Hulu's Animaniacs reboot leaves a sour taste trying to comment on the world of today

https://variety.com/2020/tv/reviews/animaniacs-reboot-review-hulu-1234834878/

"The new Animaniacs, premiering on Hulu 27 years after it first debuted and in a world where the iconic WB water tower recently got an HBO Max makeover, is well aware of what its preemptive critics might think of it," says Caroline Framke. "In one of the first new episodes, for instance, Warner brothers Yakko (Rob Paulsen), Wakko (Jess Harnell) and their Warner sister Dot (Tress MacNeille) sing a peppy song about Hollywood’s conveyer belt of reboots that ends with them all sitting on a giant pile of cash while the Hulu logo blares behind them in bright neon. In the tweaked opening credits, one of TV’s most enduring theme songs gets pointed lyric updates advising mad nerds to remember that the Animaniacs 'did meta first,' and assuring the audience that this reboot is appropriately 'gender neutral' and 'ethnically diverse' for its new era. (Sure.) So while the 1993 Animaniacs was aggressively self-aware, this 2020 version feels aggressively so, even defiant, as it constantly works to justify its existence." While the original Animaniacs took shots at the entertainment industry, the new version focuses too much on the Trump era. "If you don’t think about it too hard, this Animaniacs reboot at least looks and sounds an awful lot like its predecessor, with its Looney Tunes music cues and elastic shenanigans," says Framke. "Occasionally, it hits on a smart way to update the old sensibility in a way that makes perfect sense, particularly when it switches up the animation style to explore a different world. But more often than not, its focus on how messed up the world is now gives 2020’s Animaniacs more of a sour aftertaste that keeps it from being as effervescent as it once was, and could be."