I just started watching Phineas and Ferb a few weeks ago because I am perpetually six years old and have seen pretty much everything else on television that plays late at night, and I have to admit, I’m damn impressed.
Unlike the majority of Disney Channel drivel, it’s an incredibly smart and well-written show that makes relevant references and ones that may just make you think a bit. In the most recent Christmas Vacation episode, they make reference to Santa not being real, to which Phineas combats it with “evidence” - parodies of the Patterson-Gimlin 1967 Bigfoot footage, the “Surgeon’s Photograph” of the Loch Ness Monster, and the Shroud of Turin. Was that last one a jab at Christianity? Ooh, burn.
There’s a scene in the full-length movie where the two Doofenschmirtzes get together and are so happy to have become a duo that they sing a song about it. They parody famous duos, from Laurel and Hardy to John Lennon and Paul McCartney to Simon and Garfunkel. Will your average ten-year-old get these references? Of course not. They’re attempting to appeal to a broader audience, and I’m sold.
It’s a cute show about a non-traditional family (Phineas and Ferb are stepbrothers, and I can’t think of the proper word to describe this type of family right now so forgive me) and it deserves a lot more credit than it’s gotten.
Also, the voice of Perry the Platypus is Dee Bradley Baker, the same guy who did the voice of Olmec on Legends of the Hidden Temple. Sold yet?