The Banana Splits Movie Review
First let me get something out of the way: the worst part about people who “never had a childhood”, be it because of trauma, exposure to adult content, or other personal complications, is that they can never put themselves in the shoes of people who “did”. In fact to them a bad start was probably their own idea of a normal childhood. I bring this up because even the purest and most innocent, if obscure, memory is most likely set to be corrupted once they’re actually adults as their lives were sadly never that good to begin with. The short version is that this is what The Banana Splits was for me: a diet yet nevertheless heartfelt alternative to Barney or The Teletubbies growing up which, due to that obscurity, I actually never found a way to return properly. In fact, before discovering this movie, I as far as settled for variants from The Nature Anthem by Grandaddy to this odd yet short spoof once shown in Stankervision/That Damn Show. The long version, now that it is more than clear how I wasn’t one of those with a happy start, is this: The first thing that came to my mind, as I began watching this, was a sort of disturbing yet still somehow warm honor it was that Canada had done this before albeit with their own properties. To put it plainly just as Japan showed appreciation and respect towards Evil Dead with Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell Canada essentially went a sort of reverse, if not opposite, direction with the way they had originally incorporated The Raccoon’s theme (by Lisa Lougheed) into Hobo with A Shotgun’s credits and instead went the full monty with the entire children’s show instead. Meaning Canada went even further when it came to coming to terms with the fact that this is what was left of my obscure childhood anyhow. Yet weirdly enough, much like a lot of movies released in 2019, in a way it revives it by doing so even as it slanders it, especially as the arguably post-Goonies scenes with the children bring back its innocence. I almost even want to say that this is so many movies at once. On one side we have The sort of Banana Splits movie we never got as children finally come into fruition (in an obvious yet inevitable Monkey’s paw type of deal). On the other we have what I want to say is The Cabin in The Woods meets a reverse Dr. Sleep, or if I’m to attempt to be critical it becomes a loving hate letter to The Banana Splits and their trivia/history when it enters horror movie territory. And on the final yet obvious side we have that same Jason Eisener touch channeled into a narrative 10 times more inspired, despite being just as risky and violent (especially when we come across the character Karl, who may as well be one of Hobo’s distant relatives). This especially surfaces as it blurs the line between destroying something that a fair amount (if not most) of us Americans may have found sacred and serving as some intricate albeit wonderfully surreal Westworld inspired allegory on why these things may have been best left off forgotten to begin with. That’s not to say that the horror was just done for horror’s sake as examples such as the same commentary between the way Harley cares about one of The Banana Splits in an innocent way compared to the way this one vblogger did proves that Ms. Esterhazy herself knew this show was indeed special for us despite uniting us like this. To wrap it up I really feel as though I’m finishing watching this movie as I’m finishing this review, actually. It really was a poetic mixture of triumph and tragedy to see something from one’s childhood become this. But the fact remains that once you become an adult you can’t really go back. And even if you could you’d still be in a different time. But hey, I’m a horror movie fan and they reimagined this show as one. Maybe it was just as good (or even better) as I remembered it.