept audiences glued to their seats in the early 1990s and terrified me as a boy growing up with tasteless French educational cartoons. The talking heads from the original production (including the late Chris Recardi) nicely evoke the punkish atmosphere of Krikfalusi's Spimcor studio.

"Happy Happy Joy Joy" broadly describes the context in which "The Ren & Stimpy Show" was created. It also touches on the show's broad influence, nodding to the jagged humor of many of the animated TV shows that followed: South Park, Beavis and Butthead, Adult Swim. Perhaps inadvertently, the documentary offers at least one counterargument to the reboot: that Ren & Stimpy may struggle to make an impact now that its irreverence has become the norm.

Where on earth did such a ridiculous show come from - finally, we come to the point. The directors unabashedly claim Krikfalusi as a writer. While the many interviews with his former colleagues are welcome, their recollections tend to revolve around his working relationship with the punk master. The "King," "Hitler," the "Warhol of animation"-they find plenty of ways to talk about what a boss he was. If he was the center of the show's appeal, that's another reason to oppose a reboot.

Compellingly, the film ties the tone of the show to Crickfalusi's own personality. His description of his violent pitching style is accompanied by "smashing" and set against shots of the characters wreaking havoc. Overall, "Ren & Stimpy" is the epitome of Clickfalusi's disturbed mind; in his first substantive interview since Buzzfeed's coverage, he talks about his tantrum-prone father and alludes to the pain he's been in ever since. He says, "I sympathize with almost all of the characters.

Only a year after the show began, Krikfalusi was fired from Nickelodeon amid skyrocketing production delays. True to its auteurist perspective, the documentary goes through the fate of Ren & Stimpy, which languished under the direction of Bob Camp until 1995. Fragments of the raucous sexual imagery that permeated Kricfalusi's later work lead us to a coda dealing with accusations of sexual abuse and its consequences. This is where the film stumbles.

Robin Byrd, one of the two accusers in the Buzzfeed article, recounts her relationship with him as a teenager and the traumatic impact it had on her. As Cicero and Easterwood told Collider, he refused to participate in the first version of the interview and only changed his mind when the allegations surfaced. As Cicero and Easterwood told Collider, he refused to participate in the first version of the story and only changed his mind when the allegations surfaced.

Meanwhile, his other accuser, Katie Rice, was not interviewed and is only mentioned in passing. Other allegations against him, such as possession of child pornography, are also not mentioned. When you make something that people really like, they sort of expect you to be perfect. Once they get to know the real you, the magic of 'Oh, he's just like everyone else,' is broken a little bit. But then he is not like everyone else - he has been accused of sexual abuse of children.

If the coda seems oddly messy, it's partly because of the added circumstances. Still, the film conspicuously fails to explain how the man depicted in the first 85 minutes came to be at the center of this controversy. This would be less relevant if the film had not, up to that point, immersed itself in showing "Ren & Stimpy" as an expression of Krikfalusi's personality. The message seems to be, "You can't separate the art from the artist, but you can separate the artist from its worst excesses.

There is another documentary that should be made here. It is more contemporary while being more troubling to investigate. Vanessa Coffey, the Nickelodeon executive who organized "Wren & Stimpy," presents part of her story here. Of the sexual abuse testimonies, she says, " I think John has been this way for a long time." What made her so -

"Happy Happy Joy Joy - The Ren & Stimpy Story" will be available on video-on-demand on August 14.

Top image: artwork for the documentary by Bill Ray.