Product Review

Norman Moosewell, volume 8 of the collected Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, is another fine outing from Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose. Discovered by football scouts, Bullwinkle joins the team at Wossamotta U., where Bullwinkle's throwing arm turns the team into an unbeatable juggernaut. As the odds in their favor rise at bookie joints everywhere, Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale decide it's time to cash in by fixing a game so that Wossamatta U. will lose. The story line is not only the usual rapid-fire compilation of cheap jokes and painful puns, it's also an impressively scathing satire of college sports. Interspersed between episodes of this story are Peabody's Improbable History, in which Professor Peabody and his assistant Sherman go back in time to help Shakespeare with the debut of Romeo and Zelda; a Fractured Fairy Tale about the son of Rumplestiltskin; and an exceptional Dudley Do-Right story in which Dudley becomes convinced that Snidely Whiplash is his younger brother--and decides that what Snidely really needs is the love and discipline the villain never got in childhood. With Rocky & Bullwinkle, even the exposition is entertaining. The animation may be slapdash, but the wit is always crisp. --Bret Fetzer