Storyboard:

A group of ensigns on the aging star ship USS Cerritos bond together as they assist the crew on their many missions.

The Sweatbox Review:

I have always loved Star Trek, ever since watching reruns of it on Saturday mornings back in the 1970s, starting when I was about seven years old. I thrilled to the adventure, the characterizations, and the explorations of both themes and alien worlds. But I have to admit, there has always been an aspect of camp to the franchise, which has been embraced to varying degrees through the years. So, while the idea of turning it into a situation comedy may seem weird or antithetical on the surface, it may actually be viewed as a natural and even inevitable evolution. So, for those that found Deep Space Nine too serious (which is crazy, since that show could be hilarious, too), Lower Decks may tickle your neglected funny bone.

It is also a tremendously fun show for anyone who has loved Star Trek in its many forms. Sure, it pokes fun, but it does so lovingly, with deep cuts that reference everything that fans love and treasure. The idea is not to berate Star Trek in any way, but to instead find the humour in Star Trek situations. The dialogue comes fast and hard, but if you pay attention, you may get a few extra laughs. Those who still adore mighty Chief Miles O’Brien, or who can wistfully reminisce at how Wesley Crusher was almost executed (so close!) on a planet of half-naked beautiful people just for stepping on the grass, will enjoy all the many refences to past shows. Not that it’s necessary to know all those things, but the show’s writing certainly rewards old-time fans.

Creator Mike McMahan (Rick And Morty) and his writers know their Trek lore, making Lower Decks an honestly in-canon experience, seen through a comedy lens. The last time that Star Trek was animated, it was the 1973 Filmation TV show, which served as basically a fourth season of the original series, complete with voice work by the original cast and generally serious stories. This time around, executive producer Alex Kurtzman gave CBS All Access a new premise, though one based somewhat off of a beloved episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (also called Lower Decks), which took a look at the lives of crew members that were outside the command structure.

The USS Cerritos (named after a small, humble California city) is a starship that – while it still serves an important purpose within Starfleet – it has admittedly already seen its best days. Its equipment is getting old, breakdowns are becoming more common, and the missions are not as A-list as they once were. Captain Carol Freeman, though quite capable, has been relegated to taking on more minor missions, often in support of larger ones. Aiding her is second-in-command Commander Ransom, a somewhat narcissistic, rule-loving pretty boy of an officer. The tactical officer is a tough Bajoran named Shaxs, and the doctor is T’Ana, a cat-like humanoid that is a nod to bridge officer M’Ress from Star Trek: The Animated Series.

But, while the command officers play an important role on the show, they are not the main characters. No, that honor goes to the ensigns of the lower decks, the ones who actually make the ship run, the ones who do all the menial but vitally important stuff, similar to the ship they serve.

Brad Boimler is an uptight, huffy rule-follower who delights in acting according to regulations and is aiming to be a Captain someday. His opposite is Beckett Mariner, a female ensign who actively eschews protocol, rejects authority, and generally just tries to enjoy herself. Fortunately, she is also eminently capable and resourceful when she wants to be, which makes her worthwhile keeping around. Boimler, on the other hand, turns out to be next to useless in a crisis. The relationship between Boimler and Mariner is at the heart of the show, and provides its most comic moments. Though they are initially repelled by each other’s natural tendencies towards order and chaos respectively, they inevitably become the best of friends. They both love Starfleet in their own way; and ultimately, they believe in the mission, even if they have drastically different takes on how to accomplish it.

Joining them are a female Orion named D’Vana Tendi, a typical eager young space cadet who serves in the medical bay and largely concerns herself with being liked; and keen engineering ensign Sam Rutherford, who is adjusting to new cybernetic implants.

The show takes place one year after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. Design elements therefore reference the Next Generation era, with unique takes. Uniforms belong distinctly to Lower Decks, with additional color piping elements. The Cerritos itself is very nacelle-heavy, reflecting that it is one of the more utilitarian Starfleet ships. There are also cameos by such characters as Q, and Will Riker and Deanna Troi, creating a further link to Next Gen..

