Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Reaction & Review | The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania!

 

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering an animated movie from 2017. That movie is "The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania!".

Now, for those of you who read my review of the "Jetsons" movie that I did a couple of years back, I mentioned this thing while covering that movie, and I sorta hinted that I was gonna review this thing at some point if I ever found a copy of it. So, those of you who read it, this shouldn't come as a surprise to you. But for those haven't, yes, this is a *real* thing made by a big time studio such as Warner Bros. And even I'm still baffled that this thing actually exists.

In fact, let's start with that, shall we? Out of all the crossovers you could possibly imagine, who was demanding to see a crossover happen between two properties that have almost *nothing* in common with each other? And yes, I'm aware that WWE has done a quite a few crossovers with former Hanna-Barbera properties such as "Scooby-Doo" and "The Flintstones". But at least with those, it made sense. With "Scooby-Doo", well, "Scooby-Doo" has been doing crossovers since it's inception and they're still doing crossovers today. In fact, they've made two animated films with the WWE, with one of those I actually watched ala "Scooby-Doo! Wrestlemania Mystery". And it also made sense with "The Flintstones", considering back in the day when "The Flintstones" was airing during prime-time, they would usually have celebrity guest stars who also had rock puns for their names, plus they even did a crossover film with the Jetsons. And again, it makes sense considering they were both Hanna-Barbera properties.

But then you have this film, and I ask again, *who* was demanding to see this sort of crossover happen, besides the big wigs over at Warner Bros. and WWE? And setting aside how out of place these franchises should co-exist together, neither one has seen any sort of relevancy either. Because on one side, you have "The Jetsons", who have been irrelevant since their 1990 movie. And the fact that they haven't had *anything* besides this movie, 27 years after their last appearance, gives me the impression that Warner Bros. had no real plans to ever bring "The Jetsons" back at all before this movie. And on the other side, you have the WWE, whose product I haven't watched in about, oh...6 years or so, because it's been unwatchably bad. And no, I don't want anyone telling me that I *have* to watch it now because Vince McMahon is apparently no longer running the company, their product is still shit. The only instances of wrestling I ever watch are the occasional viewings I watch via Botchamania and NewLegacyInc. And as for the actual wrestling, I mostly stopped caring about it.

Now I actually do know the plot to this stupid thing, because I still remember the ads for it back when it use to air on TV. So get this, somehow, someway, the Big Show, AKA Paul Wight, ends up frozen in time to the Jetsons future, and he somehow ends up taking over the future after finding out that robots rule the wrestling ring while human beings no longer wrestle for some reason. Which then leads into George Jetson going back in time to recruit the superstars of the WWE, as they team up together to save the future from the Big Show's clutches. I *wish* I was kidding, guys, but sadly, I'm not. Even I couldn't make this kind of bullshit up if I wanted to. It almost sounds like fucking fanfiction, which probably is sort of insult to fanfiction writers, because even some of them probably can come up with some halfway decent ideas over this crap.

But who knows? I may getting way ahead of myself here. This movie could somehow, totally doubt it, actually wind up being halfway decent. I know I'm probably fooling myself, because I really have almost no faith in this thing being any good, but I'm still going to, at least, see if there's any sort of merit to this thing at all. And the only way I'm gonna find out the answer to that is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. I kinda don't want to, but I'm gonna have to here. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania!".

3 minutes later

So let me see if I understand this. So, Big Show, upon finding out that he's not gonna get a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match on SmackDown! tomorrow night against Sheamus in Albuquerque due to an upcoming snowstorm, he's gonna fly a plane over to Albuquerque, just so he can get his shot at the championship. I have a bunch of questions, mainly, how the fuck can Big Show fly a plane? I don't recall *any* instances where he's able to accomplish such a feat, let alone get this obsessed about winning the championship. Well...the latter, I can possibly imagine, but not flying a fucking plane of all things! For now, though, I'm just gonna pretend he took flying lessons at some point before becoming a pro wrestler, and just see if any of the rest of the film will make any sense.

17 minutes later

Well, guys, so far, the only character I actually like in this movie is Rosie, the robot maid. Why? The dry humor she's giving out here is genuinely really funny. I'm gonna give the film that much.

3 minutes later

So...according to this movie, WWE still exists, and is promoting a match with robot versions of Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns wrestling each other. Well..,if there's one thing that hasn't changed, WWE still sucks, especially if they're still trying to shove Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins down the peoples throats a hundred years later.

