THE BANANA SPLITS MOVIE (2019)

Studio:      Warner Bros.
Director:    Danishka Esterhazy
Writer:      Jed Elinoff, Scott Thomas
Producer:  Adam Friedlander
Stars:     Dani Kind, Steve Lund, Celina Martin, Finlay Wojtak-Hissong, Sara Canning, Romeo Carere, Maria Nash, Eric Bauza

Review Score:

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Summary:

A boy’s birthday celebration erupts in chaos when the animatronic animals of a children’s TV show attack their studio audience.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

To celebrate the boy’s birthday, Beth brings her young son Harley to Taft Studios for a live taping of Harley’s favorite TV show, The Banana Splits. Beth and Harley are accompanied by Beth’s second husband and Harley’s disinterested father Mitch, Harley’s 19-year-old half-brother Austin, and Harley’s friend Zoe, who reluctantly joins at the last minute even though she has outgrown the program.

The Banana Splits, which consist of animatronic puppets Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper, and Snorky, nearly run over Harley in their Banana Buggy when they arrive at the studio. Harley is disappointed when his favorite Banana Split, Snorky, doesn’t wave back.

Lead puppeteer Karl installs new software in the robots.

Austin takes an interest in audience wrangler Paige. Austin convinces Paige to allow his family backstage after the show so Harley can meet The Banana Splits.

Promoted to VP of Programming, Andy informs producer Rebecca that he is cancelling the successful show because he doesn’t like it. The Banana Splits’ human sidekick Stevie overhears Andy discussing the cancellation while getting drunk backstage.

Bingo attacks Andy in the green room. Drooper knocks over Stevie while taping the current episode’s ending.

Stevie drunkenly taunts the puppets backstage. Drooper murders Stevie by shoving a large lollipop down his throat.

Overzealous Instagram influencers Thadd and Poppy, overbearing stage dad Jonathan, and Jonathan’s daughter Parker join Austin, Harley, Zoe, and Paige for the meet and greet after the show. Mitch goes outside to call his mistress Kara. Beth follows after him. Thadd and Poppy sneak away to do a livestream from backstage. Jonathan and Parker go off in search of the producer. Paige follows after Jonathan while Austin follows Paige, leaving Harley and Zoe alone with the puppets. Disappointed that Snorky isn’t with the other three Banana Splits, Harley and Zoe go searching for him.

Beth discovers Mitch’s affair when she interrupts his phone call. Austin joins the contentious confrontation that ends with Mitch storming away to his car.

Jonathan and Parker find Rebecca in her office so Parker can perform an impromptu addition. Rebecca reveals the show was cancelled, so Jonathan and Parker go looking for Andy instead.

While streaming over a cellphone, Thadd proposes to Poppy on Fleegle’s Magic Shop set. Fleegle interrupts by sawing Thadd in half in a magician’s box. Poppy collapses in shock.

Harley and Zoe enter. Before they can see Thadd’s severed body, Fleegle agrees to escort the two kids to Snorky.

In the green room, Drooper severely burns Jonathan’s face with a lighter and aerosol can. Bingo captures Parker.

Outside, Snorky chases after Mitch in a Banana Buggy. Mitch makes it to the security booth, but discovers the guard inside decapitated. Snorky runs over Mitch.

Following a heartfelt conversation about his mother being too overprotective since her first husband died, Austin and Beth discover Harley and Zoe are missing when they regroup with Paige and Rebecca. Everyone learns the puppets went haywire when Jonathan staggers in to say The Banana Splits attacked him.

Bingo captures Austin on a jungle set. Beth rescues Austin by throwing Bingo from a suspended catwalk. Beth and Austin then find Poppy mourning over Thadd’s body, but Beth convinces Poppy to join their search for the children.

Fleegle takes Harley and Zoe to Karl’s workshop where they are imprisoned alongside Parker. Karl, whose fingers were cut off, claims the network’s cancellation caused his creations to become homicidal. Drooper returns with Bingo’s broken body. During the distraction, the three kids free themselves, fight Karl, and lock him up in their place.

Fleegle and Drooper kill Rebecca and Jonathan after forcing them to run the Sloppy Time obstacle course.

Snorky confronts Harley, Zoe, and Parker. Harley befriends the puppet by performing the Snorky Shuffle dance.

Drooper pursues Paige. Austin rescues Paige. The two of them join Beth and Poppy in confronting Karl, who claims there is no way to stop The Banana Splits, but adds that they will not harm children. Poppy stays behind in Karl’s workshop while Beth, Austin, and Paige enter underground tunnels through a hatch.

Poppy finds blueprints for an unfinished fifth puppet that would have been female. Poppy dons the costume. Having become mentally unstable and blaming Karl for Thadd’s death, Poppy kills Karl.

Beth, Austin, and Paige discover a body pile that confirms the puppets murdered all of the adult audience members. The trio then makes their way to a stage where Fleegle and Drooper terrorize captive children by immolating Stevie’s corpse and tearing Andy apart in front of them.

Snorky brings Harley, Zoe, and Parker into the audience. Paige helps the children escape while Beth stays behind to fight Fleegle and Drooper. Austin rescues his mother by destroying Fleegle. Harley tosses Beth a pop-up wand that Austin gifted him for his birthday and Beth uses it to destroy Drooper.

Beth, Austin, Paige, Harley, and Zoe return to the underground tunnels to escape. Having been repaired, Bingo stops them. Snorky saves everyone by sacrificing himself to destroy Bingo.

The traumatized children recover outside with the police. Austin and Paige kiss. Mitch staggers back to Beth and apologizes for his affair, but Beth slaps him and demands a divorce. Left behind alone, Mitch is run over by Poppy driving a tram carrying the remains of The Banana Splits.

