Tiny Toon Adventures - Season 1, Volume 2
DVD Review by Matthew Hunter
DVD Review by Matthew Hunter
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kidswb.com |
What I can say right off the bat is that this one captures the show as it hit its stride, and it remains as fresh and funny as it was nearly 20 years ago. If you saw the show on TV as a kid, like I did, this is the set you'll want to buy, more so than Volume 1. Nearly all of the stuff you remember is here. The Acme Looniversity football game against rival school Perfecto Prep, Sweetie Bird's reworking of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven", Plucky's turn as "Batduck" and his adventure with mentor Daffy Duck as "Duck Dodgers Jr.", the horribly animated Western with Wile E. Coyote as the villain, Hamton in the lunchroom, Buster as "Mr. Popular". I found myself hard-pressed to find an episode that didn't bring back fond memories of watching the show after school or with my childhood neighborhood friends avoiding the hottest part of the afternoon in the sweltering Texas summer.
This is one show that it's ok to be nostalgic about. I've revisited many a 1990's cartoon on DVD and had my nostalgia shattered by blatant awful-ness, but this DVD set actually made me like the show even more. This was the show the smart kids watched. Sure, we all watched the Ninja Turtles, the Transformers, the Hanna-Barbera stuff, the Disney shows. But when those got too predictable, too cheesy, and too monotonous to handle, there was always Tiny Toon Adventures, and what made it fun was never knowing what it would throw at us next. It was hip, self-aware and had everything going for it: humor, well-scored music, engaging characters, and fluid (though at times imperfect) animation. When you heard that iconic theme song on your TV as a 90's kid, you stopped what you were doing and paid attention.
This batch of episodes shows how the series' creators were completely unafraid to experiment. I'm sure they were probably scared to death, with the threat of network censors and the possibility of backlash from all the pop-culture jabs. But it never comes off that way. It's amazing how many truly funny "adult" gags made their way into the show. In the first episode of this set, in fact, Daffy Duck gets caught reading "Playduck" instead of watching the Toonsters' student films. A movie title in "Fairy Tales for the 90's" is "Gone with the Gin". Plucky Duck makes fun of TV commercials in "K-Acme TV", for such products as the "Super Pluckio Bros." video game, and "Unlucky Worms" cereal (magically disgusting!). "Son of Wacko World of Sports" has all kinds of sports gags that would make Tex Avery proud. Several celebrity guest voices make notable appearances, including Jonathan Winters as a parody of Terrytoons' Sidney the Elephant, Vincent Price as Edgar Allen Poe, and Steven Spielberg himself in a clever jab at Roger Rabbit. Also included here is possibly the best and most popular episode of the series ever: "Tiny Toon Music Television", featuring the Plucky Duck/They Might Be Giants classics " Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and "Particle Man", as well as Babs Bunny singing along to Aretha Franklin. Perhaps the best part of all this is that it rarely seems forced or overdone, unlike a lot of animated shows out there today.
There are a few bad apples in this bunch that you'll want to skip, unless you enjoy torture. "Whale's Tales" is a horrifically boring, sappy story with the Tiny Toons trying to save a whale. "Pollution Solution" is an environmental thing that's thoroughly preachy, and "High Toon" has possibly the ugliest animation you've ever seen. This brings me to another point: the animation on much of this batch of episodes is awful. I'm not sure if the Kennedy Animation studio based in Canada is still in business, but I hope to God it isn't! Their work is plagued by wonky poses, weird facial expressions, and characters who bounce and flop like silly putty for no reason. The episodes handled by Asian studios TMS and Akom are far superior in terms of animation quality.
As for the DVD itself, it's the same as before, with nice cover artwork and an ugly (but functional) clamshell case. There are NO extras this go 'round, and I really want to drop an anvil on whoever it was at Warner Bros. who decided to be so stingy about that. Still, we get 30 episodes of the show, and the video quality is much better than Volume 1, which suffered from some really poor transfers. I didn't notice any DVNR or dust, and the sound is vibrant and clear.
If you liked what you saw on the last Tiny Toon Adventures set, you will like this one just as much, if not better. If you didn't, you probably need to lighten up and give this a try anyway. Fun, smart, and funny. They just don't make them like this anymore.
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