The premise basically flips the A and B stories that one would normally find on a dramatic program. So, while there are major battles, alien conflicts, and supreme threats, the viewer is mostly following character stories and what goes on behind the scenes. And behind the scenes, things are not always going well! And sometimes, those behind-the-scenes folk sneak up and become heroes, too.

Over ten episodes, the series quickly sets up the premise and then engages in a number of supposedly routine (yet ultimately dangerous) away missions, beginning with a “second contact” situation. Mundane tasks amplify into dire situations, like transporting a Klingon general then losing him; delivering diplomatic trinkets but creating a diplomatic incident instead; towing a ship somehow becomes a deadly business; and ship salvage turns into conflict. There is also the matter of a trial, holodeck hijinks, and of course transporter malfunctions.

So, it’s just like any other Star Trek show, but with more laughs!

Is This Thing Loaded?

Disc One opens with an ad for Picard on disc. After that, the extras are all shown from the menu of each episode, with the exception of the final two. The first episode gets a full episode animatic, and some animatics for deleted scenes are also available on a few episodes.

Featurettes include:

Lower Decktionary: Joining Starfleet (6:22) Executive Producer Kurtzman, creator McMahan, and others discuss the conception of the show. I appreciate how McMahan wanted to write a comedy, but still have it be “a real Star Trek.”

Lower Decktionary: Aliens Among Us (7:31) Directors and artists talk about adapting old aliens to the Lower Decks series, and creating new ones.

Lower Decktionary: The Animation Process (8:09) Here, they examine the process of bringing together the right group of writers, and then move into general production of episodes.

Lower Decktionary: The Main Titles (7:15) The titles are examined, in terms of conception and intent, and also the show’s theme.

Lower Decktionary: Art Direction (4:59) The idea of designing the characters as “prime time sitcom” characters while still allowing for drama and action is explored.

Lower Decktionary: The Holodeck (6:32) Obviously, the writers love the holodeck more than I ever did. Good for them.

Lower Decktionary: Division 14 (4:05) The “medical specialists” who deal with such things as transporter accident victims is touched upon.

Lower Decktionary: Deck Dynamics (5:06) The creators discuss how the crew interacts, and how even the command crew is flawed in the most human ways.

Lower Decktionary: The Music of Lower Decks (6:19) McMahan and composer Chris Westlake describe the effect that the show’s earnest score has on making the comedy even better. The wonder of Starfleet’s mission comes out in the music, and is totally evocative of Trek.

Crisis Point: The Rise Of Vindicta Trailer (1:28) This is an in-episode joke.

Lower Decktionary: All In The Family (6:31) Here, star Tawny Newsome (Beckett Mariner) describes how natural it is to explore humour on Star Trek, given how comedy has always been a part of the franchise. McMahan also talks about how the show fits into the legacy of Trek, and we hear about the use of classic characters and how their appearances had to be earned.

Faces Of The Fleet (24:42) examines the talented cast, with numerous cast interviews.

Hiding In Plain Sight (7:39) reveals numerous “Easter eggs” placed into the show.

Case Study:

Paramount sent us the DVD version, which comes with a swing tray for one of the discs, a slip that duplicates the cover, and a small insert advertising Trek and Paramount+, the new name for CBS All Access. A Blu-ray and a Blu-ray Steelbook edition were also released.

Ink And Paint:

While it would have been great to see how the show looks on high-def disc, the DVD itself looks pretty good. The 16:9 picture is quite solid, aside from very occasional aliasing when a ship or other object is moving through space, but that might even be inherent to the original animation.

Scratch Tracks:

Though the show was largely recorded in the actors’ homes, due to pandemic restrictions, the dialogue comes across well, never sounding difficult to understand, though there is often a mild echoey quality if you listen for it. The sound design utilizes classic sounds from the franchise, particularly the Next Generation era. The music is also done straight, reflecting that these are real missions with serious consequences, even if we are seeing the funny side of things. The contrast works perfectly, keeping the stakes real, the drama potent, and the laughs sincere.

