President Curtis Review: A Likable But Formulaic Rick and Morty Spinoff

President Curtis, the new Adult Swim animated spinoff from Rick and Morty veterans Dan Harmon and James Siciliano, debuts its first episode on July 26 on Adult Swim and the following day on HBO Max. The season one review is spoiler-free, and the verdict is mixed — entertaining enough, but unable to escape the shadow of its parent show.

The series centers on Keith David's President Andre Curtis, a POTUS too busy punching cryptids and staking vampires to deal with actual politics. Each episode drops him into a new paranormal or terrestrial threat — the kind of low-stakes weirdness Rick Sanchez would never bother with — alongside a new supporting cast that includes Special Agent O'Doyle (Jim Rash), a gung-ho stoic bodyguard, and Banks (Stephanie Beatriz), Curtis' cybernetic Chief of Staff. David is the clear highlight: his rugged, velvety voice elevates every scene, and most episodes close with a fun stinger of Curtis recapping events by singing in the shower. Rash and Beatriz both hold their own, with Rash playing a character about as far from Community's Dean Pelton as possible, and Beatriz delivering a warmth that feels worlds away from Rosa Diaz on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

President Curtis sits in an awkward spot in the Rick and Morty extended universe. The franchise's spinoff track record isn't great — 2022's Vindicators 2 was a forgettable short-form web series that never got a second season, and 2024's Rick and Morty: The Anime drew middling reviews for slow pacing and a lack of humor. President Curtis is a more polished effort, and it does carve out a distinct tonal identity: if Rick and Morty is 70% cynicism and nihilism, this show strips most of that out in favor of a genuinely idealistic, well-meaning action hero. That's a real differentiator. The problem is that the show establishes its formula in episode one and then largely repeats it without building on it or finding ways to deepen the characters or raise the stakes.

How much you enjoy President Curtis will come down almost entirely to how much you like Curtis as a character — and whether a likable hero and a strong voice cast are enough to carry a show that never quite finds its own identity. For Rick and Morty fans craving something lighter and more optimistic, it scratches that itch. For anyone hoping for a spinoff that stands fully on its own, it falls short.