VeggieTales Review: Leggo my Ego - The Cartoon Adventures of Larry-Boy

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: A few funny bits

Cons: Formulaic and not as clever as it could be

The Bottom Line: 

Huge ego problem

And it's Larry-Boy's ego

That just might destroy

"Is This Heaven?"  "No.  It's a Jelly Filled."

Puffing yourself up at the expense of others is the subject of the third adventure in The Cartoon Adventures of Larry-boy series, Leggo My Ego.  It also introduces a dastardly new villainous pair.

This series of videos is a spin off from the computer animated VeggieTales series.  They had done a couple of videos by this point that featured series regular Larry the Cucumber as Larry-Boy, a superhero with obvious ties to Batman.  In an effort to produce some videos quickly, these are traditionally animated, although the voice cast from VeggieTales still voices their characters.

This story opens at a carnival where Larry is trying to spend a relaxing day.  But his day is interrupted when The Alchemist starts making the cotton candy machine spew its wares all over everyone.  But actually, this was just a set up to spray Larry-Boy with a chemical that will shrink anyone that Larry cuts down.

And over the next few days, The Alchemist's partner, Mother Pearl, goes out in disguise and tricks Larry-Boy into talking bad about a police office and even his friends.  As he does, a puff of smoke leaves him, surrounds the person he was talking about, and shrinks them.  The Alchemist is always there to capture them.  Will Larry realize what is happening in time to save his friends and the town of Bumblyburg?  Or has his ego gotten out of hand?

It's the third one, and already the formula is obvious.  Larry-Boy starts out with a problem and the villain exploits it.  He gets a lesson in his Superhero class from Master Bok Choi and doesn't see how it applies until the very end when it saves the day.  I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, but it would be nice to see a little variety in their stories.

While there are some jokes here, it isn't as well done as the regular VeggieTales line.  These are obviously aimed more at young kids and less at the entire family.  The moral is also a little heavy handed again.

On the other hand, I have gotten used to see these characters are 2D animation instead of their traditional computer forms.  That was probably the biggest change to get used to in the beginning.  Having the correct voices for the characters certainly helps.  And I am wondering why some of the characters created for this series never made it back over to the computer animated series.  Vickie, the photographer at the newspaper, The Daily Bumble, would have made another good female character, for example.

Some of the early villains have had the potential to frighten young kids.  That's not the case here.  The Alchemist and Mother Pearl are villainous without being at all frightening.  Even a monster Larry-Boy has to fight near the end isn't that bad.

The final 8 minutes of the half hour DVD is the short "Cuke of All Trades" that finds Larry-Boy trying to watch two stores for friends at the same time.  But both the bakery and the candle shop are suddenly overrun with customers.  Of the shorts so far, this is probably my least favorite because the jokes seemed obvious, although I'm sure kids will love it.

There's a lot of potential with the Larry-Boy character, and I see how these traditionally animated shows could have been a lot of fun.  It's sad they didn't take off or have nearly the following to develop into a longer series.  Leggo My Ego is just average and shows why these never quite caught on.