Round pegs. Square holes. You know the story. Someone over at The New Yorker decided it would be uber-cute to add life to their cartoons, rendering these one-panel one-liners as quick animated clips. Yeah, I hear crickets chirping too.

I love animation and video, multimedia in all its multivariate forms, but this is overkill. New Yorker cartoons work because they are so easy to digest—a quick, witty fistful of mental popcorn, and the printed page or static computer screen is more than adequate. Gumming up instantaneous entertainment makes them almost tedious. And if your Flash player isn’t up to snuff, or the feed is getting crushed, the payoff is a mile away.

I do understand their animation temptation. The executable simplicity of enlivening and streaming these magazine mainstays must have made this idea an easy sell. But here, the media gets in the way of the message.

This is literally a case where the idea only works on paper.