Potter Puppet Pals

Comedy – Sketch | Parody

Created by Neil Cicierega

Starring

• Neil Cicierega
• Emmy Cicierega
• Alora Lanzilotta

Synopsis: Characters loosely based from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series create mischief and wreak havoc on each other…as puppets.

Review:

In Neil Cicierega’s version of Hogwarts (School of Magical Mystery Tour) everything is a little left of centre. Harry Potter is a conceited ass hole, Ron Weasley might be a little gay, and Dumbledore rarely wears clothes. Harry, Ron and Hermione play pranks on each other, Snape or Voldemort while Dumbledore flicks in and out to bestow wisdom that may or may not be brought on by smoking a lot of weed. He seems pretty high.

Potter Puppet Pals (PPP) has a lot of potential given not only the limitless qualities of the magical world, but also in its use of puppets and, initially, animation. By having non-human subjects, the series is able to play on extremes and shock humour. The first two episodes (Bothering Snape and The Trouble at Hogwarts) released around 2006 (an educated guess, as it appears Cicierega has removed them from his YouTube account, but keeps them on the PPP website) do so with full flair at a perfect pace and length for our bite-sized entertainment society. Future episodes, however, seem to run long and the jokes rely on swearing, the stupidity of characters or characters defecating in their own trousers.

After the two first episodes, Cicierega traded in the cute cartoons for real puppets. Although the puppets are impressively detailed, the technical aspects of the episodes lacked as clean animation turned into grainy footage and awkward edits. But as the series has carried on, the quality has increased, as has the popularity; the YouTube view counts continue to climb for episodes new and old, garnering an average of 1.5 million hits for each released within the last year. I just can’t understand why he pulled away from the animation in the first place.

PPP plays well into its target audience – Harry Potter fans that enjoy TV shows like Family Guy. Cicierega does an impressive job at giving voice to every character, and for the past five years PPP has provided live shows as entertainment at the annual Yule Ball in Cambridge, MA (kind of a big deal.)

The series misses the initial humour it played on, making fun of death and crisis, but it’s still got some good lines and, since it isn’t serialized, is fun to pick a random episode from when there’s 10 minutes to spare. It can be a little hard to figure out the order of episodes anyway, as their listed on the PPP website, Cicierega’s personal YouTube channel and the PPP YouTube channel all uploaded and arranged in different orders.

Cicierega is a smart creator though – the most recent episode in particular was released specifically stating that its content was due to comments left on previous episodes. He listens to the fans and realizes that without them, there’s no point to the series, which is a lot more than can be said for some shows floating around the web.

Overall, Potter Puppet Pals is good for a quick laugh but isn’t worth fighting your little brother for the computer over. And I’d like to know where I can get a set of Potter puppets for myself.

3/5