The surrounds and rear speakers get a modest workout, and there is light use of bass. The English track is available in 5.1 or 2.0. There are English captions, and no other language options.

Final Cut:

Before watching the show, I was feeling pretty ambivalent about it. But then you hear that theme, which is honestly one of the best Trek themes ever done, not giving any hint of the show’s comedic intent, but matched with visuals that betray the show’s true nature. Having now watched the first season, I am really quite enthusiastic. Someone should have told me that it was kind of like Futurama, another favourite show of mine, but taking place in the Star Trek universe, using only Star Trek references. How could I not love that? Even then, though, it could have gone badly, but thankfully that is not the case. Genuinely funny writing, stories that are authentically Trek, a slick animated style, and wonderful voice work – that sells both the humour and the drama – make for a very entertaining show. Really, it’s the Star Trek show I never knew I wanted.

Storyboard:

Members of the Justice League battle supervillains, monsters, and invading aliens in kid-friendly adventures.

The Sweatbox Review:

We all loved Justice League, the show that ran from 2001 until 2004, and continues to live on in our DVD collections. It had all the characters from the comics, the stories were epic, and the tales had uncommon depth to them, with most of the series containing two-parters. It was everything a superhero or comics fan could want. I tremendously enjoyed re-watching the show again with my little boy when he was old enough to enjoy it, and he likewise was thrilled with the adventures of the World’s Greatest Superheroes. However, television network people apparently thought that smaller kids needed a show they could enjoy too, telling simple stories of short length. Maybe they’re right. I had Super Friends growing up, so maybe today’s wee ones need a gentler superhero show, too. I was actually able to enjoy Marvel Superhero Squad, so why not give a DC kiddie show a chance?

And hence we have Justice League Action, a series whose stories run only a quarter-hour, keeping the conflicts as basic as possible, while emphasizing action and uncomplicated morality. The good guys are perfect, and the bad guys are truly despicable. There’s no time for shades of grey when the story needs to wrap up before the first commercial break. (Note that the choice of the screen capture above is a bit of a gag. The Leaguers aren’t really that young when they’re not magically de-aged, like in this one episode.)

The series begins with an atypical 4-part story, pitting members of the League against the Brothers Djinn, magical creatures who want the Earth to revert to an earlier geological state, wiping out mankind and leaving the Djinn to be rulers of the planet. The villain who allows their escape in the first place is Black Adam, whom Batman meets after following the Wizard (who we all know is named Shazam) to the Rock of Eternity. (Actually, Bats ends up giving the Wizard a tow on the bat-rope!) Naturally, this portends the involvement of the hero Shazam, previously known as Captain Marvel. Other heroes involved in this story range from Hawkman to Swamp Thing, the former wearing a bizarre costume like nothing seen in the comics, and the latter sounding oddly young and human. For the most part, the show sticks with classic representations of the characters, but we do get the occasional odd choice.

The next story further shows off the wide-ranging scope of the show, which is perhaps its greatest asset. The mix of characters is often inspired and beyond fun. Even in the comics, we have never seen a team-up between Superman, Hawkman and Space Cabbie, squaring off against Lobo, who challenges them for the right to bring in and the worm villain Mister Mind. I mean, that’s really a pretty incredible plot right there. Even John Constantine, one of the least kid-friendly characters in the mainstream DC Universe, is a member of the Justice League here, teaming up routinely with Zatanna and Batman to fight such threats as Solomon Grundy and Klarion the Witch Boy. Batman gets to travel to Apokolips with Big Barda, The Demon helps Batman while driving around in a mystically-enhanced hellish ice cream truck, Lex Luthor invades Themyscira, Plastic Man sneaks onto Brainiac’s ship, and Blue Beetle, Firestorm, and Stargirl help out against the Phantom Zone villains. The plots may be paper-thin, but you can’t beat them for awesome character combinations. Perhaps more than any previous DC animated show, Justice League Action really revels in the terrific depth of possibilities inherent in the DC Universe. The final episode on the set even brings back Space Cabbie for an adventure with Batman, Cyborg, and Jonah Hex, as they face off against Kanjar Ro! That’s crazy!

