Review: Netflix’s "Disenchantment" Doesn't Cast a Spell Like "The Simpsons"

Matt Groening’s Netflix show Disenchantment is just too long and not as funny as it could be. D’oh.

Netflix has earned a reputation for resuscitating brilliant cult favourites that were either unloved in their own time, or never got the chance to live up to their potential. I’m talking Arrested Development, Wet Hot American Summer and Mr. Show (AKA With Bob and David). They also revived Adam Sandler’s career, though, it doesn’t meet that other criteria.

Unfortunately, Netflix hasn’t been as patient with some of their originals, cancelling The Get Down and Everything Sucks after one season.

Last month, Netflix VP original content Cindy Holland explained that Everything Sucks ultimately got the chop because most viewers who started watching the show simply didn’t get around to finishing it.

So, it raises an interesting conundrum for users, knowing Netflix sees exactly what you’re watching and when you stop watching it: Do you power through programs you’re not really enjoying, to fool the streaming service into making a second season that has hopefully ironed out the wrinkles? Or, do you stop watching when you’re bored and, you know, get on with your life?

You’ll face this very test over the weekend, when Matt Groening’s new animated project Disenchantment debuts. (This review is based on the first six episodes of the first season.)

Groening, of course, is the co-creator of The Simpsons, which will never be cancelled, and Futurama, which was cancelled and uncancelled and then cancelled again in 2013. Catching up to the lifetime run of The Simpsons is unlikely, but his latest would be lucky to just match Futurama’s seven seasons. Frankly, viewers may not even get through episode one, which runs for 35 minutes and feels like 75.

Disenchantment takes place in the fictional medieval kingdom of Dreamland, where rebellious Princess Bean (Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson) rejects the husband selected by her overbearing king dad (Joe DiMaggio). Admittedly, their foiled wedding leads to one of the show’s best, grimmest gags. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a drag, with Bean under the influence of a literal demon named Luci (Eric Andre) urging her to do bad things. She ends up meeting a sweet runaway elf, named Elfo (Nat Faxon, speaking at a near-shriek), who acts as her proverbial angel. Buuut, inevitably, he’s peer pressured into causing trouble during their olde-timey adventures too. And it goes on like that episode after episode.

You can’t fault the vocal performers. Jacobson, in particular, is a delight as the reckless Bean, who has a spectacular, drunken monologue about starting her own band in the third episode, and who is animated in the same pig-nosed, overbitten style of The Simpsons. Andre, as well, is expectedly anarchic. And the eagle-eared of you will recognise DiMaggio, Billy West, Maurice LaMarche, Tress MacNeille and David Herman, all from Futurama, as fellow citizens of Dreamland. There are also some welcome cameos from British comics like Rich Fulcher and Noel Fielding (as an amiable executioner).

Unfortunately, to get to Noel Fielding, you’ve got to get to episode five, and that may prove a stretch. With episodes lasting for 30 minutes (and beyond), Disenchantment's stream of jokes has a much higher failure rate than its 22-minute cousins, even with writers from Futurama (and Australia’s own Briggs). It similarly fails—and never strives, I suppose—to reach the emotional highs or inventive storytelling achievements of those prior Groening efforts. Despite its wickedly dark sense of humour—key quote: "Don’t be modest; you killed these mentally ill siblings fair and square"—and unreal setting, it even winds up falling short of its biggest influences: Rick and Morty and Adventure Time.

Netflix has already commissioned a second batch of episodes, so there’ll be more Disenchantment no matter what. Maybe by episode 20, the show will have become fully realised. Still, I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to hang around to see.

If it doesn’t get a second life, at least we’ll always have the lively theme song by Mark Mothersbaugh, which opens each ep with giddy promise. "Maybe this time," I kept thinking…

2.5/5

Disenchantment Season 1 debuts on Netflix 17 August 2018.

Header Image: Netflix