Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering an animated film from 1990. That movie is "Jetsons: The Movie".
Now, I'd like to start off by saying that, out of all the main properties that Hanna-Barbera created, I find "The Jetsons" to be the one series with the most untapped potential. Because when you look at all of the cartoons they created back in the day, what exactly is still around? To my knowledge, the only ones I can think of are "The Flintstones", which exist mainly through cereal. "Scooby-Doo", which, at least to me, they should've put that fucking mutt down ages ago, mostly because it's been the same shit with that franchise, what with them releasing a ton of direct-to-video animated films almost every single year. "Tom and Jerry", as far as I know, had one live-action movie that they came out with last year. But aside from that, nothing else from the Hanna-Barbera lineup has survived. Which, I'm curious as to why "The Jetsons" got the shaft in all this? Because there's a ton of things that Warner Bros. could do with this property, seeing as how they own all the cartoons Hanna-Barbera made after it's closure, but they haven't really done that. The only time that "The Jetsons" got any sort of treatment was this movie, and the animated crossover film they did with the WWE. And no, I'm not kidding about that crossover, it really DOES exist. And I may have to get around to covering it at some point.
But anyway, setting aside what untapped potential that Warner Bros. is sitting on right now, I should probably talk about what I know about this movie going in. I remember when I was a kid that I use to own a VHS tape of an episode or two of "The Jetsons", and I use to watch this tape a lot back in the day. And the one thing I remembered about it was near the end of the tape, they would show a trailer for a "Jetsons" movie. In fact, about a month or so back, I was looking up a trailer for this movie, and, lull and behold, it was the exact same trailer that I saw back in the day as a kid. In fact, I can remember the one time that this movie aired on TV, which I believe was on the WB, back before they became the CW. And it was a LONG time ago, so I couldn't tell you back then that if I liked it or not. Then again, I don't recall if I ever watched the whole thing or not. But again, it was such a long time ago, and I have no memory of this movie, outside of that trailer that I watched years ago.
What I do remember about "The Jetsons" are the character names. I know of George, Judy, Jane, Elroy, and their dog Astro. I, unfortunately, don't remember the robot maid's name, because it has been that long since I last watched anything involving "The Jetsons". However, I am gonna be changing that tonight by checking out their debut film. I'm certainly hoping for this thing to be decent. I'm not totally sure if it's gonna be good, but I am gonna find out momentarily. So the only thing for me to do at this point, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Jetsons: The Movie".
17 minutes later
So, this rock star just asked Judy on a date. Well, he didn't really "ask" Judy, he only asked her name, and then proclaimed that he and her have a date on Friday night...while he's still in the middle of his performance. Setting aside the fact that she didn't say yes or no, is that, like, a thing that happens at concerts? Can you just ask a girl's name and then say that you have a date with them on said night afterwards? I don't go to a whole lot of concerts, but I don't recall that ever being a thing. And the fact that this rock star didn't even ask Judy makes it sorta creepy. I understand that what I'm saying is all trivial and bullshit, but it is something that I kinda wanted to make mention.
2 minutes later
Wait, so just a moment ago, George's family was complaining about moving while they had plans. And when George says that he's been wanting this promotion all his life, 30 seconds later, Jane's like "Oh, you're right. How could we be selfish?" Way to pull a 180 there, Jane! I mean, forget about George forcing his family to move without their concern. The fact that George's wife developed Stockholm Syndrome within the span of a minute just comes across as really strange and sorta unbelievable, really.
12 minutes later
OK, I was gonna comment about that little rap number being shit, but thankfully, it stopped the moment I was about to complain about it. So...I'm kinda hoping we don't get any more rap numbers like that, because that one really sucked.
4 minutes later
You know, guys, I will say that, while this song here from Judy is pretty decent, I just don't find her relationship with Cosmic Cozmo to be believable. I'll get more into this later when I eventually review it, but I just wanted to let you guys know that this crush that she has on him just doesn't really work for me.
8 minutes later
All right, I have a really stupid question that I'm probably not going to get an answer to. So these little furry things have been causing the glitches at the plant that George was made Vice President of...does this place have NO security cameras whatsoever? You would think that a series like "The Jetsons", being that they're from the future, would be known to have some sort of hi-tech security guarding the plant. But no, nothing like that has been set up! Now it's possible that these furry things would've probably destroyed them, what with them getting around the plant and all, but nobody has even bothered to try it because, I guess, Mr. Spacely didn't really think about that when he made George Vice President. And if that is the case, then it makes Mr. Spacely really fucking stupid.