And of course, we get a couple of appearances by current fan-favorite Harley Quinn, including an episode with her besty Poison Ivy, facing off against Leaguers including Swamp Thing. That’s actually pretty awesome.

I suppose there’s nothing wrong with allowing small kids to enjoy a superhero show aimed at their level. On the other hand, the original Justice League show managed to be enjoyable by kids and adults alike, though perhaps those kids were not under six or so. My son is now 10 years old, and he found Justice League Action to be unbearably simplistic, much preferring the older program, so Action’s audience would seem to be rather narrow. Still, an old DC fan like myself can still glean some enjoyment with seeing his favorites interact in bite-size adventures, just as I can nostalgically enjoy an episode of Super Friends on occasion. At least the animation in Justice League Action is first-rate, and Batman’s chest emblem doesn’t get miscolored in every other scene like it was on the 1970s program.

Speaking of visuals, I always find it interesting to see how these characters are adapted for each show or movie. Here, the designs are reminiscent of the Bruce Timm-era versions, with a few tweaks here and there. I’m not crazy about the huge bat-emblem on Batman’s chest, but Action’s Superman is a nice improvement, more in line with the Fleischer Superman than the enormous-chinned Timm version. Wonder Woman gets nicely tousled hair in keeping with her fighting spirit. As I said, I barely recognized Hawkman, so I don’t know what the deal is there. Others like Firestorm and Green Arrow hew closer to their classic looks. In terms of continuity, the show takes its cues from various eras of the comics and cartoons. One episode sees Batman and Blue Beetle travel back in time to what appears to be pre-Batman: The Animated Series; and in a nod to the New 52 comics, Clark Kent and Diana Prince go on a date. The League’s headquarters, meanwhile, starts in the Hall of Justice before they gain a new Earth-bound Watchtower.

This two-disc set contains the first 26 (quarter-hour) episodes of Justice League Action, which comprises half of the initial season. It may not be absolutely fantastic television, but it is a fun show, and it does make a cool introduction to these characters for kids, before they are ready for the dramatics of more mature superhero series.

Is This Thing Loaded?

The only extras here are really just advertising. On Disc One, from the menu system we get Trailers for DC Super Hero Girls: Hero Of The Year and the Wonder Woman film. Disc Two begins automatically with a trailer for The Lego Ninjago Movie and the direct-to-video Lego Scooby-Doo: Blowout Beach Bash.

Case Study:

The DVD eco-case comes with a tray for one of the discs, with no inserts.

Ink And Paint:

The picture is as good as standard definition allows, and in motion looks quite good. Pausing the frames reveals some jagged edges, but during normal viewing this is not noticed. Most often, I felt this was as good as the series could look, though occasionally there is a softness noticed that underlines the fact that a high definition release would look even better.

Scratch Tracks:

I have no complaints about the sound quality, presented here in surprisingly nice Dolby Digital 5.1. Dialog is clear, and directional effects are modest but have good power. Other language tracks include Spanish, Portuguese, and Thai. Subtitles are available in English, French, Chinese, and Thai.

There is some interesting voice casting going on in this show. Kevin Conroy comes back as Batman, which is always welcome. Likewise for Mark Hamill, who plays The Joker again, and also gets to revisit The Trickster, but he makes a certainly… unconventional… Swamp Thing. Former Batman Diedrich Bader is Booster Gold this time. Sean Astin plays both Billy Batson and his alter ego Shazam. And Khary Payton plays Cyborg in yet another incarnation.

Final Cut:

It is impossible to avoid comparing this to previous animated versions of the League, particularly the classic 2001-2004 show. Justice League Action does what it sets out to do. A negative comment could state that it presents action-packed stories of little nuance, easily understood by small children. On the other hand, it is also certainly fun, bright, and positive, and it brings to life an assortment of characters never quite seen before. Old favorites like Firestorm, Swamp Thing, Plastic Man, and even Space Cabbie are given a chance to shine, making this in some ways the ultimate DC Universe cartoon. I would love it if the stories were more sophisticated, but after all these are really children’s’ characters, and it is nice for the younger generation to have their own Super Friends-style show, only with better graphics. Certainly, it’s more appropriate for them than the PG-13 animated and theatrical movies. We’ll list this one as recommended for kids, or kids at heart.

