It isn’t hell, but it sure ain’t heaven either, “Hell and Back”, brought to us by the same team that created “Robot Chicken” boasts an all-star cast of voices and lush animation and art direction.  The bummer is that someone forgot to write any jokes to laugh at.

Augie, Curt, and Remy are three stoner friends who work at a depressed run-down carnival, run by a creepy dude with bad teeth named Cleb. They’re aimless slackers who end up at the local fortune teller, Madame Zonar, in order to find some guidance in their lives. Or they’re just bored. That works too.

Via a breath mint disaster (uh…yep), Curt accidentally gets sent into the pits of hell, and it is up to the other two bros to save their best bud.  With the help of sexy demonette Deema, along with Greek hero Orpheus, they aim to steal Curt back from The Devil and get their butts back topside ASAP.

First of all, the movie looks great. The character design is funky and unique, the sets and costumes are nicely detailed, and the animation has a quick, on-the-fly jerkiness to it that, while hinting at the lower budget of the thing, is also oddly endearing, kind of like the classic Rankin-Bass animated specials in days of yore. The people who made this feel some nice genuine affection for these characters.

And, wow, the voice cast they got for these characters is pretty impressive: Bob Odenkirk, Mila Kunis, T. J. Miller, Susan Sarandon, Danny McBride, and on and on. A stellar cast that delivers some really fun voice characterizations.

Unfortunately, all of that can’t save this movie. The script has a few good lines, and a couple of them made me laugh out loud, but most of the jokes fell flat. Many scenes kind of limped along, with funny ideas or background business being dragged down by oddly lethargic pacing and editing.  Maybe my expectations were set a little too high. I was expecting the raucous, rapid-fire, no-holds-barred comedy of Robot Chicken, and my expectations got up and left to go get a sandwich halfway through.

There are some feisty set-pieces that hint at something greater: Orpheus singing a clever song about tree rape; a running gag involving a damned soul getting mildly harassed by a demon; an aerial tram that uses disembodied arms to pull itself along the wire.  Little touches like that should have been the frosting on a hilarious cake, but instead they were actually the highlights of watching this endeavor.

I really wanted to like this movie, but I just couldn’t get into it. The little bits that made me laugh just weren’t enough to carry me through to the end.

Uncle Mike sez: meh.  You could do worse than watch this. You could do better.