Credits

Director: Matt Maiellaro Voices: Matt Maiellaro, Adam Reed, Nick Weidenfeld, Bonnie Rosmarin Writers: Matt Maiellaro, Matt Harrigan Country: USA

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A series plot synopsis is impossible and irrelevant. In the first episode, Mouse forces a shark to hire him for work because he does things (that's the argument he presents, not me being vague). The shark sends him to pick up a dude that's a rectangle with no eyes, but rather than bring the rectangle guy back like he's meant to, Mouse takes him to a porn shoot then heads off to rob a bank. The story often goes off on unexpected tangents, so for example Mouse can be on some errand and stop to form a band in the middle of it. The show is very stream of consciousness driven, but an underlying plot does slowly emerge. The stream of conscious element and most of the weirdness is explained, but you have to stick through right to the end for enlightenment, and some of the surreal elements don't stop even after you understand what's been going on.

There is no other way to describe 12 oz. Mouse than it is fucking weird. In the early episodes, the show's art looks like something out of a spastic 7 year old's hand drawn flip book. Characters are often just rough shapes, and may have erratic parts like a very uneven hand. The art does get a bit more elaborate later on, but the established character designs don't improve.

All of the characters are peculiar. There's Skillet, Mouse's shrieking chinchilla sidekick. There's also a giant eye guy who stresses the "i" sound in any word that contains it, and sometimes just inserts the sound into words anyway. There's a liquor store worker that looks like a boomerang. There's a bartender that has some text from a script written on him. There's Golden Joe, a guy with a gold tooth, echoing voice, and the ability to teleport. There's a blue peanut that's initially a cop, but always high no matter what his role is. There's a woman who makes a sound like a blow horn. There's a woman that turns into a man and has rocket powered feet like Gamera. And of course there's the anti-social, alcoholic, psychotic, gun blazin', green mouse.

I'm not really into bizarreness just for bizarreness sake, but 12 oz. Mouse does have some funny moments. I spent most of the time just wondering what the hell was going on, and because entire scenes can reappear (not to mention a few recycled jokes and situations) I often got confused where I was in the show. This may be partially due to the DVD's structure, which puts all the episodes together as one long movie. There're chapter breaks, but there's not a chapter selection so if you're not sitting down for the whole thing, you have to pay attention to where you stop. Even the credits have been removed, so it's really easy to lose your place.