The animation is subpar and story lines and "humor" are predictable and stale. The main character of "Father of the Pride" is presented as the stereotypical Hollywood interpretation of the middle-class, lazy, dufus, husband/father. Most higher-thinking audiences have tired of the clichéd idiot male whose main goals in life are to drink beer and sleep. The writers' attempt to inject this otherwise clichéd character into Vegas as a lion in the Sigfreid and Roy act, to me, just doesn't work. An animated Married With Children or Rosanne is how I would best describe the humor. I gave this show a chance: I watched every episode of FOP and didn't crack a smile let alone a chuckle. For reference purposes, sitcoms I personally find funny are Seinfeld (Seasons 3 and later), The Office (Seasons 1 thru 6), and Scrubs. I'm surprised FOP made it past the 2nd episode. The animation is lackluster at best and comes across as 2-dimensional even on a high-def television. And I'm not exactly sure how they accomplished this but the voices/audio just don't seem to be in synch or don't mesh with the motion of the characters. The whole production just seems forced and unfunny. Sorry

Network: NBC; Genre: Animated Comedy; Content Rating: TV-PG (for some language and sexual content); Classification: Contemporary (Star range: 1 - 4);Season Reviewed: 1 season"(The Today Show) is the Cadillac of morning shows. It consistently beats the competition in all key demographics and Katie Couric has that good-girl-but-probably-wild-in-the-sack thing going on."A poke in the ribs at a network's insistence on referencing only NBC shows or a blatant NBC cross-promotion taken over the top to make it just sound like a joke? I'm not sure. That kind of jaw-droopingly transparent product placement and cross-promotion is all over 'Father of the Pride' - NBC's surprising venture into prime-time adult animation. Forgive me for being leery of a show apparently created by Dreamworks Co-CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, but when your show looks more like a Coca-Cola advertisement then 'American Idol', it's time to pull back a bit or risk having it be seen as a tool.Puns, name-dropping and a few recognizable celebrity names touting the star power behind the animated voices – 'Pride' has all the earmarks of a Dreamworks/PDI project. It is a semi-revolutionary series, actually the 2nd behind UPN's seen-by-nobody 'Game Over', as a weekly CGI-animated show. PDI (Dreamworks' animation house and the poor man's Pixar) having made movie hits out of such disposable fair as 'Ants', 'Shark's Tale' and the 'Shrek' series bring all those elements to TV. John Goodman! Cheryl Hines! Orlando Jones! And Carl Reiner! All selected demographically to appeal to every member of your family! You won't see them but you will hear the hell out of them! All of this blares from the show's advertising campaign to it's intro ('Viva Las Vegas' sung by Goodman himself) in true PDI fashion. 'Pride' centers around a family of exotic white lions living in a refuge in NBC standby location Las Vegas to be used in the magic shows of well-known magicians and masters of the impossible Sigfried (Julian Holloway) and Roy (voice chameleon David Herman). There is bumbling, head-of-household Larry (Goodman), his pleasing but no-nonsense wife (Hines, 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'), their son Hunter, rebellious daughter Sierra and, of course, the cranky, wild-card predictably shocking, father-in-law Sarmoti (Reiner). They're all animals in this refuge, but the joke is - I guess - that they act like people. So instead of seeing Goodman (or Kevin James) going through these familiar sitcom stories we see lions doing it. Close you're eyes and listen to Goodman and Hines talk and you will notice nary a difference. Every once in a while the show turns its premise into something creative, but even then its something like relating catnip to teenage pot experimentation. Such wit. If 'Pride' is a revival of adult animation I don't know how 'adult' it is. Even with some references to raves and animal sex I still can't imagine how this would trigger a V-chip on the strictest setting. Puns have never been considered sophisticated "adult" humor. A lot of the material in the show is funny in theory. In theory, it's funny that Sigfried and Roy sit in a chair and throw gas bombs to the ground so they can be standing when the smoke clears. It's funny in theory that everywhere they go they bring a tape recording to play their theme song. It's funny in theory that Danny DeVito provides the voice of a radical right wing lobster who faces impending doom so that Barbra Streisand can have a lavish meal. But none of this stuff is able to elicit a laugh. Most of that, I think, is a side-effect of the animation style. CGI (or Computer Generated Imagery , for all the 12-year-old's up past their bedtime who think this show is the epitome of "adult") animation is still relatively new and the show's animated actors are too stale and mechanical. They lack the nuance, comic timing and execution of a human actor as well as the intimacy that has developed with hand-drawn animation. In time this will surely be improved as hand-drawn animation has, but right now these characters are only able to execute the broadest of gags, sending a well-meaning joke veering off it's target eliciting a knowing nod, but never a laugh. To date, my favorite joke in the show has Siegfried and Roy talking to each other over intercoms and the writers giddily jump on the opportunity to reference Alexander Graham Bell's famous first words. Now, that's fun. If the rest of the show could go for more references executed with that level of subtlety instead of tired, old Sigfried and Roy gags we might have something here. From a purely visual standpoint the show is delicious to look at. The movements of the characters (as well as the "camera") inside their setting are fluid beyond anything in traditional animation. This illusion gets shattered though when you look around and really notice how bare the family house is. It recalls the bare walls of the Flintstone's home during the dawn of hand-drawn animation and reminded me that we are in the middle of something of an animation revolution. Of course, 'The Flintstones' isn't exactly known for being funny either. I doubt 'Pride', or any CGI animated series for that matter, will survive long enough in this current network-driven TV climate to make a classic. Aside from the fact that there aren't enough furries, ravers or people who think Katie Couric would be wild in the sack on the face of the Earth to keep this show alive. As long as the production cost of these type of shows remains astronomical, and networks are placing more emphasis on cost then on ratings or potential audience growth, these shows will never be able to flourish. However, I wouldn't stick my flag in the ground and fight that battle with this lame show. * ½

