ADHD Presents: Lucas Bros. Moving Company

DISCLAIMER: Hello everybody! This month we are taking a different approach for our weekly Wednesday posts. Anime Club will be temporarily postponed (Consider it a Season 2, mainly just so I can catch up on my list of shows to watch) and for the month of July we will be taking a look at Fox’s Animation Domination High-Def shows. This week we have Lucas Bros. Moving Company.

LUCAS BROS. MOVING COMPANY

STARRING: The Lucas Brothers, Jerrod Carmichael, Hannibal Buress

CREATED BY: The Lucas Brothers

GENRE: Animated Comedy

YEAR: 2013

COUNTRY: United States

The stand-up comedy of New York-based identical twins Kenny and Keith Lucas (The Lucas Brothers) gets animated. After their uncle dies and leaves them his old van, the twins start a moving company called Va¢ation Boy$. Their customers are often apprehensive to hire such a scrawny duo, but the brothers like to remind them that that’s why God made two of them. A day that begins simply by moving a bed down the street may lead to the threat of city-wide catastrophe, resolved only with the help of a once-famous ’90s wrestler.

The differences between the Lucas Brothers and their real life counterparts are much more telling. The real Lucas brothers are comedians, not moving men who never seem to move anything. With an online talk show and movie roles (in the coming “22 Jump Street”), in addition to this Fox microseries, they obviously have an industriousness completely alien to their fictional counterparts, who meet the slightly surreal challenges thrown at them with a blasé indifference bordering on nihilism.

For example:

“Cut off by white tigers from the apartment house furnace they’re trying to light, Kenny says: “Keef, you know what we gotta do. We gotta give up.” Stymied while trying to break into a building guarded by Pac-Man game pieces, he declares, “Yo, Keef, looks like there’s really no way out of this one.”

“Lucas Bros. Moving Co.” meets the challenge posed by Fox’s Animation Domination High-Def format — how to do something of substance, or at least tell a story, in 10 to 11 minutes of running time — with a disarming sweetness and a clever, stylized casualness. The stories, about a haunted air-conditioner or an encounter with a Don King-like modeling agent, start small and prosaic and spiral out into wild, absurdist quests. Off-center pop-culture references — Jumanji, Jean-Claude Van Damme and A. C. Slater (Mario Lopez’s character on “Saved by the Bell”) — are made with a built-in chuckle.

The characters are mediocre role models with minimal work ethic and a knack for getting themselves into outrageous situations. Of course, that’s also what will draw teens’ attention to the show, particularly if they’re at all familiar with the stars’ comedy routines on which the content is based. Besides some fairly graphic violence (visible bone breaks, beatings, and blood) and strong language (“damn,” “ass,” and “bitch,” for example), the guys dabble in marijuana use in their copious downtime. Sexuality is present to a lesser degree, usually hinted at rather than explicitly shown.

PROS:

•  Practical Nihilism.
• Interesting comedy.
• Lucas brothers comedy gold.

CONS:

•  Unlikeable character.
• Too much marijuana use.
• Semi-interesting plot.

SCORE: 6.5 / 10

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