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Review:

“The Banana Splits Movie” spun out of a fantastic “what if?” Producers essentially asked, what if we took a campy cult kid’s show that hasn’t been relevant in 50 years and turn it into a splattery slasher aimed at Syfy viewers with the midnight munchies for a no-holds-barred B-movie?

The only thing more amusing than that silly setup is the irrational outrage it ignited online. When a tongue-in-cheek trailer dropped unexpectedly, with it came one-star reviews from Amazon users who, having not seen the film mind you, penned eye-rolling comments like, “what nut thought The Banana Splits should be turned into killers?” and, “as an adult, I HATE this movie, whoever green-lighted this should be drugged with LSD and forced to watch this travesty repeatedly.”

“The Banana Splits” ran only 31 episodes between its 1968 debut and 1970 cancellation. The show, produced by cartoon titans Hanna-Barbera and featuring early puppetry from H.R. Pufnstuf icons Sid and Marty Krofft, continued airing in scattered syndication until 1982. This means anyone angry about a rated-R retooling is a.) between 45-60 years old and b.) getting up in arms over a property that’s been dormant for four decades outside of a throwback t-shirt available at Target. Toxic fandom makes its hay on accusations of ruined childhoods. But if the mere existence of “The Banana Splits Movie” raises your blood pressure, you have definitely exiled yourself into “get off my lawn” territory.

“The Great Space Coaster” was the equivalent of “The Banana Splits” for me growing up. If producers proposed putting that show into a sequel, I’d fully support the idea. In fact, now I insist on seeing Baxter the clown and Gary Gnu turned into serial killing comic cannibals.

I’ve never played Five Nights at Freddy’s. However, my first summer job when I was sixteen was working at Chuck E. Cheese. To preemptively answer the question that always follows, yes, I was the mouse. More apropos of the topic at hand, I can confirm that cleaning up after closing in a darkened dining room while Jasper T. Jowls and Mr. Munch “sleep” in the neck-high balcony above is every bit as weird as you probably imagine.

So when it comes to animatronic animals run amok, you’d better believe I’m absolutely on board. I also back “The Banana Splits Movie’s” demented decision to skewer Saturday morning sweetness with a flighty fright flick. If you have good humor when it comes to gore-coated goofs, you too will flip the film an upward thumb while the sour grapes crew bitterly erects a bunch of middle fingers.

As in reality, The Banana Splits show in the movie is a live-action sketch series. Except here it tapes in front of a studio audience and replaces animated intermissions with Nickelodeon game show bits where kids run goo-filled obstacle courses. It would be far more practical to have the four main furries, Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper, and Snorky be actors in theme park costumes. Instead, they’re electronically complicated sports team mascots running on new software that’s about to elevate the Defcon level to “Westworld.”

Harley is The Banana Splits’ biggest fan. He’s arguably too old to idolize an anthropomorphic elephant. His disinterested dad calls the show “stupid.” Even the friend forced to come along thinks it’s time to move on to more mature interests lest Harley risk being bullied. Nevertheless, Harley’s mom puts together a small group to celebrate the boy’s birthday at an episode taping and Harley could not be any further over the moon to see his favorite fictional characters in person.

Finlay Wojtak-Hissong plays the obliviously innocent little boy practically perfectly. As everyone else cocks eyebrows, Harley daintily dances in front of his TV while waving a star-topped wand out of synch to the theme music. This quick hit of characterization excellently embodies that awkward age of being “into” something past its prime, yet also being late in realizing that you’ve already outgrown it (a concept ironically lost on adults filling their diapers over this movie). It’s simultaneously charming and heartbreaking to see Harley so eagerly enthusiastic and then confusedly crushed when Snorky fails to return a wave when they first meet. Like Ralphie with Annie’s secret message about Ovaltine, we’ve all been this kid learning to incorporate disappointment into our childhood.

Harley’s mother Beth is on her second husband, Mitch. Mitch raised Harley, but Harley’s older half-brother Austin has a contentious relationship with the man while also challenging the way Beth overprotects their family. “The Banana Splits Movie” doesn’t need all of this melodrama clogging up exposition. On the other hand, I’ll give a golf clap for electing to inject a loose arc that thematically binds lead players while also paralleling their predicament’s progression when the puppets become predators.

Aside from Beth and a few other exceptions, “The Banana Splits Movie” makes a majority of the adults cartoonishly annoying so we can snicker at their death scenes with plenty of detachment. Oh, and don’t fret about the kids. The Banana Splits only capture the children and although they are subjected to some macabre milieus, they don’t suffer direct physical harm.

I’m surprised two writers receive credit because the film features a brand of undemanding writing that couldn’t have mandated more than four drafts over a two-week period. Ordinarily, that can be a problem that brings boredom into formulaic horror. For “The Banana Splits Movie,” it’s an understood, acceptable aesthetic. Based on premise alone, you inherently suspend disbelief simply by pressing Play in the first place. Plotting makes next to no sense, yet the overall atmosphere remains so delightfully dopey, there’s no incentive to be irritated by tropes like ridiculous reasons for everyone to continually split up as the studio becomes slice-and-dice central.

This is “take it or leave it” entertainment that’s more than a little lowbrow. When I see an oversized orange Muppet monstrosity swooping Predator-style onto a jungle set to kidnap a teenager, I’m choosing to take the movie as the lightly loony lark it was always intended to be. Apply common criticisms and you just join the people pointlessly pouting over misappropriating an old show the rest of the world had forgotten about. To them I say, tra-la-la, la-la-la-la, tra-la-la la-la-la-la-la!

Review Score: 75

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