A new documentary on The Ren & Stimpy Show doesn't really delve into creator John Kricfalusi's sexual misconduct scandal

The A.V. Club

Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story, which was released Friday on Video on Demand, "really has no choice but to address the recent revelation that series creator John Kricfalusi used his fame to groom and sexually exploit underage girls," says A.A. Dowd. "But just as that information has complicated diehards’ relationship to the dog-and-cat duo of their childhood ('It’s a stain on the show’s legacy,' one talking head says of Kricfalusi’s transgressions), it’s also complicated the story told by this nonfiction account. When the movie does turn to the predatory behavior, it mostly feels like an aside; one gets the distinct impression that the filmmakers had to scramble to insert some uncomfortable new material into their otherwise completed documentary. Which isn’t to say that directors Ron Cicero and Kimo Easterwood would have presented some wholly hagiographic portrait of Kricfalusi had one of his victims not come forward two years ago. Much of Happy Happy Joy Joy is made up of interviews with the creative team behind Ren & Stimpy—writers, animators, Nickelodeon executives—and there’s no shortage of anecdotes that paint Kricfalusi as an uncompromising control freak, a demanding boss, and an artist with some rather serious anti-social tendencies. All of that, of course, has been wrapped up in the creator’s whole outsider-cool, rock-star mystique since the early ’90s, when he turned the episodic adventures of a short-tempered Chihuahua and his sweetly moronic feline companion into the highest rated show on cable television." ALSO: Happy Happy Joy Joy perpetuates the problematic myth of the cult cartoon's bad-boy genius.