Review: The Proud Family: Louder And Prouder “When You Wish Upon A Roker”

Overview

This week, Penny and her friends get a glimpse into the future to see what it’s like to live without their overbearing parents courtesy of Al Roker. While the friends bounce pretty early on, Penny sticks it out hoping to take advantage of the fact that she’s on her own and can do whatever she wants. Unfortunately, she learns the hard lessons of adulthood too late and Al threatens to keep her in the future forever. Oscar soon joins in and saves Penny who has a newfound appreciation for her dad and all the hard work he puts forth.

Our Take

Other than the pitch change for Oscar’s voice in the future, this week’s episode was solid if not somewhat derivative of other animated series who have done a similar premise. In fact, Nic Cage stars in a film called The Family Man that has essentially the same beats as this episode. In any event, seeing an evil Al Roker return to the franchise was fun and the important lessons learned make for a solid piece for the younger watchers to learn from. In a world where it seems like kids are growing up faster every day, this is a great way to tell everyone to slow down and enjoy the finer things in life before you’re dealing with the greater responsibilities of being an adult.

The episode features a multitude of guest stars for the episode including the timely appearance of Jaden Smith as “Myron”, Desus Nice as “Kareem”, Karrie Martin as “LaCienega”, and Logan Browning in the lead role as “Penny”. For the most part, all of the cast was pretty superb and if a potential future spin-off were to happen, I can’t see why this couldn’t be the backdoor pilot featuring all of these actors.