Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Father of the Pride

Father of the Pride aired from August until December 2004 on NBC.

Larry ( voice of John Goodman) was a father, a working stiff-and a lion-in this animated series about the denizens of a zoo full of performing animals kept by Las Vegas showmen Siegfried and Roy( Julian Holloway, David Herman). Although he had a huge mane and an imposing presence , Larry was constantly being bossed around by his smarter wife Kate ( Cheryl Hines), and his bossy, arrogant father-in-law Sarmoti( Carl Reiner), whom Larry had replaced as the star of Siegfried & Roy's stage show. Rebellious Sierra ( Danielle Harris) and awkward Hunter ( Daryl Sabara) were his two kids and Snack the gopher( Orlando Jones) his always-scheming best friend. The animals all talked to one another while in the zoo, then dropped to all fours and behaved like animals when they were with Siegfrield & Roy-who were portrayed here as preening doofuses. Stories involved little misadventures around the house, problems with the show ( was Larry getting too fat to jump through the hoop?) and visits from celebrities ( often voiced by real celebrities).

Father of the Pride was almost derailed when the real Roy Horn was badly mauled during a show in October 2003, but both he and partner Siegfried Fischbacher wanted it to continue. Alas, despite great efforts ( each episode reportedly cost $1.6 million and took nine months to produce), viewers were unimpressed and it was canceled after a few months.

An Article from Time Magazine

To the Drawing Board
Monday, Jun. 14, 2004 By AUSTIN RAMZY | HONG KONG Article

After illusionist Roy Horn was mauled by one of his own performing tigers on a Las Vegas stage last October, grieving fans held vigils outside the hospital where the critically injured showman was admitted, and placed mementos at the foot of a Siegfried & Roy statue on the city's Strip. Sixteen time zones away, in a drab industrial building at the far end of a Hong Kong subway line, the shock was felt just as much. Imagi, a fledgling animation company, was in the running to make Father of the Pride, a prime-time comedy cartoon about the private lives of Siegfried & Roy's feline co-stars. "I opened the newspaper and it said Roy was bitten by a tiger," says Francis Kao, founder of the company. Then calls started coming in from DreamWorks SKG, the Hollywood studio that dreamt up the idea. "I started to get nervous," Kao recalls.

Miraculously, Horn survived, and Father of the Pride debuts in the U.S. in August on NBC, which is awarding it the choice time slot vacated by Frasier. That makes Imagi, with its 300 employees, a small example of the kind of business high-cost Hong Kong needs in a big way: knowledge-based companies that don't require cheap inputs or production costs to compete. (Although the city has a world-famous film industry, Japan and South Korea have long been Asia's animation centers; mainland China and India are also on the rise in this field, capitalizing on their cheap labor pools.) Imagi is also a tale of the younger generation reinventing the family business, a venerable Hong Kong tradition.

The company traces its roots to Boto International, one of the world's largest manufacturers of artificial Christmas trees, which was founded by Kao's father, Michael Kao. The junior Kao joined the firm after graduating from Sacramento State University in California in 1998, and his first job was to produce an animated website for the company. Kao, a longtime fan of cartoons, was fascinated by the animators he met and persuaded his father to set up a cartoon unit. In April 2001, Kao went to a television programming conference in Cannes with six minutes of a cartoon, only half of it done in color, to sell to television networks. No one showed any interest, partly because Kao didn't arrange any meetings before getting on the plane. "We were there with a booth," Kao laughs, "but I was just drinking beer with the animators." Six months later he went back with a full episode, and sold the show, a time-traveling, robots-meet-dinosaurs adventure, to the French television network m6. In 2002, Boto sold off most of its manufacturing operations to an entity held by the Carlyle Group, an American private-equity firm, for $136 million. Boto said its manufacturing operations had peaked and the sale was a good deal for shareholders. Angry minority shareholders said they were being shortchanged and criticized the sale as an effort to benefit insiders. Led by shareholder and Hong Kong stock-market watchdog David Webb, they tried to block the restructuring, but narrowly lost a vote. "Christmas is canceled," Webb lamented. That left Kao's animation unit as the core of the company. "What do these guys know about the animation business?" Webb asked.

At the time, not much. But last year, the renamed Imagi International Holdings landed a contract to animate 13 episodes of Father of the Pride. The company doubled its staff to 300, and Raman Hui, the Hong Kong-born supervising animator of DreamWorks' Shrek and Shrek 2, flew in to oversee the work. According to Hui, DreamWorks considered more experienced companies in France, South Korea and the U.S. but picked Imagi because its employees were plucky and determined to learn. "It's really refreshing," says Hui, one of six DreamWorks employees supervising work in Hong Kong. "They say, 'Tell us how to do it.'"

As well as a great time slot, Father of the Pride has top-name talent—voice-overs will be done by John Goodman, Carl Reiner, and Cheryl Hines of Curb Your Enthusiasm. But it may yet be undermined by Horn's condition. Last month, NBC previewed the show in New York City for advertising executives, playing a video greeting from Horn, his first public appearance since the mauling. The effects of his attack, and a stroke he suffered after it, were apparent, says Kristi Argyilan, media director of the advertising firm Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos. "They were trying to say, 'Look he's O.K.,' and he's not," she says. "He's got a long road ahead of him yet. You've got that hanging over the show." But even if Father of the Pride bombs, Imagi has other projects in the works, including a movie for Japanese toymaker Bandai and a feature film of its own. "For this to work, you have to be wild," Kao tells his staff. "Give me some wild ideas." How about a young man who, weary of making Christmas trees with his dad, thinks show biz might be more fun?

