'Animals': A Quirky Cartoon With Lots of Star Voices

The barely animated new cartoon series Animals, debuting on HBO Friday night, features pigeons, rats, geese, horses, and other creatures that can be found in the show’s New York City setting, chatting with each other. Talk, talk talk — they talk endlessly, usually in pairs.

Two pigeons discuss an apparently spontaneous birth emitted by one of them (non-spoiler-alert: it turns out to be a golf ball). Two rats discuss what they’ll bring to a party (one decides on a nice cracker; the other opts for paper plates, which are deemed a rather dull idea). In each case, no one’s mouth moves, so the effect is a little like watching a ventriloquist act in reverse.

The people providing the voices are, foremost, the creators of Animals, Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano, but also a star-packed list that includes Cobie Smulders, Aziz Ansari, Ellie Kemper, Nick Kroll, Molly Shannon, Adam Scott, and Jessica Chastain, as well as the brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, who are the executive producers of the show. Matarese and Luciano have said the dialogue is largely improvised around story outlines, which sounds reminiscent of Larry David’s method on another HBO show, the far more animated Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Animals is intriguing, and if you’re in the right mood, its leisurely pace and slacker rhythms can pull you in for a while. But I can’t say that I laughed — there were a few snickers at some of the animals’ more acerbic responses. And while I get it that the show is low-budget — initially, Matarese and Luciano financed the project themselves and brought it to South By Southwest and the Sundance Film Festival before it was picked up by the Duplass brothers and sold to HBO — the minimal animation can become visually tedious.

This is definitely the kind of show that will develop a cult following of viewers who are totally into its cool-dude point-of-view. It didn’t do much for me — instead, I’m looking forward to the second season of the Duplass brothers’ other HBO show, the sitcom Togetherness — but I can see where Animals could gather an audience that really appreciates animal sex jokes such as, “Are you on bird control?”

Animals premieres Friday at 11:30 p.m. on HBO.