• Directed by Bob Cesca
• Written by Bob Cesca, Tara Donnon, and Mike Cervantes
• Starring the voices of
  • Bob Cesca
  • Tara Donnon
  • Lauren Donnon
  • Jimmy Cesca

This’ll probably end up being a short review — there’s only so much you can say about a half-hour compilation of animations dealing with a poop-flinging simian presidential candidate. [Insert your own joke here.]

The cartoons of Monkey For President were first presented over the web through a variety of outlets (one being Rounds Entertainment’s website), and Rounds is now distributing the collected videocassette. As you may have surmised, the shorts revolve around a monkey being promoted as a presidential candidate. and if you think his chances of election are seriously undermined by being completely nonverbal, wearing a diaper, being a carrier of the dreaded “Crapola” virus, and flinging his own feces at will… brother, you don’t know American politics.

As is usually the case with these incompetent candidates, Monkey has a handler — Gavin Capuchin, an odd-looking fellow who almost looks like an Alien Grey, given his bulbous bald head and his lack of a nose (a feature held in common with many of the characters in our ongoing saga). If you want to talk about character arcs, I suppose you have to concentrate on Gavin, as the story of the campaign really turns into the story of Gavin’s descent into madness — eventually beaning people with hammers and trying to build a Double-Decker Jumbo Craft as a campaign plane.

But character arc isn’t exactly where it’s at with these cartoons, as each was a two- or three-minute downloadable animation. See Monkey find out what lurks beneath Pat Buchanan’s street clothes! See campaign ads trying to make an issue of thermonuclear flowers! See the dreaded effects of the Crapola virus, which causes violent, explosive diarrhea in its victims! See Gavin wear a beard of bees! See Al Gore imitate Monkey in trying to develop a new, more energetic persona! See poop be flung!

This is definitely entertainment for the post-South Park era, both in terms of forgiveably jerky animation, and in the massive reliance on potty humor. Does it work? Well, potty humor’s always an iffy thing, and I think seeing cartoons which were meant for separate download crunched into a single 30-minute tape does tend to wear down the humorous aspects (not that poop isn’t inherently funny, but…). On the other hand, it sure beats downloading the whole kit’n'kaboodle on dial-up. If you’re feeling a hankering for something reminiscent of (though not nearly as good as) the old “Bill the Cat for President” campaigns from Bloom County, give it a go.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 3
• breasts: 2
• explosions: 2
• episodes of poop-flinging: 2
• dancing viruses: 1
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest references: 1
• characters who actually won the popular vote but had the presidency stolen from them by an incompetent electoral process and the fiat of a severely conflicted Supreme Court: 1