A Review from USA TODAY
Published on August 30, 2004

Adult jokes can't rescue juvenile 'Pride'
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
Just because a show isn't suited for kids doesn't mean it's meant for adults.

Through an Olympic-fueled ad campaign that seems just as likely to entice teenagers as their parents, NBC has been strenuously pushing its high-profile, high-risk cartoon Father of the Pride as an "adult" show. And yes, with its potty-mouthed pandas and randy lions, Pride certainly isn't children's entertainment however juvenile the humor may sometimes be.

Unfortunately, as even the Discovery Channel has discovered, you can only get so much entertainment mileage out of animal sex. Too grown up for children and too childish for adults, this impressively animated effort from the makers of Shrek is ultimately neither fish nor fowl nor lion.

Pride is the story of a family of showbiz lions: Larry (John Goodman); his wife, Kate (Cheryl Hines); and Kate's irascible father, Sarmoti (Carl Reiner). They and a wide assortment of animal friends, from some vain tigers to a chatty gopher (Orlando Jones), work for Las Vegas magicians Siegfried and Roy (voiced by Julian Holloway and Dave Herman).

Ah, yes, Siegfried and Roy, who epitomize the best and worst of Pride. As characters, they are the show's best: flashy, fiery, hilariously self-absorbed wizards who behave like the adopted children of Paul Lynde's Uncle Arthur from Bewitched. They come into their own in a much better upcoming episode when a spot on the Today show brings up Roy's vendetta against the "non-threatening good-looks Matt Lauer."

They are, however, only supporting characters. And try as you might, you can't forget that the real-life version of that vain tiger almost killed the real Roy. While that may not make the show unseemly, it does put a creepy damper on the comedy.

Tuesday's special premiere deals with a less-than-special problem: Dad and Mom want to have "a little zoom zoom in the boom boom," but their friends keep getting in the way. The chief obstacle is a frustrated spinster panda, Foo-Lin (Lisa Kudrow), who is pining for an unresponsive male panda (Andy Richter).

For all its unusual aspects, the central flaw in Pride is one that's common to mediocre sitcoms: All the humor comes from secondary characters. With the exception of Reiner's Sarmoti, the main characters are as dull as they are ordinary. Bumbling dad, understanding mom, bratty daughter: How many times can we watch this same show?

If you're looking for adults, you need a fresher Pride than that.

An Article from The Associated Press

Tuesday, August 31, 2004
NBC should take little pride in its new animated sitcom

By Frazier Moore
The Associated Press

Father of the Pride, the first and most iffy of NBC's lackluster lineup of new fall shows, premieres 9 p.m. today (Channels 5, 2).

It's being hyped as an innovative comedy with youth appeal but adult raciness, employing the same computer animation used for the Shrek films, and boasting top-notch voice talent, including John Goodman, Cheryl Hines and Carl Reiner.

The series fancifully depicts the family life of just-like-people lions featured in the Las Vegas animal act of Siegfried & Roy, who was critically injured by a tiger in October - after the series was well into production.

Now that Father of the Pride is on the air, the audience's challenge will be accepting the show as a thing apart from its real-life, tragically affected source material.

But what then? Even if the premise hadn't collapsed, would the show be everything it means to be? Doubtful.

For instance, the premiere episode finds Larry the head lion (Goodman) in a typical sitcom jam: Wife Kate (Hines) won't have sex with him until he can find someone to date a lovelorn friend.

"Larry, this isn't really the time," says Kate, whose friend is planted on the living room couch.

"This is the PERFECT time," he reasons. "You're in heat. I'm not hungry. I just peed."

Father of the Pride isn't irreverent enough to score many points with the cool crowd, but a more general audience may not relate to cuddly wild animals with a naughty streak.

Unlike The Simpsons, which caters to multiple tastes, Father of the Pride may end up satisfying no one. It's a family sitcom about lions that is neither fish nor fowl.

It's also a show that's been tainted by tragedy. In the aftermath of Horn's mauling, there's something ghoulish about watching him and Siegfried Fischbacher spoofed as a pair of flamboyant prisses, more cartoonish than the human-like animals that work for them.

This is a big, maybe insurmountable, problem for NBC. But oddly enough, the network dares to compound its dilemma. On Sept. 15, it will air a one-hour special, Siegfried & Roy: The Miracle, which promises an exclusive interview with Horn conducted by Maria Shriver.

If there's anything Father of the Pride doesn't need, it's for viewers to be reminded of "Roy's journey, beginning with the accident that caused his injuries and subsequent stroke, through his recuperation."

NBC should have already learned this lesson. At its annual "upfront" for advertisers last May, the network featured a pre-taped appearance by Horn as part of its gala presentation. But the sight of him bummed out many members of the audience.

NBC's special will score a big audience. But at what cost, once those viewers are reacquainted with Horn's harsh reality? Harsh reality can put a damper on laughs. Father of the Pride has none to spare.

For the official site of Siegfried & Roy go to http://www.siegfriedandroy.com/