The Cuphead Show! Season 3 Review: The Crazy and Unpredictable Animated Series on Netflix
Cast: Tru Valentino, Frank Todaro, Joe Hanna, Gray Griffin
Creator: Dave Wasson
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Even just watching the first four episodes to write this The Cuphead Show! Season 3 review! we can realize the recurrence of a formula that works enough, preventing the series from making a real leap in quality (with some consequences that we will talk about later), but simply confirming everything that makes Cuphead… well, Cuphead! Some series don’t want to change the history of television. They are limited to being there, present in a vast catalogue, silent and without too many proclamations, destined – as perhaps will happen in this case – to remain short-lived niche products.
Capable, however, of capturing a small slice of enthusiasts who just want to “switch off their brains” for a while. And The Cuphead Show! the brain makes us disconnect, confirming itself, for another 11 episodes, as one of the craziest (although not entirely unpredictable) animated series that can be seen, remaining faithful to a diverse audience that favors young viewers and nonsense-loving adults.
The Cuphead Show! Season 3 Review: The Story
The first episode of the third season of The Cuphead Show! resumes, without any summary, the threads of the plot with which the previous season ended. Mugman has been kidnapped by Satanasso, the lord of the underworld, to take revenge on Cuphead, owner of the powerful and magical devil’s pitchfork. Pitchfork that he has no intention of returning. A perfect cliffhanger to pick up from, which immediately requires an extra-long episode (22 minutes, double the standard) and whose solution, from the very first minutes, determines the tone of this third season.
Perhaps even crazier and openly interested in making people laugh with its absurdities and the illogicality of situations, character behaviors and developments, The Cuphead Show! He never manages to take himself seriously, not even in the saddest and most important moments at first sight. Indeed, there is nothing important except that healthy and uncaring desire to do crazy things. The adventures of Cuphead and his brother Mugman were born to be cartoons, exaggerating every single aspect and relying on some catchphrases which, now in their third season, will make loyal viewers laugh even more. With self-contained episodes that offer stories where delirium is the only undisputed rule, fun is guaranteed. As long as you let go completely.
The Cuphead Show! Season 3 Review and Analysis
Everything is as expected, Of course, as long as we reduce this expectation to yet another fun carousel ride that the series has accustomed us to. The news that we already told in the review of the second season is almost nil, with a cast of characters that is always the same and that gains strength thanks to the past episodes. Sometimes one even gets the feeling that even that minimum of seriousness left has been definitively let go (this is the case of Satanasso, always a villain who does not take himself too seriously and who is never really dangerous, but here he is treated as a continually silly; or of Nonno Bricco who on certain occasions seems more childish than his grandchildren) in favor of laughter.
It is the strength and at the same time the greatest flaw of the series, which is not capable (or perhaps even unwilling) of leaping in quality or change just enough to give new interest to a potential renewed audience. Stuck in its madness, Inkwell Island crystallizes unchangeable, take it or leave it. The result is a series that lives in an existential limbo: now that the episodes previously ordered by Netflix are concluded and distributed, whether the series is renewed for a fourth season, or its story ends here does not change the result.
One might think that the one from The Cuphead Show! be a sad fate. An almost invisible yet truly satisfying work for those who follow it, unable to create a real passion, yet managing to make one feel missed when one is not looking at it. The credit goes to the imaginary it proposes, a tribute to the animation of the thirties and to the old cartoons where an exciting story didn’t count, but only the entertainment. Able to make the most of the possibilities of drawing and animation, distorting faces, and bodies, destroying environments and not respecting the laws of physics.
The Cuphead Show! It’s a love letter to the pure sense of fun, the one that comes from the belly and doesn’t need anything else. Maybe that’s why Cuphead and Mugman, eternal childish and messy children, prove to be the perfect comic mask, coming from a long tradition. And perhaps, that long and exhausting diatribe that cyclically returns, when they argue unable to choose between the cinema and the amusement park, is a mirror of everything we need. And what they offer us.
The Cuphead Show! Season 3 Review: The Last Words
The third season of The Cuphead Show! confirms all the qualities of the Netflix animated series inspired by the famous video game. There is nothing serious, nonsense reigns supreme and, thanks to a style that recalls the old animated short films of the thirties, the interest at the expense of everything is only one: fun. It won’t involve a large audience, but for the aficionados – despite the absence of news – that’s enough.
