Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Royal Crackers’ on HBO Max, Yet Another Addition to the Seemingly Never-Ending Droves of Animated Sitcoms

Guess what?!? Here comes yet another animated sitcom about a ragtag bunch of miscreants masquerading as a family. This series follows the dysfunctional Hornsby family, who head up Royal Crackers, a cracker company that’s not doing so hot. The show is also called Royal Crackers. It’s Adult Swim’s latest addition to its nightly lineup, and this half-hour comedy may bring a new look and vibe to the programming schedule, but it’s going to drive away more viewers than it attracts.

ROYAL CRACKERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The Hornsby family is seated at the table in their home. Deb Hornsy (Jessica St. Clair) asks her son Matt (Maile Flanagan) what kind of “rowdy” music he’s been listening to. Theo Hornsby (Andrew Santino) grills his nephew about what kind of music he had been playing, and it ends up being Post Malone, who Theo doesn’t know.

The Gist: Royal Crackers follows the Hornsby family, who became wealthy selling crackers through their company of the same name. Their father isn’t well (really, he’s close to death), and was obviously responsible for the company’s success. So the rest of the family continues to vie over who will wrest control from their father once he does kick the bucket.

There’s Stebe (Jason Ruiz), the family man who Theo Sr. left to run the company and wife Deb, Stebe’s brother Theo Jr., who’s trying to relive his days as a wannabe rockstar, and young Matt, who’s caught in the crossfire of it all. None of them are worth more than you can throw them, and they’re somehow expected to be able to run a business when they can barely run their own lives? They want to find ways to revitalize the company, but that seems like a pipe dream for these morons.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The obvious comparison that Royal Crackers is going for is Arrested Development, but this is nowhere on that show’s level. You’ll likely be reminded of the unfunny sludge mass-produced for streaming services, like Brickleberry or F is for Family. If you’ve ever watched an animated series with a “wacky” family filled with gross-out humor and irritating characters, you’ll find Royal Crackers is more of the same. What it won’t remind you of, however, are the shows on Adult Swim that are actually worth watching. Surreal Adult Swim era, this is not.

Our Take: Royal Crackers has a vision, a blueprint of what it wants to be. It desperately wants to channel series like Succession and Arrested Development while serving up what it feels are irreverent jokes. It wants to be side-splittingly funny. Unfortunately, the only thing hilarious about this show is how bad it actually turned out to be. Lines like Deb’s “A bidet washes out your butthole after you crap. And I could just as well use it on my front. Don’t even try to stop me.” rely on pure “gross” humor to shock viewers, and the few tired jokes there are that don’t rely on those remarks just don’t land. The characters are unlikable in ways that keep you from even remembering their names, and the premise (a cracker company?) is hardly enough to hook viewers on first watch.

If this is the best that Adult Swim has on offer for its current iteration, the adult programming block could be in trouble going forward. This type of dreck should have been left in the same era that Dane Cook rose to comedy fame, especially since it sees fit to reference the “su-fi” in the first 10 minutes, and no one should be subjected to that in 2023.

Sex and Skin: There isn’t any nudity until the end of the episode, and it’s blurred out, but there’s sexual talk and lewd commentary running throughout. It’s pretty lewd as it is, and that’s not even including explicit sex talk. There isn’t a ton of it, but it’s there sometimes.

Parting Shot: Stebe announces that Theodore Hornsby, Sr. is “back, alive, and well” at a press conference, saying the family will work with their father to right the wrongs of the “last few days” while apologizing to a sea of reporters before Theo initiates an offensive “handshake”.

Sleeper Star: The only thing that entertained me in the least about Royal Crackers was laughing at how Matt’s voice actor, Maile Flanagan, is the voice of shonen anime legend Naruto Uzumaki. I also wished I had been watching Naruto this entire time, because Royal Crackers is absolutely awful. That said, Flanagan did a great job in the role, especially since Matt is one of the less obnoxious characters.

Most Pilot-y Line: Stebe (Ruiz) tells his brother Theo: “Theo, the fact that Dad trusted me to run Royal Crackers says enough about whose table this is, okay?” All the info you need about the back story and why these characters interact the way they do is right there.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Having watched Adult Swim since its inception, there have been many hits and several misses over the years. Royal Crackers is one of the biggest misses to have ever graced the network. American Dad it is not. It’s a crass amalgam of forced pop culture jokes, terrible animation, an unlikable and unfunny characters, and some truly abhorrent plot points. If you wanted to listen to bad jokes on loop, you could just listen to an Amy Schumer special and turn this off.

Brittany Vincent has been covering video games and tech for over a decade for publications like G4, Popular Science, Playboy, Variety, IGN, GamesRadar, Polygon, Kotaku, Maxim, GameSpot, and more. When she’s not writing or gaming, she’s collecting retro consoles and tech. Follow her on Twitter: @MolotovCupcake.