Review for WWE Slam City

When the Finisher (who looks like a cross between Kane and Bane) fires all the WWE Superstars, they all have to find a 'real' job. This all takes place in the stop motion world known as Slam City.

The jobs the Superstars find include John Cena working in a garage, helping Big Show fit in his car, Alberto Del Rio in a cafe, sorting out Damien Sandow's coffee and making Steve Austin's... you guessed it... Stone Cold.

Randy Orton working in a zoo, Kane in a school cafeteria, before being replaced by Santino making pizza, CM Punk selling ice cream and dealing with The Miz, Rey Mysterio as a crossing guard, Sheamus working in a cinema and dealing with Brock Lesnar disrupting the film and Mark Henry as a Kids' Pizza House Penguin mascot and having to split a pizza with The Rock.

These are all shown as mixed sketches of a few minutes or less in the style of a Looney Toons cartoon. But if only they had a glimmer of the comedy of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons it would make this a lot more entertaining. But it is not. I watched the full hour and did not laugh once, did not smile, in fact for the most part I just groaned as I heard Randy Orton say he 'hears voices', CM Punk declare his ice cream is 'the best in the world' and many other groan-worthy jokes that I didn't even get.

The comedy is obviously aimed at under 8s, but even they will have seen better jokes elsewhere. Constant repetition of the same jokes, such as people being thrown up to space to freeze? I'm not sure why this is funny, but they repeated this at least four times each time being a little less funny than the last. The rapid fire nature of the show and the jumping between characters means that you do not have a chance to breathe to even appreciate the situation that is being set up. You have Kane working in a cafeteria. That could be the source for a lot of comedy, but it is aimed so low and just not given any time to allow the humour to develop. Instead we are just hit over the head with the obvious jokes and none of them are very funny.

Use of stop-motion is fine, though compared to anything Aardman have done, this is crude to say the very least. The effects and the way it is presented is fine and with better material I probably would have appreciated it more. The voicework, not provided by any of the Superstars (as far as I can see) is crude imitations with possibly one of the worst impressions of Stone Cold I have ever heard. Although on the opposite side, the impression of The Rock is pretty good.

Overall, my problem with this show is that it just isn't very entertaining. The overall premise of The Finisher trying to be Champ is lost in all the bad sketches and any time they hit on something that could be funny it is forgotten in favour of something more stupid. I'm not quite sure why anyone would want to watch this or indeed what they would get out of it. It is not funny, entertaining or even at times watchable.

The disk also includes a short Making of, which is a nice look at the effort in making the film and also a quick tutorial about how to create your own stop motion animation. There is also the option to watch the whole thing again but as four separate episodes. These put all the John Cena, Alberto Del Rio, Rock and Mark Henry and Sheamus and Brock Lesnar sketches together and is probably what they should have done anyway.

Slam City has the foundations here to be a good show. The animation is nice at times, the way it is presented and even the haphazard interwoven stories is fine. What they now need to do is hire some writers to actually give them some good material to work with. Having characters fly up to space to freeze is not a good joke and certainly not one that needs to be repeated. If they can fix that one major issue then you might have a fun show. As it is, this is an awful show that doesn't deserve the care and attention the animators obviously gave it.