Babar
& The Adventures Of Badou: Gone Wild
(2010)/Geronimo Stilton:
Going Down To Chinatown
(2014/E1 DVDs)/Gilligan's
Planet: The Complete Series
(1982/Filmation/Warner Archive DVD Set)/Tarzan
(2013 CGI feature film/Constantin/Summit/Lionsgate Blu-ray w/DVD)
Picture:
C+/C+/C+/B- & C Sound: C+/C+/C/B & C+ Extras: D/D/D/C
Main Programs: C+/C+/C+/C-
PLEASE
NOTE:
Gilligan's
Planet: The Complete Series
is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive
series and can be ordered from the link below.
Here
are continuations of four franchises we've looked at before,
including a little-seen TV series you may not have heard of.
Babar
& The Adventures Of Badou: Gone Wild
(2010) is a CGI sequel series to the hand-drawn Babar TV show and
feature film that is not bad, but tends to be a little limited in the
spirit and fun of the originals, offering 8 episodes/90 minutes of
child-friendly fun for the most part. However, the voice actors seem
to be trying to make up for the animation's limits by whining and
over-emoting where they do not need to.
Still,
your children should see this once just to see if they like it or
not. If not, they can go back to the original shows. There are no
extras.
Geronimo
Stilton: Going Down To Chinatown
(2014) is the latest single from the Italian-produced TV show that
offers fun mystery adventures in the old-fashioned tradition. The
four shows here run 92 minutes and have a common theme. It might be
slightly politically-incorrect, but it is not bad and as interesting
as any of the singles we have seen so far. Therefore, it is as good
a place to start to see if your children would be interested in
seeing the show.
There
are no extras.
Gilligan's
Planet: The Complete Series
(1982) is a little seen or known animated sequel to the original
1960s live-action series, made as the original was still making all
kinds of money in syndication and on cable, but by 1982, three
successful TV movie reunions had happened. Even more forgotten,
Filmation actually produced the first revival in 1974 (for 30
half-hour shows) called The
New Adventures Of Gilligan
and it was a hit on Saturday Morning TV. All the actors returned to
do the voices of their original characters save Tina Louise as Ginger
Grant and Dawn Welles as Mary Ann Summers. For this new show,
inspired in part by Star
Wars, Welles was back,
voicing both Mary Ann and Ginger.
The
silly premise is that somehow, The Professor (Russell Johnson) found
a way to build a spaceship to finally get the gang off of that
island, but their bad luck strikes again as the rocket (again the
S.S. Minnow) goes off course, never makes it back to the U.S. and
lands up landing them up on another planet far away that (lucky them)
can sustain human life. We get a friendly, funny reptile alien who
especially like Gilligan and all kinds of odd space adventures.
Never very funny, but child-friendly, well made for the budget and at
least amusing, it is a welcome release, even if it only available
online from Warner Archive. Fans ay least should check it out in
these surprisingly solid transfers.
There
are sadly no extras and like their Shazam!
DVD release, Warner should have turned to Filmation scholar Andy
Mangels to do new extras, but did not. Maybe for Blu-ray?
Finally
we have a new CGI Tarzan
(2013) created with motion capture technology (meaning less actual
animation is required; not a good thing CGI) with potential action
star Kellan Lutz voicing the title character. Backed by a decent
voice cast, the look and whole project looks, feels and is watered
down, like a sanded-down version of the Disney hit animated Tarzan,
but with less detail, a poor script whittling down the origins tale
and no memorable songs. Disney let their rights expire (along with
John Carter we guess) so the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate was anxious
to cash in and greenlight this project, but like the live action
Warner/Casper Van Dien Tarzan,
this will be added to the forgettable attempts. Note we did not get
the 3D version, but I cannot imagine that helping.
The
Filmation 1970s Tarzan TV series has limited detail and Disney
kept it out of circulation to push their feature film & any
tie-ins to it (including their own TV series version) and it was not
a masterwork either, but it was more interesting than this. Maybe
we'll finally see that issued on DVD or Blu-ray (depending on who has
the film prints when Filmation folded like possibly DreamWorks).
This runs 94 boring minutes, but it does offer one nice change from
the Disney version... no annoying Phil Collins songs!
Extras
include Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes
capable devices, while the discs add 3 Making Of featurettes.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer of Tarzan
on Blu-ray is also a little weak and maybe the 3D is better, but we
did not get that Blu-ray version, but can it be as disappointing as
this? There are detail issues at times, though the animation is
overly simplified and on the anamorphically enhanced DVD that comes
with the set, the worst transfer on the list with awful softness
throughout.
As
for the rest of the DVDs, the anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Babar
(a CGI production) and Geronimo
tie the surprisingly nice 1.33 X 1 image on Planet
for second place and to be frank, all three have animation quality
neither Tarzan
disc has. Planet
even has some nice color (from Consolidated, versus Filmation's older
client lab Technicolor) that impresses for its age and simple
animation. Fans will be happy with that and these prints are Blu-ray
ready.
In
the sound department, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix
on Tarzan is easily the sonic champion, but for being issued
theatrically in Dolby Atmos 11.1, this mixdown is not that impressive
and unless Lionsgate saved a better mix for the Blu-ray 3D version
for some reason, this disappoints a bit.
The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on the Tarzan
DVD, plus Babar
and Geronimo
DVDs tie for second place for good, if not great sonics.
Unfortunately, the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Planet
sounds a generation down versus its nice picture, but new lossless
transfers of the older sound would likely yield warmer, fuller sound.
To
order Gilligan's
Planet: The Complete Series,
go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases
at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo