2025 Show
Catlan McClelland & Matthew Schlissel · United States of America · English
Jon Hamm stars in this cooky adult cartoon that is too niche for its own good
Part Family Guy and part Gravity Falls, Grimsburg’s offbeat sensibility is nothing new to adult animation fans. It’s very much in line with other shows rooted in absurdist, pop-culture-based humor. But somehow Grimsburg feels more inaccessible and frenetic, which could be good if you’ve been wanting something niche and weird, but not ideal if you want to emotionally invest in a show long-term. Grimsburg is too busy churning out jokes and zingers that it fails to properly build its characters into people you’d root for and want to see more of. And it’s a shame, because, with more character-building and fine-tuning, I can see Grimsburg becoming a cult classic among cartoon fans. But as it is, it’s too loaded with jokes for its own good.
Marvin Flute may be the greatest detective ever to catch a cannibal clown or correctly identify a mid-century modern armoire. But there’s one mystery he still can’t crack — his family. Now that he's back in Grimsburg, a town where everyone has a secret or three, Flute will follow every lead he’s got to redeem himself with the ex-wife he never stopped loving, even if it means hanging out with the son he never bothered to get to know.
"Grimsburg frequently succeeds in getting laughs at the expense of an industrial complex that’s long since jumped the shark... But Grimsburg runs into the same problem as many spoofs when it comes to cultivating emotional stakes."
— Alison Herman
In the deathly town of Grimsburg, whose slogan reads “If you lived here, you’d be dead by now,” an alcoholic detective helps solve murder mysteries while also dealing with his estranged family.
Fans of detective shows will get a kick of how they’re parodied in Grimsburg. Our anti-hero, Detective Mike Flute (Jon Hamm, who plays an alcoholic genius once more) conveniently goes into a mind palace-esque place to solve crimes, much like BBC’s Sherlock does, except there he encounters bizarre mostly unhelpful clues. Also represented are TV detectives’ uncanny ability to solve a crime by just sniffing the crime scene, their sky-high ego parading as enigma, and a truckload of unresolved family issues.
I’m pretty sure I missed half the jokes here either because they’re too obscure or just too darn fast.
Renee Cuisia is the lead curator at A Good Movie to Watch. In her spare time, she likes to watch K-dramas and analyze them to death. She's also seen You've Got Mail one too many times but is still convinced it's one of the greatest films out there.
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