4 minutes later
You know, guys, I am willing to say that this song here is...actually pretty good. The animation I'm looking at right now is sorta off-putting, though. And I mean, it just looks REALLY weird. Still...it's not terrible. And, like I said, the song here is pretty good. So, at least there is that.
17 minutes later
You know, now that I've gotten a chance to see more of these creatures, these Grungies, I will say that they are...sorta cute. They're kinda like a mixture breed of Ewoks and Gremlins, if they ever decided to have babies. Didn't think I'd have to make that comparison, but I did. And it's sorta interesting.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Jetsons: The Movie". And we're closing out with a...really awful rap song. Seriously, guys, this song that's playing right now REALLY sucks. Thankfully, you guys can't hear it. But I can, and...oh god, I'm just gonna shut that off before I have to hear anymore of it...OK. Well, um...what to even say about this movie?
Well, I can start by saying this. If I had watched this movie back in the day, and I saw it during my early years, I probably would've loved it. Because while I didn't watch a whole lot of "The Jetsons", I still liked what I saw back then. And if I had seen this thing back when I was 7 or 8 years old, I would've totally watched this thing numerous times, regardless of the flaws that it does have now. In fact, watching it now, knowing that this movie is over 30 years old, it does possess some level of charm to it. Mind you, the movie isn't great, and it's certainly flawed as hell, but I still ended up sorta liking it. I mentioned this earlier, but "The Jetsons" is one of those Hanna-Barbera properties that certainly has a lot of potential to be something else, if Warner Bros. wanted to do something more with this franchise. The only thing I know that they did with it was giving it an animated crossover film with the WWE of all things. And I'm REALLY curious to know how that went. Probably not well, but I am gonna have to give it a watch at some point to see how stupid that thing really is. But anyway, aside from that, I think I may have a theory as to why "The Jetsons" never really went further after this movie. You see, this movie is VERY dated for it's time. For example, there's a bit of a ham-fisted message about saving the environment, which includes the Grungies home world being destroyed by the plant that Mr. Spacely put George in charge of after being made Vice President. I can also say that some of the animation is a bit dated, but I'll talk more about that when I cover animation. I can also say that some of Judy Jetsons's dialogue is really stupid, but again, I'll talk more about that when I get to writing. But overall, I can kinda see why "The Jetsons" never really took off, save for that WWE crossover. I feel like if Warner Bros. took some of this dated stuff, and put it into modern times, it might come across as showing it's age. And thinking about it now, I feel like if "The Jetsons" WERE to make some sort of modern reboot, then I could imagine stuff like forced diversity and gender politics getting in it's way. And, in hindsight, maybe it's better that "The Jetsons" stays as a product of it's time. Now, you COULD make it work, but you would have to avoid the pitfalls I just mentioned if you wanted to reboot "The Jetsons" into modern times. But that's just me theorizing about shit that has, almost, nothing to do with the movie itself.
So, let's actually talk about the movie, shall we? Let's start with the writing. The writing here is...OK. Like, there's nothing about this story that's going to set the world on fire. It's mostly just a longer episode of "The Jetsons". However, I also have to say that some of this writing is a little bit disorganized. And I want to start with Judy, the daughter of the Jetsons family. Earlier, I brought up this relationship she had for this rock star named Cosmic Cozmo. Well, calling this a relationship is a bit of a stretch, because there really isn't one to begin with. She first gets entranced with the guy, who's doing his performance live, and he suddenly asks Judy her name and says that they have a date on Friday night. Now, I may not be a relationship expert, but I'm pretty sure that's not how most of them work. Granted, I haven't been to a lot of concerts, but I'm pretty sure that's not how relationships start. But what I find strange is, during one moment, she meets this guy named Apollo, and says that Cosmic Cozmo was her ex-boyfriend. Um...no, what YOU had, Judy, was a crush. At no time did you ever start dating this rock star, because George Jetson suddenly announced to his family that they were going to move. If anything, Judy should be blaming her father for all this, because she and the rest of the family didn't get a say on how they felt about this sudden announcement. And that's another thing that bothers me. Why the hell did George not consult with his family about moving so suddenly because of his promotion? Don't you think a topic such as moving homes is something you would want to talk about with your family before you decided on this sudden movement? I mean, the family did try to say that they had plans of their own, but George says that "Well, this is something that I've been wanting for you, guys. Don't you support me?" And then Jane pulls a 180 and decides that it's perfectly OK for them to move. And then suddenly, as they're moving, the rest of the family is already happy-go-lucky about it, save for Judy, who's still bummed out because she didn't get to go on her date with this fucking rock star that she barely knows anything about. And mind you, her new love interest, Apollo, barely has any character in this movie. So honestly, it's not that much of a trade off. You miss a chance to go on a date with a rock star who randomly picked you out of a crowd and claimed a date with you, to a blue guy who's just about as bland and shallow as they fucking come.
