Review: Star vs The Forces of Evil – “Cheer Up Star” & “Quest Buy”

 

 

Cheer Up Star

Star Butterfly has conquered many foes in the small handful of episodes we’ve seen. But can she conquer a teenage girl’s worst enemies? Boys and shopping!

The first part of this episode is titled “Cheer Up Star.” It begins with Marco having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. He misses the bus, lands in some trash, and gets a black eye. All on picture day. Then, when he vents his frustration, he accidentally breaks Jackie’s skateboard. A bad day, indeed.

Luckily, he has Star to cheer him up.

So when Star, herself, gets depressed because her crush, Oskar, hasn’t called her, it’s up to Marco to cheer her up. After a few failed attempts, Marco decides to lure some monsters to Earth because nothing makes Star happier than fighting monsters.

Unfortunately, he called a few too many monsters. However, it did have the intended effect. Star came out of her funk. Then Oskar called her in the middle of the battle. Angry at all of the noise the monsters were making while she was on the phone, Star blasted them all with a syrup spell. Happy that Oskar finally called her, Star gave Marco a huge hug. But he was covered in the syrup and they got stuck together.

This was an interesting episode, simply because it was almost entirely told as a flashback. Marco was recounting how and why he called the monsters as they were preparing to fight said monsters. It made the episode stand out a bit from what we’ve already seen. And it had Star being love-struck by a human boy. Almost like real teenagers.

 

 

“Quest Buy”

The second half of the episode was “Quest Buy.” Star’s wand is running out of juice and she can’t find her charger in her messy pile of stuff. Marco chides her for not being neat then suggests she just buy a new one. So the pair head off to the Quest Buy to get a new charger.

But Quest Buy isn’t just any superstore. It has everything you could ever want. It just isn’t organized very well. No one knows how to read the symbols that make up the store directory.

While Star and Marco are searching for chargers, Ludo shows up looking for a beak trimmer. Of course, the two forces meet up and begin fighting in the store. Marco uses his organizational skills to figure out the store map while Star tries to fight the monsters without using her almost-powerless wand.

In the end, Marco’s skills prevail and Star gets her charger. The friends magically whisk their way out of the store, leaving Ludo to pay for the mess they made…and the charger too.

Back at home, it turns out that Star’s charger was sucked up by Marco’s hand vacuum while he was cleaning. Now Marco has a magic floating hand vac and Star has her magic wand. Magic for everyone!

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this episode. I really wanted to like it but it felt a little lacking. I just don’t know what it was lacking. There probably could have been a few more jokes about the products in the store. There probably should have been some teenage-girl-loves-shopping types of jokes. Instead, all we were given is a mystical store that no one can figure out and a store employee who seems to be everywhere but doesn’t actually belong to a department. Overall, it was cute but a little confusing.