But although Happy Happy Joy Joy directors Ron Cicero and Kimo Easterwood are here to salute a groundbreaking animated program, they hint from the start that there’s a darkness to this look back. To these people’s mind, the world is conspiring to remove some joy from their lives. We constantly hear adults whining that their childhoods have been ruined - either because Hollywood decided to reboot your favorite 1980s comedy with female characters or it turns out Michael Jackson was a pedophile. But in Happy Happy Joy Joy - The Ren & Stimpy Story, a documentary that just premiered at Sundance, that nostalgia is poisoned by cruel reality. Since everything else from the 1990s is being rediscovered, it seems fitting that Ren & Stimpy get its own nostalgic tribute. The show was rude, crass, weirdly sexual, demented and inappropriate. The animation often focused on gross-out imagery - infected teeth and swollen body parts - and seemed to constantly involve Ren and Stimpy losing their minds. Ren the dog was a screaming, angry psychopath who violently abused his slow-witted but adoring friend Stimpy the cat. After all, it was animated and featured a funny talking dog and cat who got into all kinds of mischief.īut within five minutes of watching any Ren & Stimpy cartoon, it was clear that this was far different than other children’s TV shows. Or maybe you’re someone who was exposed to The Ren & Stimpy Show, a program that aired on Nickelodeon in the early-to-mid-1990s, which was ostensibly made for kids. When we’re young, we all stumble upon something too dark, too weird, too mature that warps us in some way - something that we absolutely shouldn’t have gotten our hands on at such an impressionable age.
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