Kevin Review: Unpleasant, Unfunny, and Unwatchable

A complete misfire, the new animated Prime Video comedy series Kevin is unfunny, unpleasant, and practically unwatchable. You cannot imagine the dumpster fire this Amazon original turns out to be. It’s almost shocking that the streamer chose to lift the review embargo three full days early, though on a Friday, it feels like a deliberate attempt to bury it in the media cycle.

The lack of promotion for Kevin is another tip-off, even though I’m sure some will give it a positive review based on the voice-acting talent and put their trust in a creative team as jokes fly over, or more aptly, under, their heads. The jokes don’t know whether to satirize, comfort, or attack. You endure the abrasive characters, not laugh with them or at them, and you certainly cannot embrace them.

What is Prime Video’s Kevin about?

And perhaps most importantly, the show is utterly humorless. So much so that the writing lowers the bar to the point that it confuses mild amusement with actual laughs.

The story follows the titular character, Kevin (voiced by Jason Schwartzman), a neurotic, dry, and deadpan tuxedo cat whose family is about to be ripped apart. That’s because his parents/landlord/treat dispenser/unwanted guests are about to break up. They are Dana (Aubrey Plaza) and Dan (Twisted Metal’s Mike Mitchell), who have decided to go their separate ways.

Of course, being a product of a broken home is now too much for Kevin to bear. He takes a feline walkabout, a Babe: Pig in the City–type misadventure, that eventually lands him in a halfway house for cats: Furrever Friends. A pet shelter run by Seth (Big Mouth’s Gil Ozeri) in Astoria, Queens, he loves his fur friends so much that he has no control over any of them.

Prime Video’s Kevin Review

Which, if you’ve ever owned a cat, is fairly accurate. While there, Kevin meets, like in any comedy, an eclectic group of personalities, because God forbid you have a group that gets along and shares common interests. That would be boring. There’s Brandi (Strangers with Candy’s Amy Sedaris), a grouchy pooch who doesn’t care for Kevin or any of his feline kind.

Then there’s Armando (John Waters), a harsh and cynical Pesian cat, who looks like an orange tabby, snobbier than Frasier Crane. Then there’s the adventurous Cupcake (Whoopi Goldberg), the well-intentioned Judy (Aparna Nancherla), and Scottish Fold, who is always sick and spreading her germs just as much as her positivity.

All these personalities, with their conflict, contrast, and variety, should create comedy. Except it doesn’t, and it even has a hard time making the show watchable. Even the 2D animation is charmless. Jason Schwartzman is an unusual choice, as the neurotic actor is much easier to take in small doses, not as someone leading a comedy with a character that makes the viewer anxious and uneasy.

Is Prime Video’s Kevin worth watching?

The writers frame the titular character in a way that creates a disconnect with the audience. That’s because all the characters are unlikable, and the audience has no one to invest in as an emotional anchor. In fact, all the characters are grating, compounded by an all-star cast playing versions of themselves rather than creating something fresh.

The casting seems concerned with recognizable voices, not performers who contrast and create comic friction with each other. Which is why Kevin is not worth watching: that is the essence of what makes animated comedy so great, as perfected by The Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, South Park, and BoJack Horseman.

This Aubrey Plaza, Joe Wengert, and Dan Murphy animated comedy never finds a reason to exist beyond a money grab for the creators and their famous pals. The series is flat, visually, comically, and emotionally. The surface-level quirks and all-too-familiar personas have little chemistry, which drains the audience before they can invest in them.

You can stream Kevin exclusively on Prime Video starting April 20th! All eight episodes were screened for this review.