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mjnorcross
Reviews
Sonny with a Chance (2009)
A Waste of Time (and Talent)
The stakes have been raised extremely high with the tween sitcom these days, and Sonny with a Chance just doesn't cut it. It's a horrible show with a few good child actors including Demi Lovato. How weak is the show? Well watch the episode Selena Gomez guest-stars in. Demi is forced to make her character to overact when she sees Selena walk into her dressing room. The only good part of the show is the show-within-a-show called So Random!, where most of the show takes place. The sketches are a throwback of the classic Nickelodeon series, All That! and use the exact same humor.
Nothing about Sonny with a Chance except the show-within-a-show works. Not only that, but it is a total waste of time and Demi Lovato's talent. I also find it a good thing that she left the show after leaving rehab earlier this year. She definitely needs to focus on music, because I could tell that being the star of a sitcom was not a good idea for her.
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (2006)
A good show for preschoolers, but a pretty odd way to introduce newer generations of kids to Mickey Mouse
They don't call Disney the "Mouse House" for nothing. There's no question that Mickey Mouse is the king of the classic Disney cartoon characters. He's iconic, memorable, and almost every Disney fan and cartoon fan in general knows his name. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is perhaps the latest show to have him as a star, and for some bizarre reason, they decided to create a show aimed at preschoolers.
The show follows the same interactive formula used in two Nick Jr. shows, Blues Clues & Dora the Explorer. The main character interacts with the viewer and asks him/her for help on a certain something. In addition to Mickey's familiar pals like Minnie, Donald, and Goofy, there are some elements that are exclusive to the show such as the clubhouse itself, a floating mouse-eared device named "Toodles", and the "Mousketools" the device usually carries. There are some bright sides to the show. It teaches children creative skills and problem solving, and that is a very important thing to teach to children nowadays, because there is no creativity when it comes to television for kids and tweens.
This was an odd route Disney chose to reintroduce their mascot to new generations of kids. With the character's track record of being on shows such as Mickey Mouse Works and House of Mouse, Mickey's no stranger to television. But, an interactive "edutainment" show for preschoolers does not seem like a very good fit for him. I don't think rendering the characters into 3D CGI was the best idea either, but the show sure did work. I know someone whose daughter watches the show and now also watches the original Mickey Mouse cartoon shorts by Walt Disney himself because of it.
Shake It Up (2010)
It's the Disney Channel Original Series that tells kids aged 9-14 to Shake it Up, but does it deliver?
Here's the recipe for Shake it Up, take elements of popular dance shows such as Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance, add in more elements of the typical clichéd tween sitcom, add them all together, put it on the small screen for 30 minutes and, Presto! You've got a pile of steaming crap.
Bella Thorne and Zendaya play CeCe Jones and Rocky Blue respectively, they're best friends who get a new job on a dance show called Shake it Up Chicago. Not only do they moan and complain whenever they don't get what they want, but they claim they are good dancers (when in reality, they can't even dance). CeCe's little brother Flynn, he likes to annoy the girls to death, and likes Rocky more than his own sister, although he doesn't hate either of them.Then there's the brother-sister duo, two Swedish exchange students names Gunther and TInka. They are the most annoying of the entire cast. Not only are the accents the actors use for the two respective characters annoying and stereotypical, but neither of them even made me laugh. The jokes on the show aren't funny either. Quite frankly, all those jokes have been used before on other sitcoms and the creators of Shake it Up decided to slam all of those used jokes into one show. And, since it's a Disney Channel original series, they add in a laugh track to everything the characters say every 10 seconds, and nothing they say made me laugh. How in the world does Disney Channel allow these kinds of shows to be made?
Everyone on the show is beyond stupid, they don't deliver any laughs for the entire family, and the outfits are so repetitive, they're not even appropriate for tween programming. This is a lazily scripted, poorly acted, unfunny, inappropriate, sometimes offensive show. If Walt Disney himself saw this, well... let's just say he'd turn in his grave.