11 minutes later

Wait wait wait...wait a fucking minute here! So, Judy's been studying 21st century history and that even includes studying WWE. Ignoring that stupid bit, she says that Sheamus was Big Show's greatest rival?! I know that Big Show isn't really well-known for his rivalries, but you mean to tell me that wrestlers like the Rock, John Cena, Randy Orton, Mark Henry, Undertaker, or even Shane-fucking-McMahon paled in comparison to fucking Sheamus of all people in terms of Big Show's greatest rival? I'm not gonna take anything away from Sheamus, since he is a rather good wrestler, but as Big Show's greatest rival?! I'm sorry, but I call bullshit on that.

8 minutes later

You know, guys, I find it really funny that one of the only female superstars that they could get for this movie was Alicia Fox. It's funny to me, because they're trying to make her look like a big deal in this movie...except she hasn't been relevant in the real life WWE since...2008/2009? So the fact that they couldn't cast anybody that was actually more popular than her at the time like Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, or even Alexa Bliss, is somehow even more puzzling than WWE's shitty booking. Now I have a theory as to why she's in this movie, however, I'll get more into that later once I start reviewing this thing.

4 minutes later

So, instead of having actual security...wait, correction, there's *one* security guard on his way to the ring, WWE is resorting to using it's own wrestlers in order to stop George Jetson, much like a crazy fan who jumps the barricade to "get in on the action". Sure, why the hell not? It certainly can't get any more stupider that that, can it? Oh, and apparently, George Jetson just ended up pinning Seth Rollins. Well, I *would* say I just jinxed myself there, but since I don't give a fuck about Seth Rollins anyways, it honestly doesn't bother me as much.

19 minutes later

So in order for Sheamus to fight Big Show, he has to fight robot versions of Kane and the Undertaker. And yet, they couldn't get the actual Brothers of Destruction to join in on this movie? Granted, I understand it wouldn't make the film any better, but at least it could've been something interesting. But what the hell do I know? This movie is stupid as hell as it is, so it's probably best that they grew a brain and stayed out of this movie.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania!". Let me go ahead and shut this stupid thing off here...OK. Dear god, where the fuck do I even begin here...? Well, I can start off by throwing this out. Children will adore this thing. Especially if they're fans of WWE, they will probably love this thing even more. As to whether or not they're fans of the Jetsons is something I can't quite say, but I will say that, for the most part, this will definitely entertain children. I wanted to throw that out there because I know that this kind of movie wasn't aimed towards me. I'm not a fan of WWE's current product, and the Jetsons is something that, while I appreciate, isn't something I can claim that I'm a huge fan of either. That said, it's not gonna stop me from talking about the problems I had with it, since I'm not a child, and I'm reviewing this from the len's of an adult's eyes.

So now that I've gotten that little disclaimer out of the way, let me finally talk about all of the issues I had with this movie. Let's start with the writing. As I mentioned earlier from when I talked about the ads for this thing, Big Show ends up frozen in the future and ends up taking over Orbit City, and the world, after finding out that robots took over wrestling. Well, specifically WWE's wrestling, which is now "creatively" known as "World Wrobot Entertainment". I *wish* I was kidding about that. Also, ignoring the stupid wording, this movie never mentions the word "wrestling" or "wrestler", the latter in which they refer to as "Superstars" for WWE. And yes, I know it's a very trivial thing to be bitching about, but it's those small details that makes this thing even more stupid than what it already it is because, somehow, WWE was always afraid to use that term. And if it's because they don't want kids to know that it's actually called "Wrestling" and not "Sports Entertainment", then that's a retarded excuse because, when I was growing up, I grew up watching wrestling. Especially when it came to WWE back during the Attitude Era, when they were more lax with what they could do back then. And they usually referred to it as "Wrestling". I could get over the "Superstars" bit, but for WWE to omit the term "wrestling", especially for a movie that clearly involves wrestling is basically just them acting very childish about it.

But anyway, getting back on topic, it's pretty much exactly how I surmised at the beginning of this thing when talking about the film's stupid plot. And I still stand by that, because this story is about as stupid as you could possibly imagine. And this is coming from someone who enjoys watching stupid movies. But you see, with those, they actually have to have some level of charm to them. This thing has almost no charm to it, and I just kept asking questions to things that almost made no sense. For example, when Elroy was talking about going back in time to recruit help from the WWE Superstars of the past, he brings up something about not ruining the space time continuum when using his time machine that he built for his science fair project. Now that, by itself, is just an overdone cliche when talking about stories involving time travel. However, what else is really stopping him from using it to go back further in time to recruit other wrestlers from past eras like Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, the Rock, or even Kane and the Undertaker? I know the real reason why they didn't go with that, because they wanted to promote their current stars at the time. However, it's always something about time travel stories that usually bugs me about this shit, since they usually try to find a way around their own rules, even though they're not suppose to.