Storyboard:

So, once again, the day…is not quite saved, as Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup return to do very little saving of the world before bedtime.

The Sweatbox Review:

Earlier this year, I gave the first DVD volume of the so-called “reboot” of The Powerpuff Girls a more or less favorable review, saying that it ultimately won me over with its rapid-fire humor even as I had a fair number of issues with it. Alas, with the second home video release, my goodwill towards the series is starting to diminish. The Powerpuff Girls is quickly showing danger signs that it’s eventually going to become the mess that everyone feared it would be when it was first announced. Not only is it still depending on the viewer having seen the original version in order for it to make any sense, but it’s also rejecting almost everything that made that show such a brilliant hit in the first place. If the 90’s Powerpuff Girls was revolutionary for its sophisticated comedy and its portrayal of its female leads, then the new one is essentially fitting into the “throw a bunch of random jokes at the screen and see what sticks” mold that dominates the majority of Cartoon Network’s programming these days.

And, as I’ve said in the past, there’s nothing necessarily “wrong” with that. It’s a formula that’s worked for the cable channel with regards to both their children’s and Adult Swim lineups, so on paper applying it to one of their breakout hits from the past might sound like a good idea. The problem–at least on the majority of the twelve episodes included on this disc–is that the approach proves to be more restricting than liberating here. That’s not to say there aren’t still giggles, because there are, but when you compare it to what came before–which the series is constantly daring you to do, since it continues to apparently exist in “the same world” as the original cartoon despite being a “relaunch”–too often it falls short.

It took me a while to decide what was “off” about these episodes, with the best comparison I can think of being that they play like SpongeBob SquarePants after its fourth season. The gags are there, but many of them don’t land, and while there’s occasionally an episode that works, there are others which become a borderline chore to sit through. It’s an odd feeling when you’re chuckling at something but still not exactly “enjoying” it (Shrek the Third, I’m looking at you!), but that’s the frustrating sensation I got when I was wrapping up this disc. I had laughed, but I wasn’t satisfied, but what makes everything worse is that the people involved don’t even appear to be trying very hard here. In the last disc, I discussed how this reboot might be “too similar” to the original for its own good, but now I’m thinking that it has the exact opposite problem. There is no apparent desire to be like The Powerpuff Girls here. In fact, if Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup weren’t the stars here, then there would be virtually nothing to connect it to that series!

Case in point: the trio do virtually no crime fighting here. Instead, they get involved in one “bizarre” situation after another, whether it’s all of them turning old or Buttercup becoming obsessed with killing a lobster. Sure, they still battle a monster or two, and old faces do show up from time to time (Mojo Jojo, even when he only appears for a cameo, is always good for a smile), but most of the time they are dealing with school life or other matters not involving saving the planet. For better or for worse, this does lead to what is easily the best episode one the disc, one in which Blossom and Princess Mobucks compete to win a class election. Mobucks is one of the few villains from the original series to get a spotlight here (along with “Him”), and the reboot handles her “evil Little Orphan Annie” personality well, but the real highlight here is an overly polite politician boy who is one of the funniest parodies of Barack Obama I’ve ever seen, right down to his vocal mannerisms. It’s amusing stuff, even if it ultimately doesn’t have much to do with The Powerpuff Girls.

