Saturday Morning Cartoons - The 1970s, Volume 2
That 70's DVD (or Animation Wasteland)
DVD Review by Brandon Pierce
DVD Review by Brandon Pierce
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kidswb.com |
The 1970's were a time of dancing, partying, funky clothes, Star Wars, John Travolta, and last, but least: Bad Hanna-Barbara and Filmation shows. But, if you read Jon Cooke's review of Volume 1, you already know that. There are a couple shows on here that had a lot of potential to be decent ideas for children's shows, but they are just so flawed, and poorly written, that the word "FAIL" enters my mind 20 seconds into a single episode! BTW, the word "FAIL" is still in, right?
The first series highlighted is The Hair Bear Bunch, which, in my opinion, isn't too bad of a show. Of course, I'm only seeing one episode. It has a nice premise: three wild bears try to break out of their cages at a zoo and cause mischief, while being chased by the zookeeper. Sounds decent enough, but then you find out that the show is a shameless rehash of Yogi Bear, and it's difficult to enjoy the show afterwards. Hair Bear is like Yogi's stoner brother that he never told anyone about. He has all of Yogi's mannerisms, his trouble-making personality, and on top of it all, he's voiced by Daws Butler! The zookeeper, Mr. Peevly, is a rehash of Ranger Smith as well, both in design, and no-nonsense attitude.
The next show up is The New Adventures of Gilligan. The original Gilligan's Island always had that corny tone to it, and this animated version is no different. Still, I can't get past the feeling that the writers for this cartoon never saw the original series. Most of the characters' personalities don't match with their live-action counterparts. Based on the highlighted episode alone, Mr. Howell is selfish and disrespectful to the other characters, The Professor is more take-charge and bossy, and Mary Ann is quite rude. These characters were not that way in the original series. And, why is Ginger a blonde here? Did the professor create some kind of hair dye on the island? If he can make hair dye on a desert island, why can't he fix the Minn-- oh, never mind.
Most of the actors from the original show reprise their roles for this cartoon, with the exceptions of Tina Louise and Dawn Welles. Louise's absence isn't a surprise, as she always hated being associated with Gilligan's Island, but why no Welles? I guess, there wasn't enough budget for all the actors, and Welles got the axe. Or Welles knew the cartoon would be terrible and opted out herself. Oh well, more power to her.
The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, is a weird hybrid of Josie and the Pussycats, and the later Ruby-Spears series Mr. T. It takes a known character or personality, and pairs them up with a bunch of kids, and they solve mysteries. The kids have their own music group, and much of the animation of them performing is obviously rotoscoped from Josie. This particular episode "The Mardi Gras Caper", doesn't showcase the rest of the series well. A diamond ring is stolen, and the kids hunt around town trying to solve the case, but Chan solves it by simply... inspecting the main crime scene, and finding the missing diamond. Thanks for wasting our time with the kids! I hope none of the other episodes were that sloppily written.
Most of the other featured series are okay. For the Looney Tunes fans, we have an episode of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show which contains 4 classic Chuck Jones shorts. Only one, "Hare-way to the Stars", has not been previously released to DVD, but the print they used here looks nice. The opening sequence and bumpers for the main show look to be in terrible shape however. The color is faded, and there's scratch marks all over the place. Oddly enough, cleaner prints of the opening to this show was used on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 2.
We also get an episode of Sea Lab 2020, another show I never thought was too bad, but it's hilarious how clumsily they'd include educational bits. The characters Hal and Gail are scuba diving, and Gail wonders why she has more oxygen, and Hal explains that girls' lungs are smaller and take up less oxygen. Regardless if that's true or not (I'm no science whiz, but that makes no sense), Hal going through all the trouble of explaining, and making it sound like regular conversation is just absurd. You can tell the writers were desperate for something for the kids to learn.
Grape Ape is a show I do have fond memories watching as a kid. I always liked it, and it's nice to see a few episodes of it as part of Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape Show. The Tom & Jerry episodes however are terrible, as this is the era when they were friends, or friendly rivals. The rest of the programs are hit or miss. Many fans have been wanting the musical/variety series The Banana Splits on DVD, which they finally get an episode of here. I don't see what the big deal is. I've heard better music at a school pep rally.
The only real special feature is a documentary on Shazzam (which the set contains two episodes of), about two kids named Chuck and Nancy who for some reason are lost in Arabia, and they find a magic ring, which they use to summon Captain Planet... er.. Shazzam. According to the opening sequence, Chuck and Nancy must return the ring to it's rightful owner, before the genie Shazzam can transport them back home. Why the genie can't get them home before then is never explained. Can't imagine what the story pitch for this show was like.
I get the feeling that WB must dislike this series the most, mainly because this is the first documentary I've ever seen for a cartoon where the historians (Jerry Beck, Mark Evanier, Paul Dini, etc.) do nothing but dogpile it, and explain the show's flaws. The main issue is the show has no real suspense. If the kids get into trouble, they always call Shazzam, and Shazzam always successfully vanquishes off whatever danger there is. You always knew the kids would be safe, so there was almost no point of watching the show!
Another problem I noticed that none of the historians discuss is the lack of emotion that the animators put into the characters, which makes most of the "dramatic" moments unintentionally hilarious. Example, there's a scene where Nancy (voiced by the effervescent Janet Waldo) gets kidnapped, and her brother Chuck doesn't notice at first (how he couldn't tell she was gone is beyond me, she sure jabbered a lot), and when Chuck does, his reaction is literally, "Where's Nancy? She must have been kidnapped. Hm." Hard to take a show seriously, when the characters are completely wooden, even when their own lives are in peril. The show is also just way too talky, with the characters totally explaining every event that is happening to them, when we, the audience can see for ourselves. of course this problem plagues almost every show from the 70s. This is "illustrated radio", right here.
So, that's the 70's Vol. 2 DVD in a nutshell. Do I recommend the DVD to anyone? I think it might make a nice Christmas present for your 5 year old cousin... or dog. Really, there's not a lot this DVD has to offer. Some may want it for nostalgic purposes, but only those people would be in their 40's now, and today they'd see how terrible most of these shows are, and most really should have stayed buried in WB's vaults. The only thing these shows would really be good for is seeing them get ridiculed by the Nostalgia Critic. Which is probably where my copy will be going to soon.
Set Contents:
Disc 1: