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The creative tension and falling out between comic strip creator Walt Kelly and Chuck Jones mares The Pogo Special Birthday Special. It’s like listening to an orchestra playing while being ever-so-slightly off key the entire time. The individual pieces are all there, but they’re just not assembled correctly to make a pleasing overall effect.
The backgrounds are lively and colorful, the character models are appealing, and there’s a few good verbal jokes, but the pacing is all over the place, and at times it drifts too far over into either Kelly or Jones territory to congeal as a coherent collaboration. There’s also the general problem of something so southern in nature given life by people clearly unfamiliar with the sounds and vibes of the area, as too many of the voices sound like goofy riffs on dialects instead of cohesive character voices.
Jones’ trademark wit is gone, and the entire thing is too cutesy for words. Something went wrong, or the major fight between the two of them caused the rest of the production to rush out a finished product. Not the worst thing Jones attached his name to (check the Raggedy Ann and Andy Christmas special), but it is disappointingly shapeless.