Unfortunately, this “no saving the world before bedtime” format also sets up what is by far the worst episode on the disc, Once Upon a Townsville, one which I was surprised by how much I hated, which is something I’ve never had to say about this franchise before now. Basically, a fairy tale princess falls down a wishing well and finds herself in the middle of a modern day city, and…yeah, what they’re doing here is ripping off Enchanted, which is an odd choice since that movie itself was already a parody (albeit a fairly gentle one). Why spoof the spoof? The girls meet the princess, and there are some songs (you know, like in Enchanted), and Buttercup tries to convince her that she should save herself instead of waiting around to be saved (you know, like in Shrek). I’m not even sure who this episode was made for, as the various swipes at Disney–which are almost shockingly unfunny–don’t feel earned since they haven’t had a so-called “damsel in distress” heroine in decades. Basically, this episode includes everything that doesn’t work about the reboot, including feminism which places itself directly in the face of the audience instead of playing out naturally like in the original cartoon.

“The original cartoon” is something I feel I’ve come back to too frequently during this review, but again, the series doesn’t have any interest in “separating” itself from that landmark show, always making the assumption that the audience is familiar with it. This means the viewer is going to be pretty freaking confused when “Him” makes an appearance (which is, to be fair, quite welcome) if they haven’t seen the first Powerpuff Girls, and there are other examples which are far too numerous to mention here. Making things more confusing is that there’s an apparent lack of continuity, as sometimes the girls are still in kindergarten while other times they appear to be in grade school.

There is some fun to be had here, though, including an episode in which the girls face off against a school janitor as well as the aforementioned election escapade. But if the series is going to keep going, it’s going to have to learn how to breathe on its own without also setting aside the very reasons it’s around in the first place. Otherwise, there may be no saving it.

Is This Thing Loaded?

The Powerpuff Girls: The Last Donnycorn arrives on disc with five shorts which were used to promote the series before it aired. In many ways, these are a bit more amusing than some of the episodes on here, with the girls engaging in destructive games of ping-pong and Bubbles attempting to do a beauty vlog. Each runs about three minutes. No trailers are included.

Case Study:

Here we have a standard white plastic case with no slipcover. On my copy, at least, the words “DISC MADE IN MEXICO” were stamped extremely prominently over the tech specs for some reason. Inside an insert promoting the new Ben 10 reboot can be found.

Ink And Paint:

As is the norm, The Powerpuff Girls is a brand new show, so it looks perfectly fine on disc. I didn’t find this quite as sharp as the first Powerpuff Girls DVD I reviewed, but colors are nevertheless very crisp, with nothing major to complain about.

Scratch Tracks:

Again, everything is fine. Nothing overly fancy (this is a children’s DVD), but satisfying all the same. No alternate language tracks are included.

Final Cut:

Unlike the recent (and superior) Ducktales, the new Powerpuff Girls is continuing to play out like a quasi-sequel to the original series rather than a full reboot. There is, despite all of my negativity in this review, some hilarity to be found here (I have to appreciate any cartoon that somehow finds a way to parody student films), and kids should at least be pleased with it. Having said that, the subversive humor of the original is almost nowhere to be found here, and apart from the shorts, the disc has no other extra features. There’s news that the reboot is going to add a fourth Powerpuff Girl to the mix to liven things up (presumably it won’t be the dearly departed “Bunny”), but that’s not going to be enough on its own to keep this series afloat. It’s not a sunken ship yet, but it could be in need of some rescuing.

Storyboard:

Marceline and Bubblegum get more of the spotlight in this season, which has many weird and wonderful adventures in the land of Oo. The highlight is the Stakes miniseries, which focuses on Marceline’s past and examines whether she will stay a vampire.

The Sweatbox Review:

The sixth season ended with Princess Bubblegum essentially vacating her royal post and turning to civilian life. In the opening of the seventh season, which had only limited involvement from creator Pendleton Ward, we find her in a homey shack, still being served by her loyal Peppermint Butler. The somewhat wacky and vain King of Oo, who has now christened himself a princess(!), shows daily why he is an unfit ruler. Jake and Finn now wear armor in their service of their new “princess,” but there is no doubt that this situation cannot stand for long. This is all too evident in Bonnie & Neddy, which sees the King of Oo trying to shamelessly exploit a newly discovered candy dragon who lives beneath the kingdom.