Now since I mentioned the wrestlers, let's actually talk about them next. Now I'm kinda thankful I actually know a bit about their personalities, otherwise, I would've just written them all off as having no idea who the fuck they are. I know Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins were being pushed heavily to the top, with the former more so than the latter, since Vince had an obsession with bigger guys and had some relation to Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. And Seth Rollins shtick was that he was the future of the WWE and also the "Architect". Which, by the way, he constantly repeats that shit in this movie. Reigns, surprisingly, doesn't have a whole lot of dialogue in this movie, though there are a few times where he'll repeat his catchphrase of "Believe that". The Uso brothers are boring as fuck in this movie, since the only thing they're good at are making lame ass jokes that wouldn't even make a 5 year old laugh. But then again, this was before they turned heel and were actual megastars in the Tag Team division in 2017 on Smackdown!. Alicia Fox has no interesting personality, both in this movie and in her actual WWE run. But again, I'll get more into her later. The two who actually get the most screen time are Big Show and Sheamus. Big Show I understood, because he is being played up as the villain of this movie. But I wasn't really expecting Sheamus to have more screen time than someone like Reigns. Then again, Sheamus actually has something resembling a personality and is a better wrestler than Reigns is, however, that is just me being somewhat biased.

I may as well just delve into acting, since I've spent a good amount of time talking about the wrestlers. Well, before I talk more about the wrestlers performances in this thing, I actually want to divide the acting into two parts here. One for the wrestlers, and one for the Jetsons, and I'm gonna start with the Jetsons, since I feel like I've neglected them since I started this review. In terms of the voice acting for the Jetsons, most of the cast do a really good job of capturing the personalities of these characters. The best of which would have to be the casting for George and Jane Jetson. They sound almost exactly how they did back during the older cartoon series. Though in the case of Grey DeLisle, the voice actress for Jane in this movie, she's a fucking pro at what she does and can definitely play up the bitchiness of Jane when she needs to. But that, of course, is not taking anything away from George's voice actor Jeff Bergman, since he's pretty much accurate to how George O'Hanlon voiced the character from way back when. And I think that if the Jetsons had gotten some sort of rebooted animated series, then I think he would be perfect to voice George for that series. However, I'm just going on about something that hasn't happened yet. So, at least in terms of the Jetsons cast, the acting from them is really good.

Now as for the WWE cast, well, it's kinda sort of a mixed bag here. I'll start with the Big Show, because he is the star of this movie for better or worse. He hams it up so much in this movie, which is baffling, considering you have Vince McMahon providing his voice as well. And somehow, Show is out-hamming Vince more-so than he's ever done throughout his entire wrestling career. Sheamus is actually one of the very few stars in this thing who actually turns in a rather decent showing. It's not great, but it looked like he was actually trying to have some fun with his role. Roman Reigns, like I said earlier, has very minimal dialogue in this thing, so he didn't have to do much here other than speak his catchphrases, though admittedly he did sound rather wooden. Then again, Reigns was never good at giving out promos, so I shouldn't be too surprised at that. Seth Rollins honestly sounds rather dry, thus is the reason why he phones it in here. The Uso's kinda sucked, though I can't necessarily blame them considering the script that they were given. Michael Cole is, without question, the *worst* of the entire WWE cast, because he actually gives out commentary at one point in this movie, and his performance during all this is so fucking robotic that he actually sounds more scripted here than how he was when doing play-by-play commentary on actual WWE television. Which is fucking astounding because I didn't think he could get any worse with his commentary. But somehow, he pulls that off here, and it kinda proves, to me anyway, why he was one of the worst commentators of the WWE.

