Review: Smiling Friends: “Gwimbly: Definitive Remastered Enhanced Extended Edition DX 4k (Anniversary Director’s Cut)”

Overview

Pim and Allan find a homeless Gwimbly and work to try and get him back on his feet by getting a sequel to his hugely popular game. When we meet the CEO, we learn that homie is banking on a new character thereby making Gwimbly obsolete. As a result, Pim and the gang opt to make an independent Gwimbly game to which the CEO wants to do anything he can to shut it down.

Charlie has to make an angry customer named James smile against all odds. From cooking to serving milk, Charlie really does try everything to make his customer smile and nothing seems to work until the CEO comes barging in the house and is killed there by making a new happy customer (or is he?). Gwimbly gets a job in a new game where The Boss is a special character.

Our Take

CEO

Anybody who has played PS2-era action-platforming games like Spyro: The Dragon, Bubsy 3D, and Mario 64 will love the inclusion of the 3D sprite character to the fray because I know I did.

I was a little worried that the season two premiere of Smiling Friends would veer too much into Code Monkeys territory as it pertained to gags about gaming and whatnot, but then I was quickly reminded by how talented Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack are within the first minute or two when that worry would come to pass. For starters, the CEO was out-of-control and possibly my favorite antagonist the series has ever done featuring an almost Nick Kroll-like (I didn’t see his name in the credits but that sure sounded like him) delivery that composited a villain not unlike TMNT’s Krang.

Charlie’s bit was pretty good, though doing two plots in a quarter-hour series can be tricky because there’s even less time than say a 22-minute series that may do similar and even they don’t get it right a lot of the time. Fortunately, this series is co-created by Zach Hadel who is as much of a master of getting the most out of an animated short as possible and that shows here in a very grounded B-plot. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.

Throw in Gwimbly’s creepy Cameos and The Boss taking part in a Smash Bros. send-up, and the season two premiere of Smiling Friends is a litmus that passes the test that Zach and Michael have a lot in store for us in the upcoming second season of the network’s soon-to-be most popular series.