This season’s focus on Bubblegum, as well as Marceline the Vampire Queen, is further seen second story, Varmints. Here, Marcy discovers that Bubblegum has forsaken her crown, and the two battle varmints who are threatening Bubblegum’s garden. The next episode catches up with Cherry Cream Soda, her new husband, and her dead husband Root Bear Guy; then the King of Oo sends Finn and Jake on another ridiculous quest; and BMO switches worlds with his reflection in the mirror, Football, who quickly becomes a menace.

Then the show did something it had not done before: it entered into miniseries territory, with an 8-episode arc known as Stakes. Over the course of these episodes, Marceline has Bubblegum cure her of being a vampire, only to have to fight off resurrected vampires that she had slain years earlier. This set of stories, which feature a unique title sequence, continue with the same quirky storytelling the show is known for, as they delve more into Marceline’s history, her relationship with Simon (Ice King), and her conflicted feelings about herself. That it covers such areas as depression, mental illness, identity crisis, existentialism, and vampirism – and has some pretty epic battles besides – is a testament to just what the show can achieve.

Entering into the second half of the season, the series did not quite revert to form, making the next story double the usual length, and presented without a break on the DVD. The More You Moe, The Moe You Know brings back Moe, the aged creator of the mechanical Mos. He apparently has become mechanical himself, and sends BMO on a mission to the factory, but not is all as it seems!

The show then settles back to its more familiar formula of 12-minute stories, focusing on various members of the cast. Finn’s daughter Viola gets a spotlight episode, as does Ice King (with the return of his old flame, Betty). Finn and Jake have a few adventures, and revisit Farmworld. New characters such as Blank-Eyed Girl and Huntess Wizard are introduced, and we get to know one of the Banana guards better. It’s a solid season of whimsy, mixed with lots of actiop and a touch of poignancy.

Special mention must be made of Bad Jubies, a stop-motion episode guest-directed (and written and storyboarded) by Kirsten Lepore. The visual style of this episode was already enough to set it apart, but it was so well received that it won both an Annie Award and an Emmy. It is the class of a season that is very strong throughout.

Is This Thing Loaded?

There is a handsome assortment of extras on these discs.

The first disc has an Animatic for the Football episode, five Song Demos, three Art Galleries (Stakes, Background Art, and Model Design), a time-lapse featurette showing the creation of a title card in Behind The Title Card: The Dark Cloud (2:21), and nine Minisodes (21:51 total). The minisodes offer smaller adventures, with the usual assortment of weird plots and inspired musings. And lots of frogs.

Disc Two has two featurettes on the making of the special stop motion episode. Good Jubies: The Making Of Bad Jubies (12:37) runs about the same length as the episode, with lots of cool shots of the animators, sculptors and set builders at work, plus an interview with the episode’s creator. Bad Jubies: Time Lapse (2:45) further shows what went into the building of the sets.

Then, there are two more Animatics (for King’s Ransom and Hall Of Egress), one more Song Demo, and four more Behind The Title Card segments, running between 90 seconds and 3 minutes or so.

Case Study:

Unfortunately, Warner Home video has apparently decided that the show no longer warrants a Blu-ray release, and has only made this season available on DVD. The 26 quarter-hour episodes come on two discs, packaged in a white DVD case, with a die-cut cover slip depicting Bubblegum. There is an insert with an episode listing, with tiny type.

Ink And Paint:

As these episodes are only in standard definition, a small drop-off in quality is noted. Honestly, the image is still pretty good overall, but the colors do seem more muted, and the picture naturally just a hair less sharp on DVD than it looked on Blu-ray. As it is still a direct digital-to-digital transfer, the image is entirely clean and free of physical artefacts. Outlines are often jagged on freeze frames, but look fine in-motion.

Scratch Tracks:

Blu-rays of previous seasons of Adventure Time only ever used Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks anyhow, so it is no different on this DVD set. There is actually a rich, broad sound field at work here, even if it is limited to the front, and I really appreciated the sound design on this season. Of course, giving the discs the 5.1 sound heard on broadcast, preferably in a lossless format, would be even better, but one cannot complain too much. For an animated TV show, this sounds really quite good.