I mentioned the Grungies earlier, and I wanted to talk about them next. Now again, I brought this up earlier, but it bears repeating. If you have never watched "The Jetsons", one of the things that made the show stand out was that they were known as the family of the future. And you would think, being that this movie IS set in the future, you would expect high-tech security to be guarding this plant that the Grungies have been sneaking around in this entire movie. Well...guess what? There isn't. At no point, in this movie, does anybody set any kind of security at this plant. Which I guess makes sense, considering that the only two employees at this plant are George and the robot known as Rudy 2. Hell, it's even admitted by Rudy 2 that this plant has gone through 4 different Vice Presidents by Mr. Spacely. So...I have a question about that. Why exactly did Mr. Spacely not bother to hire MORE people at this plant? Because if there are glitches that are happening at this plant, why would you not hire more security people to investigate what exactly is causing the glitches? Better yet, if you're not gonna hire more people, then why not build ACTUAL security at this place? I mentioned it earlier, but how about actually setting up security to catch who or whatever is causing these glitches to happen? Or if you don't want to do that, how about setting up something such infra-red lasers? That way, if any of these Grungies actually end up tripping them without noticing, THEN you could get an idea that somebody was sneaking around the plant, and you could figure out what's been causing the problem. Now, I know you could write this all off as the Grungies could just disable all of this security stuff while trying to tear down the plant that's causing damages to their home world, but it still would've been some kind of explanation for the movie to use. But they don't. Like I said, nobody bothers to mention anything involving security, because I guess Mr. Spacely just didn't think that far ahead, even though he's spent so much time and money into the plant. Yet, he still couldn't be bothered to put in some kind of security, just in case something decided to go wrong. And I totally understand that the people who wrote this movie were also probably not thinking that far ahead, and it's just a harmless children's film, but it still could've at least tried to explain the lack of security for this plant.
I'm also gonna briefly mention the characters. Because since this movie is based off a cartoon series from the 60's, these characters already have established personalities that came from their own show. And if you haven't seen it, then, chances are, you might find these characters a little bit bland. The only character who has any semblance of depth in this movie is Judy. But that's not saying much, since she mostly plays the heart-sick teenager that loves shopping and boys. Also, I don't know if this was a thing or not back in the show, but her dialogue is so fucking cheesy whenever she has to make any galaxy related puns or wordplay. It just sounds way too cheesy, even for me. Everybody else is just kinda there, really. By the way, yes, I did find out that the robot maid's name was Rosie. So, at least I figured that out. But really, none of these characters are gonna go through any real change, save Judy, and I guess, George. At least, until he figures out what his work has been doing to the Grungies home world.
But other than that, the writing here is OK. Nothing about it is going to stand out at you. But at the same time, I don't think it was intending to break any new grounds, either. It's just there to be what it was meant to be, which was a continuation of "The Jetsons" series. And on that end, it accomplishes that pretty well. With that said, let's get into the voice acting. For the most part, the acting is really good. I will say, though, that I wasn't really a fan of whoever voiced Elroy in this movie, because he didn't really sound like a small child. I felt like he was trying to impersonate a small child, but it totally didn't work for me. But as for the rest of the cast, it's mostly really good. There are two actors that I need to make mention of. One of them is George O'Hanlon, who voiced George Jetson from back in the day, and he reprises his role one last time in this movie. And for what he had to work with, it was not too bad for his part. And the other voice actor I'm gonna make mention of is the legendary Mel Blanc. If you don't know anything about Mel Blanc, then go watch any of the Looney Tunes shorts from back in the day. Because he damn near voiced EVERY Looney Tunes character from back then. He is, to some people, a voice acting god in the animation world. And in case you're wondering, he voices Mr. Spacely in this movie, and I'm going to assume even from during the show. He is great in this movie. But then again, no one is ever going to top what Mel Blanc could do, because he is just that damn good at what he did. So yeah, the voice acting is mostly good, save for Elroy's voice actor. That latter voice was just kinda shit, really.