Which finally brings me to Alicia Fox. I saved her for last because, like I said, I have a theory as to why she's in this movie at all. Of course, like before, you have to take my theories for what they're worth. I have no proof that they're true or not, so please bear that in mind as I talk about it here. So anyway, my theory as to why Alicia Fox was even in this movie at all comes to down to one thing: Pity. I feel as if WWE wanted to give her something to do since they had no plans on ever using her outside of being a jobber for the latest talent. So instead of having some other female star who was actually more successful than her to take part in this crossover, they chose someone who nobody gave a fuck about and put her in this movie. Which, in all honesty, kinda fits, since no one really cared about this movie when it came out. Why not have someone as her being casted in a direct-to-DVD movie that nobody cared out? Makes sense to me when you really think about it. And even before this movie, she was never really popular even when she won the Diva's Championship at one point. The only other time when she was close to being relevant was when she took to Twitter one time and bitched about how she wasn't getting pushed, let alone having any sort of merchandise for herself. And then, coincidentally, a few hours or even a day later after she posted that comment, WWEShop.com was advertising a brand new T-Shirt for Alicia Fox. So, I guess the lesson here is that if you complain on Twitter, you will eventually get what you want. Which is unfortunately still true, nowadays, but I should probably stop rambling on about my theory and actually talk about her performance here in this movie. In short, she sucked. Though surprisingly, she wasn't the worst here. That honor, again, goes to Michael Cole. But then again, considering the circumstances, I don't think it was that hard to do.

So anyway, long story short, the acting, at least in terms of the WWE cast, is definitely a mixed bag here. Some were OK, and some totally sucked. That's pretty much it. The Jetsons cast did really good, though. So I can at least say the acting here, overall, is decent at best. The animation, though, looks rather cheap. Granted, I understand that Hanna-Barbera's cartoons didn't always look great, but they looked a hell of a lot better than this. A lot of the animation here is cheap, and the character models, at least for some of the WWE stars, are questionable at best. And I get that it's possible that they wanted to replicate to the style of how "The Jetsons" looked and operated back in the 60's. But again, they weren't as cheaply made as this thing looked. If there is one positive I can give this movie in regards to it's art-style is that, at least with the Jetsons, they look perfectly accurate to how they did back in the 60's. The WWE Superstars, though, like I said, are rather questionable. The ones who stand out to me the most are Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and the Usos. I don't know what it is, but them getting the Jetsons art-style just doesn't look right at all. I think it's probably because of the fact that they look overly-built on their designs. And yeah, I get that they're wrestlers and all, but when you compare them to the Jetsons themselves, they stand out like a fucking eyesore. The only one who kinda blends in well enough is the Big Show. Which makes sense, given he's suppose to be the tall giant and all. But almost everyone else looks wildly out of place with their designs. And it just makes me wonder, again, why they felt the need to make this sort of crossover?

But anyway, regardless of that, the sound-mix is mixed fine. And the music here is also fine for the most part. Some of it is just basically the wrestler's theme music, while at other times trying to replicate the music that you would hear in an episode of "The Jetsons". Speaking of which, there is one thing I did want to comment about, which would have to be this odd rendition of "The Jetsons" theme song that plays shortly after the Jetsons recruit the WWE superstars. The singer is trying to list off all of the WWE stars in order of their appearance, but the lyrics to their names sounds very off-putting and it doesn't mesh well with the song at all. It tried to sound clever, but it ended up sounding very janky and terrible when put into execution. But other than that, the music here is fine for what it is.

Ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, can I recommend "The Jetsons and WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania!"? Gosh, um...well, for kids, yes. I would say, again, if they were fans of WWE and you want to show them something that's gonna entertain them for a bit featuring them, then I would say go for it. Whether or not they'll care about "The Jetsons" is, again, something I can't say. It would really depend if you want to show them something like this. I will also say that if you, yourself, are a fan of the WWE and you have some sort of nostalgia for "The Jetsons", then I would say go ahead and check it out. You might actually really enjoy this more than I would. But as for myself, I can't recommend this to anyone else. This idea was stupid from the moment I saw the commercials for on TV years ago, and sure enough, it was incredibly stupid after I finally watched it for myself. So, at least this movie sorta lived up to it's stupid premise for better or worse. But again, I seriously can't recommend this thing to anyone else. Especially if you're not a fan of either property. I'm definitely not gonna be watching this thing a second time, however...there is one other positive to this thing, specifically, the version I have on DVD. As is the case with a lot of these direct-to-video animated movies put out by Warner Bros., there are several bonus episodes of "The Jetsons" that are available to watch on the DVD version. I'm gonna go and watch those episodes right now. Because I've only seen about a couple of episodes from a long time ago, and I'm hoping that whatever episodes are on here are not only gonna be new to me, but will most likely be better than the actual film that I had to sit through just now.

And with that, guys, 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.

No comments:

Post a Comment