Father of The Pride is the creation of Dreamworks, the same people behind Shrek. But FoTP is no children's show. Its an edgey, irreverent animated comedy meant for an audience mature enough to understand it, this is why its on at a late spot. Even though there are only a handful of episodes I put this up there with the likes of The Simpsons, Dinosaurs (jim henson creation w/ a Homer-ish T-rex, his family live in the great continent "Pangea"), Family Guy and other such satires. This show speaks to many audiences; ravers, music/movie buffs, furries and just about anyone seeking a good chuckle.My two favorite episodes are "Nip Heads," where Larry and his wife Kate find "nip" (their version of weed) in their daughter Sierra's room. They ground her, she sneaks away, they think she went to a rave so they go and she's not even there. Larry and Kate eat a nip necklace they picked up at the rave not knowing what it was. They get blitz'd and make complete arses of themselves while Sierra is trying to have an interview with a teacher from the school for the gifted. Kate: Your father and I were very furried about you. *giggles* Hey Larry, check it out, I just said furried.Larry: Heh, furried... That's awesome... umm, who are you? *makes cross-eyed face*(a definite nod to those of us in the fur fandom, who incidentally, make up the most of the fanbase for this show and other anthro-animal related programs =P)The nip turns out to be the grandfather's and of course Sierra feels alienated by her parents not trusting her in the first place when she told them it wasn't her's.The second one that I really enjoyed was the episode where Hunter locked himself in the bathroom and is being ansgty (depressed), Sierra runs to the living room to tell her parents "Maaaaawwwwm! Hunter's listening to Tori Amos in the bathtub again **cut to Hunter singing along to "Silent All These Years"** The Grandfather then responds "Are we still pretending he's not gay?" The Grand-pappy lion then takes it upon himself to straighten the kid up, so he takes him out to the forest with his "tribe" to hunt elk. (kinda like the Simpsons eppie where Homer tries to make Bart shoot a dear to prove he's not homosexual) I thought that was cute, I am male Tori fan, and yes. I am gay =P Trent Reznor and Tori should hook up.There is also another ep in which the Shrek Donkey (who is a big celebrity to them) comes to town to shoot a commercial. Larry thinks that if he can get the celeb to come to Hunter's show and tell it will impress him. He accidentally kidnaps Donkey's very gay sounding stunt-double. VERY VERY FUNNY!!!!Don't watch this show unless you've got a TOLERANT sense of humor. Otherwise you will just end up hating it like all the other "liberal" television shows people like to bash, like Will & Grace and Queer as Folk. And for those who say Dreamworks shouldn't have made an adult humored show fearing they will mistake it for "wholesome" Shrek, FoTP was on at a time most of you put your kids to bed. And even still there is the V-Chip, try looking at the little rating in the corner of your TV, OKAY???-Kitsune =^.^=

I just started watching this show, and I think it's pretty funny. The animation is nothing to get excited about, but it's satisfactory. Personally, I think the writing is snappy, a bit edgy, amusingly crude at times, and absurd. If you're looking for family entertainment you're going to be disappointed, but if you're looking for slightly more adult oriented satire, I think FATHER OF THE PRIDE is good stuff. My favorite parts generally involve Siegfried and Roy, their extremely pampered outlook on the world, and the ridiculous situations they get themselves in. My feeling is that DreamWorks animation, in general, writes more for a grown animation audience and in that, it risks alienating those who still believe animation is only for kids. Seeing Sieg and Roy mock Dick "The Chainsaw" Cheney and "douchy" Al Gore, watching them speed off on their Segways, or turn a Big Gulp dispenser into a Las Vegas extravaganza is funny stuff. If you're 16 or older and like your humor sarcastic, give FATHER OF THE PRIDE a chance. It's got some really good moments.