Freaknik: The Musical

There isn't much in the way of quality animated material starring a black cast. Bebe's Kids was a largely forgettable movie. The Proud Family and The Boondocks are the only television shows that come to mind, with the Boondocks being the only one that's legitimately good. Freaknik is an animated special on Adult Swim that pretty much continues that tradition. Seriously, This thing aired on television about three days ago and I'm still hard pressed to remember what went on during all of this. The special is apparently based on an actual party that used to take place in the south until it was shut down. In the special, the spirit of the party is manifested as the ghost of Freaknik...who barely does anything, which is a shame because T-Pain's performance as the character is great and things would have been much better if they'd focused on his antics instead of the unrelated rap group that serve as the focus of the plot.

From what I remember they were on their way to preform in some rap contest hosted by Freaknik and along the way they run into a bunch of characters that don't really help or hinder them. Meanwhile there's a secret society of prominent African Americans (I only recognized Oprah, Bill Cosby and Al Sharpton) that try to kill Freaknik but don't really do anything interesting until the end. The plot's very scatterbrained (like most Adult Swim shows) and the jokes aren't very good, with about half of them being directed at Al Sharpton. Despite being labeled a musical, there isn't much in the way of songs here. I can only recall like 4 songs and most of them were used in the first 15-20 mins of the hour-long show. It also didn't help that outside the main theme, none of the songs are that memorable, which is disappointing because the special features a huge gathering of hip-hop and R&B artists and its apparent that they didn't utilize their resources to their full potential. Oh well, Freaknik really could have been done better. I wasn't really expecting to be blown away by this, but I did get a few chuckles of it.