Review: Grimsburg “The Funaways”

Overview

In an attempt to stop Marvin from forgetting about him, Stan and Dr. Pentos create a diabolical plan staging his disappearance.

Our Take

The Funaways refers to a group of kids who’ve grown up and established a bit of a homeless colony outside of town with an attitude akin to Lost Boys. In this instance, Stan’s new home is actually a lot of fun and, I think, actually gives us a pretty good idea for a backdoor pilot of some kind.

Fans of The Batman will enjoy Dr. Pentos’ lame-ass riddles as he leads Marvin on a merry chase to try and track down his son and I think kudos needs to be had to the legendary Alan Tudyk who does a lot of heavy lifting tonight as the voice of not only the aforementioned music teacher but also Stan’s imaginary friend Mr. Flesh who, admittedly, is probably funnier in small doses as his insistence on cracking jokes from a lackluster dialogue wears on me after a bit.

Ross Marquand guest stars in this tale that also features Marvin and Harmony getting it on and I’m all here for it. We don’t get enough cartoonishly-devilish love scenes in primetime animation and I think Grimsburg deserves some recognition for trying to turn up the thermometer a bit. I would have liked to have seen more of “The Jenga Killer” because that sounded like a comical idea, but as the plot of the episode progressed and got better in the 3rd act I thought the payoff at the end was satisfactory enough.

Nothing is blowing me away about the series but the Andrés Du Bouchet-written effort tries it’s best to not be a typical paint-by-numbers tale about the kid running away and just does enough to get a win here.