Sesame Street Takes On The Hunger Games With Catching Fur
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Do you guys remember when Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker and Mad Magazine were the two best sources for quality movie and TV parodies? Well, those days are long behind us, and the best place to find quality spoofs these days may surprise you: Sesame Street. They’ve been doing pop culture riffs for years, but have really upped the ante recently, taking on popular TV shows such as Homeland, Sons of Anarchy, and Downton Abbey. But those were all stepping stones to get to the most intense parody known to man, where the steaks, er, stakes are high and doom is imminent. I’m talking about The Hungry Games: Catching Fur, an obvious nod to the upcoming megablockbuster The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which comes out this weekend.
For The Hungry Games, Cookie Monster plays Cookiness Evereat (instead of Katniss Everdeen), and he’s joined by Finnicky (Finnick), Tick Tock Lady (Wiress), and Pita, a piece of pita bread standing in for Peeta. For those hoping to see Muppets fight to the death, there’s none of that here. Though there is the brief moment where Cookiness thinks about eating Pita, which can be taken as cannibalism, right? Adult themes rule!
After the brief background showing us what happened prior to this story, the squad is given the titular Games, which are all about patterns. It’s a good way to get kids interested in the actual film, though I’m never sure what kids are supposed to be watching these days. This is at least young adult fare, as opposed to spoofs of things like Mad Men or True Blood, which definitely aren’t kid friendly. But Sesame Street writers know how to make damned near anything relatable to kids, so I’m almost wondering if we’ll get to see a parody of the Oldboy remake when that comes out, focused on counting years off on a hand tattoo.
Need more Hunger Games-inspired videos? How about Cinefix’s video game adaptation of the first film? It says it’s just 8-bit, but this looks more like the Final Fantasy games on the 16-bit Super Nintendo. Wait, that’s not the focus here?
I really love these kinds of videos, but I don’t understand the point in making an RPG spoof without using the option trees that are just ripe for jokes. Well done, creator and animator David Dutton, but we’ll expect a little more from your Catching Fire vid.
And to come full circle, put your fart shoes on for the Muppets trailer that themed itself on Hunger Games. Just don’t wear those to the theater this weekend, or you will get an arrow shot at you.
