Happy Tree Friends: Second Serving

with David Winn, Ellen Connell, Warren Graff
Created by Rhode Montijo, Kenn Navarro, Aubrey Ankrum
(Mondo Mini Shows)
by Chad Van Wagner

Second verse, same as the first. Which is just fine.

For those unfamiliar with Happy Tree Friends, it’s a series of minute-long animations that first gained notoriety via the Internet. Basically, there’s a group of disgustingly cute forest creatures who, after being disgustingly cute for a few seconds, get garroted, sliced, and otherwise massacred by the end of the brief segment they inhabit. Sadistic humor ain’t my bag, but the comic timing of the Happy Tree Friends is solid enough that I’m willing to overlook that.

As I mentioned in the review of the first DVD, “naughty” animation, more often than not, becomes tedious, spending so much time being “outrageous” that the outrage becomes only so much white noise. And while the first Happy Tree Friends was all, um, killer and no filler, this disc does occasionally get swamped in its generous gore (there’s a campfire sequence in particular that stops being funny about a third of the way in). Of course, I sat down and watched all two hours plus of this thing in one chunk, so that might not apply to the casual viewer, but I did the same thing with the first one…

Ah well… Happy Tree Friends: Second Serving is still quite welcome in my home. Assuming, of course, I can keep my friends from stealing this one like they did the first. Fear of theft translates into quite a compliment. Recommended.
(www.happytreefriends.com)