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During the 80's, Robin Harris was a fairly successful comedian even though no one knows who he is and why we should we care. His crown jewel of his stand-up was his story about Bebe's kids, a tale about kids so evil that even the police are scared of them. So Paramount came calling and they wanted to make a movie based off the Bebe kids act. So they started to but Robin Harris must have read the script cause not only did he decide to not be in it, he decided to die hoping to take the movie down with him. He failed...not in dying, he's dead but the movie lived by getting Faizon Love to be Harris and animating it. So we get this complete with the tagline "It's Animation!"...fine, it's really "It's animation...with attitude!" but who am I to stand in the way of a good legend. So let's get going as we dig into Bebe's Kids.
Anyways the plot is that our hero, Robin, is at a bar talking to some blind bartender...oh, the hilarity, my sides are in pain. He's talking about his woman troubles that lead to his horrible day at Funland with....duh duh duh....Bebe's kids!!!!! A little explanation is a bit necessary, Robin meets this girl and they hit it off, then he meets her son. Eventually that turns into a promise to take her and the son to Funland but when he comes to pick them up there are the kids while their mother is out cheating on welfare, prostituting herself and buying crack. Fine, the movie never says it but Unfortunate Implications do exist here. So basically those little monsters are unleashed and destroy Funland while Robin and the chick are getting their loving on. And for additional fun, Robin's ex-wife and her sister are there to mess things up for the love story but to the movie's credit, they do avert that idiot plot where the woman meets the ex and the ex lies and the woman believes her and won't listen to the man. Well it happens here but it gets straighten out pretty quickly.
So as an animated movie, the first thing you notice is the animation. It's really horrible. The colors are all washed-out, half of the time people talk without opening their mouth which is especially true for the baby and he does open his mouth. The characters are all drawn in the most ugly way possible. And for a movie based of a comedy sketch it's not funny, all the jokes fail miserably save one but I'll get to that later. It's hyper-stylized like modern cartoons are but it doesn't work cause we don't care about this movie. Humor only comes through if we care about the characters, the situation or anything at all. Then the sound mixing is horrible, it's all a wash of sound. The voices barely come in clear, they all sound alike(I realize the minefield I'm stepping on with that) and the music is all garbled and unintelligible. The only survivor is Tone-Loc and that's cause he's Tone-Loc, the man with the most distinctive voice ever.
But there are two good moments that are kinda funny and cute. The first is when Robin threatens one of the kids that he'll beat the black out of him and he'll be lighter than Michael Jackson when he's done. That's pretty funny. The other is when robots try to kill the kids to avenge the death of one of the robots the kids destroyed...yeah, I'm serious. I was hopeful that the plot may twist into a Machine-Human war. But Robot Abraham Lincoln has to convince the Robot Overlord to put them on trial with Robot Richard Nixon as the prosecutor. Alright, this may still turn into a Machine-Human war depending on the outcome. Then the kids start to rap....oh God, it's horrible. Then they escape and there is no Machine-Human war at all!
Anyways, this movie sucks! It's not funny. It's poorly made. It's suffers from Unfortunate Implications that can be construed into Racism. The stunt casting is negated through bland voice-acting. You can't make out the difference between the music and the voices. But I am not done with this yet, there's still the game.
2/10
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So after the horror of the Bebe's Kids movie failed without a trace we all thought we were done with this. How wrong we were because this game showed up to make gamers destroy their Super Nintendo out of blind rage. And you knew you were really in trouble when the two companies produced this is Mandingo Entertainment, the ultimate slave name, and Motown Software, the ultimate R&B Record Label, and as far as I know they never made another game again. So let's dig in to one of the worst games I've played, Bebe's Kids.
Anyways, if you read any other reviews you get the horrible feeling that none of them actually saw the movie and they don't know anything about how this game relates to the movie. Of course it doesn't matter but little mistakes really take a toll on me. So anyways, this game is told exclusively through the Bebe Kids, mostly LaShawn or Kahill cause that's who you get the choice of playing. And yes, it's basically like the movie where the kids explore and destroy Funland. All the old friends are there like The Agents, Pirates and especially The Robots that could cause a Machine-Human War. But let's face it, it's a side-scrolling beat-em-up so story isn't all that important anyways.
The control is important in a beat-em-up and I can't believe how horrible the controls are. The moves are pretty standard like punch, kick, jump and some special moves. However the controls are so unintuitive that it's a pain. I mean the A button crouches and you have to crouch to get items and you stay there for a couple seconds. As for your special move, well it's a bit awkward to use. You hold L and either X or Y to do an uppercut. If you do L and B you just do a regular punch cause B's your jump button. Yeah, you can't jump if you hold any other button and I won't even discuss jumping on the scenery...too much pain. Then you spinning jump kick is pretty much L + X/Y...in the air and considering how bad the jumping is...sigh. And I know all this through the failure of the Nostalgia Critic's review. Without him guiding the way I would've broken something and that would suck.
Of course there's many, many other flaws. So let's see, the graphics are bland, unappealing and washed-out...just like the movie! So maybe there's a deeper adaptation than I thought but that's giving the game too much credit. The music is equally lifeless with just a two second loop of any and all level themes. Then the fact that your normal attacks are next to useless when killing things, you literally have to punch things 10's of times before they die! There's also a unforgivably tough time limit and with the hard to kill enemies, you'll be seeing Time Over a lot. Or I would if I didn't know to that uppercutting the enemies kills them in three hits thanks to the Nostalgia Critic's failure in which we all better learn from.
But there's the crown jewel of failure that needs to be explained a lot more fully is the Haunted Mansion level that wasn't in the movie at all! So basically this level is a Find-the-Exit kind of level/maze. You have this thermometer that's your guide to finding the exit in a general sense. The problem is that this level is so poorly designed that finding your way out using logic is a lesson in futility. Don't get me wrong there is an internal logic to this place but it's logic is so contrary to normal methods of navigation that you might as well just wander aimlessly until you escape from this accursed place. And yes, the time limit is unforgivably hard.
This game sucks! The game looks like somebody puked on the screen. The music sounds like somebody puked on the synth. The controls play like somebody puked on the controller and gave it back to you expecting you to play. The enemy AI looks like somebody just puked the code and considered it finished. I mean this game is one of the worst games that I have ever played and I still have horrible flashbacks from the Home Alone games and the Rocky & Bullwinkle game.
1/10
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So yeah, this is horrible. I know Robin Harris has done other stuff like Do the Right Thing and House Party but this is pretty much what we associate with Robin Harris. And that's a damn shame.
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