‘Grimsburg’ Review: Jon Hamm Leads Fox’s Amusing but Derivative Animated Detective Comedy

Three episodes into Fox’s animated comedy Grimsburg, I found myself reflecting on how quintessentially Will Arnett this latest Will Arnett role was. A self-loathing, alcohol-abusing detective trying and failing to get back into his family’s good graces, Marvin Flute is an amalgamation of some of the actor’s biggest roles: a little bit Bojack Horseman, a little bit Lego Batman, a little bit Terry Seattle from Murderville.

But Flute isn’t actually played by Will Arnett. He’s played by Jon Hamm, for some reason doing an overt imitation of Will Arnett. I’d known it was Jon Hamm, even, and I just forgot because that’s how well Hamm nails Arnett’s voice — the gravel texture, the snappy cadence, the whining edge. As a creative choice, it’s somehow at once low-key bizarre and disappointingly predictable. Which, come to think of it, could also describe Grimsburg in a nutshell.

Grimsburg

The Bottom Line

A genial but uneven send-up of crime-drama tropes.

Airdate: 8 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 7 (FOX)
Cast: Jon Hamm, Erinn Hayes, Rachel Dratch, Alan Tudyk, Kevin Michael Richardson, Greg Chun, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Kaniehtiio Horn
Creators: Catlan McClelland, Matthew Schlissel

Catlan McClelland and Matthew Schlissel’s series is first and foremost an affectionate send-up of detective-drama tropes, from the loose-cannon cop to the small town overrun by serial killers to the convicted criminal (the reliably over-the-top Alan Tudyk as Rufius) who inexplicably works super closely with the police department. The first episode finds Flute at the tail end of a nervous breakdown at a seedy motel, before he’s called back for a seemingly unsolvable case in Grimsburg — “the town I left behind like a perfectly timed elevator fart.” The next three send Flute and his colleagues to the set of a true-crime drama, a murder mystery party derailed by an actual murder, and a sleepaway camp stalked by a slasher.

The jokes it finds therein are … kind of funny. Only a few rise to the level of an out-loud giggle, but even fewer slip into the category of actively annoying; for a pop-culture parody, the batting average could be worse. The Friday the 13th homage is cute, for instance, but offers no commentary that hasn’t already been covered to death by 1996’s Scream and its ilk (“Well, the slasher is back, and just like in horror movies, he took out the overly sexual hotties first!”). On the other hand, I chuckled in another episode to hear Lt. Kang (Greg Chun) grumble about Flute entering a surreal, nigh-supernatural “crime mind” to solve his cases: “Oh you mean you thought about clues with your brain? That’s called being a detective!”

Was one gag that much more clever than the other? Probably not. But YMMV, and in any case Grimsburg‘s sheer density of jokes means that if one doesn’t click for you, the show’s probably already moving onto the next. Not into all the “boner” talk in the storyline about a killer who stabs his victims with animal bones? Don’t worry — that chapter also crams in the violent deaths of both Bugs Bunny and the Trix Rabbit, a nonsensical argument about whether “K” is the most masculine letter, and a snarky dig at “the Jeremy Strong school of acting, where you immerse yourself in the role in a way that’s incredibly irritating to everyone around you,” in case those are more your speed.

Grimsburg‘s brighter glints of potential lie in the parts aren’t just nods to other things. The show often demonstrates an encouraging willingness to get weird, if not always the ambition to get weird enough. The family Flute keeps letting down are comprised of his wife Harmony (Erinn Hayes), a human newscaster who was raised by bears, and their son Stan (Rachel Dratch), a cape-wearing nerd whose best friend is an imaginary and vaguely evil skeleton (Tudyk again). Flute’s partner is a cyborg (Kevin Michael Richardson) and their police chief (Wendi McLendon-Covey) a conspiracy theorist who is herself part-Sasquatch.

Such an ensemble should be able to push Grimsburg to the very limits of zaniness, and perhaps eventually they will. The four installments sent to critics are just a tiny, early slice of what’s already been announced as a two-season order; if the series learns to lean into its genial cast chemistry or build out its bonkers mythology, it could yet become a more confident and unique version of itself.

For now, however, subplots about Harmony introducing Stan to his bear “grandmother” or the chief’s romance with the fish-man from The Shape of Water never really build past the initial absurdity of those scenarios. The creature rubs his nipples against the tank and pleads not to get sent back to Guillermo del Toro. But the escalation to a sillier or darker or stranger punchline about his grievance against the filmmaker, or his attraction to a fellow cryptid, never materializes. Like the Will Arnett impression that anchors the entire series, the fish-man becomes just another missed opportunity for the series to find its own voice.