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