Review of Bebe's Kids (1992) by Drew G — 20 Aug 2009

During the 80's, Robin Harris was a fairly successful comedian even though no one knows who he is and why we should we care. His crown jewel of his stand-up was his story about Bebe's kids, a tale about kids so evil that even the police are scared of them. So Paramount came calling and they wanted to make a movie based off the Bebe kids act. So they started to but Robin Harris must have read the script cause not only did he decide to not be in it, he decided to die hoping to take the movie down with him. He failed...not in dying, he's dead but the movie lived by getting Faizon Love to be Harris and animating it. So we get this complete with the tagline "It's Animation!"...fine, it's really "It's animation...with attitude!" but who am I to stand in the way of a good legend. So let's get going as we dig into Bebe's Kids.

Anyways the plot is that our hero, Robin, is at a bar talking to some blind bartender...oh, the hilarity, my sides are in pain. He's talking about his woman troubles that lead to his horrible day at Funland with....duh duh duh....Bebe's kids!!!!! A little explanation is a bit necessary, Robin meets this girl and they hit it off, then he meets her son. Eventually that turns into a promise to take her and the son to Funland but when he comes to pick them up there are the kids while their mother is out cheating on welfare, prostituting herself and buying crack. Fine, the movie never says it but Unfortunate Implications do exist here. So basically those little monsters are unleashed and destroy Funland while Robin and the chick are getting their loving on. And for additional fun, Robin's ex-wife and her sister are there to mess things up for the love story but to the movie's credit, they do avert that idiot plot where the woman meets the ex and the ex lies and the woman believes her and won't listen to the man. Well it happens here but it gets straighten out pretty quickly.

So as an animated movie, the first thing you notice is the animation. It's really horrible. The colors are all washed-out, half of the time people talk without opening their mouth which is especially true for the baby and he does open his mouth. The characters are all drawn in the most ugly way possible. And for a movie based of a comedy sketch it's not funny, all the jokes fail miserably save one but I'll get to that later. It's hyper-stylized like modern cartoons are but it doesn't work cause we don't care about this movie. Humor only comes through if we care about the characters, the situation or anything at all. Then the sound mixing is horrible, it's all a wash of sound. The voices barely come in clear, they all sound alike(I realize the minefield I'm stepping on with that) and the music is all garbled and unintelligible. The only survivor is Tone-Loc and that's cause he's Tone-Loc, the man with the most distinctive voice ever.

But there are two good moments that are kinda funny and cute. The first is when Robin threatens one of the kids that he'll beat the black out of him and he'll be lighter than Michael Jackson when he's done. That's pretty funny. The other is when robots try to kill the kids to avenge the death of one of the robots the kids destroyed...yeah, I'm serious. I was hopeful that the plot may twist into a Machine-Human war. But Robot Abraham Lincoln has to convince the Robot Overlord to put them on trial with Robot Richard Nixon as the prosecutor. Alright, this may still turn into a Machine-Human war depending on the outcome. Then the kids start to rap....oh God, it's horrible. Then they escape and there is no Machine-Human war at all!

Anyways, this movie sucks! It's not funny. It's poorly made. It's suffers from Unfortunate Implications that can be construed into Racism. The stunt casting is negated through bland voice-acting. You can't make out the difference between the music and the voices. But I am not done with this yet. You may wonder why this isn't in my blog with all the detail I've given it and that's cause I plan on reviewing the Bebe Kids SNES game as well. Then both the movie and the game review will be put on the blog in a few weeks.