Age of Coming.
This is a non-spoiler review for all 10 episodes of Netflix's new animated series, Big Mouth - premiering Friday, September 29th.
Netflix's latest foray into Hard-R animation, following two seasons of the decent F is for Family (the much better BoJack Horseman isn't quite as lewd or crude), comes to us from the mind of comedian Nick Kroll (The Kroll Show, Parks and Rec). Along with co-creators Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett, Kroll has ushered in a hyper-raunchy, borderline uncomfortable cartoon centered around the onset of sexual feelings and confusion in middle school.
Big Mouth, named after Kroll's own self-labeled physical feature, is a suburban school yarn mixed with surreal elements like - you know - talking sperm, talking genitals, basketball playing penises, penises that look like Michael Stipe, dogs that look like Nathan Fillion, and...let's called them rampaging dildos. Oh, and enough sexuality explicit language that, during one of the season's occasional fourth wall breaks, a character actually questions if some of this could be considered child pornography.
Another interesting meta-moment comes when one of the characters seems to imply that Netflix not only encouraged this series to be go-for-broke obscene, but demanded it -- as part of the deal. And honestly it's within this sheer abundance of d***s and b***s and butts and various swirling body parts that Big Mouth tends to falter. Sometimes Big Mouth's profanity accentuates the joke but often it dampens the humor and messaging with overkill. There are moments throughout, when a scene is about to end, when you can feel the show try to force one more raunchy gag into the mix. One final go-home slice of random profanity. It can make you wince.
Kroll stars as Nick (a fictionalized version of his middle school self) while comedian John Mulaney (co-creator of Oh, Hello with Kroll) plays Nick's BFF Andrew. It takes a few episodes to feel the heart of the show as, from the get go, you're beset on all sides by jarring sexual themes and imagery within the context of wee children, but once you've got a few chapters under your belt, and the serialized aspects of the season kicks in, the ensemble can be endearing. Kids discovering, misunderstanding, and getting freaked out by each others', and their own, bodies is the crux of the show, and it's always present. But once you get to an episode that's about other things and not just sexual discovery the show feels fuller and more realized.
The ironic dynamic that exists between Nick and Andrew (who, presumedly, is the stand in for co-creator Goldberg) is a fun one. The shyer and less aggressive of the two boys, Andrew, is the one who experiences puberty first - a transformation and awakening that's accompanied by Will Arnett's omnipresent and heckling Hormone Monster. Because if this, though still friends, Nick and Andrew experience different journeys. Nick wants to experience the mature feelings and bodily changes that Andrew is feeling, but he's left in the lurch, forced to witness his friend become a slave to new urges. Of course, Andrew, of the two, is the kid who doesn't want these newfound superpowers - which are both a curse and a responsibility.
As is sometimes the case with animated comedies, a lot of the side characters are fairly one note. They pop in and do their one piece of schtick with varying degrees of success. As Andrew's self-absorbed kvetching father, Richard Kind will scream about scallops and diarrhea and such. Coach Steve, voiced by Kroll, is the resident lonesome (lovable?) lunatic. Jordan Peele gives loud inappropriate advice to Nick and Andrew as the ghost of Duke Ellington. The laughs tend to be more miss than hit, but you'll definitely chuckle on occasion. The MVP of these supporting players is Maya Rudolph's Hormone Monstress - a sultry singing female version of Arnett's puberty demon.
Jessi Klein, Jenny Slate, and Jason Mantzoukas round out the rest of the main kid crew - with other voices this year being provided by Kristen Bell, Alia Shawkat, Kat Dennings, Chelsea Peretti, Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, and more. Some voice fellow classmates and kid contemporaries while others voice, um, sex pillows, chatty vaginas, and/or plates of scallops. Again, the story isn't shy about soaring into sex-fueled surreal landscapes and interludes that are meant to drive home various points about adolescent life being a swirling torrent of confusion and anxiety, but occasionally you'll wonder just how much of it is allegory and how much of it is actually supposed to be happening for real. There's no clear set of rules for how the craziness works so you'll get an episode where a kid accidentally gets an inanimate object pregnant (yes, there's a lot of sex happening with inanimate objects here) and then has to deal with, seemingly, real life consequences.
The Verdict
There's a loving and warm heart underneath all of Big Mouth's gross-out humor - which occasionally goes overboard to the point of becoming numbing and self-defeating. The series starts out feeling like a bit flat and lazily conceived but once the episodes start diving a little deeper into the kids' lives (which can dabble in dysfunction and abuse in some cases), empathy kicks in and the show blossoms into something more than a parade of genitalia. The voice work is strong and inspired, the friendships are believable and, for the most part, the lewdness is clever.
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