Moving onto the animation. Well, I brought this up earlier, but this was produced by Hanna-Barbera. And the one thing that you need to know about Hanna-Barbera was that their animation style was never top-notch quality. They mostly looked a bit cheap, however, they mostly still provided decent quality to their animation projects. And unlike another animation company, such as Filmation, they didn't always go to the well of recycling their animation. Well...except for a couple of shots in this movie, they kinda did that. And it's mostly the scenes involving the Grungies sneaking around the plant. And in a couple of shots, you see this one machine being surrounded by electricity, and they use that shot at the beginning of the movie, and then again later on when the Grungies do the exact same shit. They also recycle a couple of shots where they clog up a couple of pipes, and those shots are rather noticeable. But other than that, this is still a pretty good-looking movie from Hanna-Barbera. The art style is very reminiscent to how the older show looked like, the backgrounds and characters look very much on par with how "The Jetsons" should look. There is also something new in this movie, which is the utilization of CG. And I'll be honest, the CG, for 1990, looks really fucking good. The CG is mostly used for second-unit shots of the locales that you see in outer space. And a lot of that looks pretty damn solid for the time. Now obviously, you would have to be a complete retard to try and compare the CG from this movie to today's standards. However, for 1990, this is, almost, state of the art for it's time. And I'm really impressed by how the CG looked like from back then.
Sound-mix here is OK, but I will admit that some of the dialogue sounds a little bit off. It doesn't happen often, but some of the audio in which the characters talk sounds a bit muffled. I don't know if it was because of the transfer that Universal did when they put this movie out on DVD, or if it just might've been a technical issue on my end. But either way, the dialogue does sound a little bit muffled in some areas, and it could be seen as a little bit distracting. Mind you, it doesn't ruin the film, but it can be noticed, if you can hear it clearly enough. The music here is decent, save for anytime the movie tries to do rap. Dear God, the rap music in this movie is horrendous. This shit is basically the bane of early 90's hip-hop that sounds like total shit. One of them is very short, which is the one where George Jetson and Rudy 2 start rhyming. It's bad, but like I said, it's pretty short, and you can pretty much overlook it. The other song, though, is awful. It's the song that I stopped playing the moment I shut off the movie. It basically sounds like somebody tried to mix in a little bit of music from a track from Super Mario Kart and tried to change it into a rap song, and it just sounds horrendous. It's honestly one of the worst rap songs you will ever hear in a LONG time. However...beyond that, the music also tries to implement a bit of techno and rock, and most of that is decent. So really, the soundtrack here is OK, save for the awful rap numbers.
Overall, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Jetsons: The Movie"? Um...hmm...that's a bit of a difficult question to answer. If you're someone who grew up watching "The Jetsons", then you probably have already seen this. But if you haven't, check it out, you might definitely really enjoy it. For kids...you know what, yes. Because I honestly think there's enough here to where children are going to find something that they'll like out of this movie. Whether it's the animation or the Grungies that they'll definitely find cute. But for anyone else...I guess, maybe, if you want a break from the same old tired shit from "Scooby-Doo", and you're looking for something different that's related to Hanna-Barbera, then I would say check this out. It does have enough charm and material to where you can also find something that you'll enjoy. As for myself, I kinda liked it enough to hold onto my copy. It may be worth watching at least 2 or 3 more times, for me, before I decide on whether or not to sell it. But still, I liked it enough, and I'm kinda happy that it turned out positive results for me. Now...seeing as how I mentioned Looney Tunes earlier when talking about Mel Blanc, I'm kinda in the mood to rewatch my copy of "Looney Tunes: Back In Action". It certainly is a really good movie, and I kinda want to go and rewatch it right now after I'm done putting this review together.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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