Homestar Runner www.homestarrunner.com Review

Overall Rating

Funny in its time
Interesting
Well animated
Original
An underdog (became popular without any advertising)

The new toons aren't very funny
Slow to update

Probably at least once in your life (if you're in between the ages of 8 and 30 at least) you've probably heard about some web site known as Homestar Runner. When the person explains about how it's about an armless stupid jock whitey and a violence obsessed masked boxing-glove-wearing short guy that never wears a shirt, you probably thought, "What they heck?" But I'm here to tell that Homestar Runner was a god among urls in it's time.

I'll be the first to admit, Homestar Runner has really slowed down recently. It's not nearly as funny, and the toons are getting slower and slower releases, to the point where now they have a Strong Bad email out every month or so, and that's if they aren't working on another toon. But who can blame them? Putting out brilliant toon after brilliant toon gets hard after a while. They've started running out of ideas.

No matter though, the old stuff twangs at those funny bone strings like no other can do. The magic happens in a little county in the USA. Occupants? Only a couple of really weird but funny cartoon characters. Chiefly among them are the aforementioned Homestar Runner and Strong Bad. But there's also the bubbly balloon like Pompom. The ultra left wing (or I'm assuming) humanitarian, vegetarian, dating-Homestar-itarian, animal rights activist Marzipan. The literally blue, sleazy vendor Bubbs, and last on the list but certainly not the least, the southern, English garbling, optimistic, even occasionally rapping and break dancing Coach Z.

The main source of toons on this site are when people send real emails to the producers and they have their er lovable Strong Bad receive and answer them. Questions range from "How do you type with boxing gloves on?" to "I'm in a metal band and we need help with lyrics!" Granted the last one wasn't a question, but I think he let it slide. At the start the questions were answered in a typical email format. Strong Bad would read the question, type and dictate his answer and that was it. Slowly though, they advanced into him actually "launching" into a toon to examine or find his answer in the "real" world. One asked for Strong Bad to draw him a dragon. And so the most famous Strong Bad email AND toon was born. TROGDOR!!! This was truly Homestar Runner at its peak.

Humor on this site can be found in many different ways. Many of them are aiming at the customs of the good ol' US of A, such as the garage sale email. Some is just blatant slapstick ("Strong Bad will you kick me?" "I can do it I will do it nine time!") The last category is the "dumb" (in a good way) approach, such as Homestar setting Strong Sad up on a date with a wall, while wearing glasses covered in yellow paint. But whatever it is, Homestar Runner can always get you a good laugh.

Homestar in its day was lovable, laughable, and enjoyable. I just hope it can go back to those times and get out of the present doldrums.