That was an excellent one.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This attempt to mix history with comedy in cartoon form didn't quite work, though not for lack of trying. Tom Ruegger and Co filled the series with too many characters (as listed in the opening song by Ruegger and the late Richard Stone) - Father Time, Big Fat Baby, Loud Kiddington, Pepper Mills, Charity Bazaar, Aka Pella, Toast, Miss Information, Froggo, World's Oldest Woman... and they all basically had to take a back seat to whichever people, places and things were at the heart of that particular episode. Of course, "Animaniacs" and "Tiny Toon Adventures" had a ton of characters as well, but they weren't all seen every week.This was pretty funny, but in at least one instance (the episode featuring slavery and the Underground Railroad) the need to educate overtook the need to entertain - I think this had more to do with the subject matter than the country it was in, as the series was overall just as irreverent about American history as the rest of the world's. But it did strike an odd note. (And this may be the only animated series to turn Lizzie Borden into a comic figure - nothing like playing a murderess for laughs to win over the kiddies, eh?)"Histeria!" is neither the best animated series from Warners (although it's still better than "Road Rovers" or "The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries") nor the best historical animated series (France's "Once Upon A Time..." shows beat this hands down), but until I get a chance to see if the "Schoolhouse Rock" shows are as good as they reportedly are this'll do. And it certainly beats "The Magic School Bus," even if the latter does have Little Richard singing the theme song.

History - er, histery, er . . histeria.It's frightening to think kids might actually consider a stand-up comic's take on historical events as historical. It's a broad humor show - and nothing more. History is only history if it can be collapsed into a stand-up routine. That's not history. That's a joke - stale like a joke, offensive like some jokes, not always so perceptive, like some jokes, and just wrong, like many jokes. That's . . Histeria, the television show.It's quick-cut, faced paced, like any old WB cartoon from the theatrical trailer days. The road runner is up again, and off. The coyote runs into yet another mountainside with the tunnel painted on it. Yuck, and hy-hyuck, once more. That's Histeria, with pretensions to being something more.At best, it succeeds not as history - at best a sort of strangled, watered down, out of context and awfully politically correct history (and that's not history) - but as a commentary on current trends and issues. Perhaps the folks at this show would hold the old various Jay Ward cartoons in contempt, for the poor animation. But Histeria is most hysterically funny when it calls upon the adult audience to pick up such an 'inside' reference, as was the stock in trade of the old Jay Ward shows.Histeria tries to be 'smart' in that way. And sometimes it succeeds. But how smart, really, can an overtly politically correct cartoon stand-up routine really be when it has aspirations to be part of some 'learning channel'?

With it's mix of semi-educational history lessons, humor, music, and spoofs of contemporary culture, "Histeria!" is quite an amusing cartoon. Episodes which spoof current and classic television shows abound here as well. The only trouble is, some of them seem over the heads of it's intended audience. Does the average young viewer understand why Thomas Jefferson is played out like "The Jack Benny Program?" Do they know that Abraham Lincoln's voice is supposed to be a parody of Johnny Carson? Are they familiar enough with the Rat Pack, to understand why Frank Sinatra & company are playing Julius Caesar, Brutus, etcetera, or Evita Peron sounds like Charo? Ernest Hemingway and Leonardo da Vinci as Batman?Not to say that it isn't a funny, and educational show, because it is. I particularly like scenes when actual quotes, with hand-written signatures of historic figures are briefly imposed on the screen. The show only ran for one season, and that's too bad, because there's so much more ground for a show like this to cover such as the world since 1945(Okay, I know they've done it already, but not enough), and the tales of the Great Depression that our grandparents never told us about such as the 1932 Bonus March, or how communists and fascists tried to take advantage of the despair of the period.Anti-media zealots like Peggy Charren, and Terry Rakolta, frequently complain about the content of children's television, claiming that it'll turn kids into violent, illiterate sociopaths, and urge parents to watch with their kids. This show certainly won't give people like them anything to worry about, and may even get them interested in U.S. and World History. But if you have kids, be sure to watch it with them anyhow, because some of what they see here will require more explanations from you.

Histeria is a wonderful cartoon that takes well known history stories and makes them entertaining! History was never this fun! Of course, the stories are much different from before, so the show isn't the most educational show ever, but it makes up for that with its entertainment. The writers were obviously thinking "What would it be like if Napoleon and Alexander the (Not So) Great lived in the society we live in today?" This is one of the reasons this show is so entertaining. It mixes normally boring history lessons with everyday characters and life situations of the present. This makes the show very entertaining. Definitely worth a look!