There are no other language options, and only English subtitles for the hearing impaired.

Final Cut:

I found this season quite satisfying. It has a nice balance of coherent world-building, strange but controlled plotting, and even some poignant characterization, not to mention a number of nice songs. There’s even a really cool stop-motion animated episode! It is a shame that such a strong season was denied a Blu-ray release, which knocks down at least the video score, but these DVDs are given plenty of interesting extras, which helps cement a purchase. Despite the unfortunate lack of a high-def release, fans really should not skip this season.

Storyboard:

Hair-tangle magnet Rapunzel returns – and so do her long, magical golden locks – in a television movie geared to kickstart a series based on Disney’s 2010 animated feature.

The Sweatbox Review:

There was a time back in the 1980s when Disney television animation almost matched the quality of the Feature Animaiom department, admittedly not such a huge leap when compared to the likes of The Fox And The Hound and The Black Cauldron. Previously to the Studio’s jump into afternoon programming, animation for the small screen had been handled by the feature artists themselves, on such programs as Disneyland and The Mickey Mouse Club, with Ward Kimball especially being responsible for many fully-animated shows and specials from the 1950s onwards into the 1970s. A decade later, when Walt Disney Television Animation was founded under the new management team of Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg as its own division, there was real concern that the proposed programs look better than anything seen on a Saturday morning from the likes of DIC Entertainment, for example.

“We can’t go out looking like trash” was essentially Eisner’s edict, and so those early Disney shows – the Wuzzles, Adventures Of The Gummi Bears and DuckTales – had real production value, so much so that both those initial two series’ pilot shows got European theatrical releases as featurettes with reissues of classic Disney features, and the first five episodes of DuckTales were also packaged as a TV movie. The higher quality was good for TV animation overall: soon other producers were upping their game, such as Warners’ move into Tiny Toons and Animaniacs territory, and Disney’s own expansion of the TV unit into what would become the DisneyToon Studio, producers of the better-end of the television product and the seomtimes dreaded direct-to-video output of the 1990s and early 2000s.

As other studios began to catch up, Disney’s shows didn’t always look so great, particularly when coupled with lower budgets, especially on feature film spin-offs such as series based on The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, which brought in a “black marker” era of small screen animation where outlines were routinely thick and the artistry fairly non-existent, leading me to forgo many of the Disney television shows of the later 1990s and onwards. The visually varied looks of other studios’ shows, such as those seen on channels like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon (and then NickToons) saw Disney drop their finely crafted art even further, going for the simple or exaggerated designs of Doug, Teacher’s Pet, and any number of wildly uneven programs in between, the most successful perhaps being those based on the classic characters (Goof Troop or MouseWorks, which occasionally featured a segment actually animated by the Feature Animation crowd) and the long-running Kim Possible, probably the last Disney TV series I had any real interest in.

Yes, there has been an explosion of cartoons for small screens in recent years, although the rise of cheap CGI hasn’t meant a rise in quality – some of those shows can look pretty hideous, while some of the ostensibly hand-drawn stuff has gotten more fluid thanks to compositing technology. Some will argue that a show need not look great because the storytelling is the main thing, but being that animation is primarily a visual medium, I do often find it a hindrance when the artistry isn’t on par with a project’s aspirations; Star Wars: The Clone Wars worked great when it was a hand-drawn, highly stylised micro series, but I’ve never been able to plug into the CG version, nor that of the follow-on Rebels series, simply because the visuals don’t come anywhere near matching up to the storytelling aspirations or the visual blast of other Star Wars properties.

But, for the first time in quite a while, I was intrigued when Disney announced the television continuation of the Tangled franchise, itself already spun off into a short film, Tangled Ever After, especially when it was revealed that the series would sport a traditional animation aesthetic, making for interesting hand-drawn comparisons to the orginal film’s georgous CG renderings. For me, Tangled still stands tall as perhaps the best of Disney’s recent return to fairytale musicals, combining a rich understanding of the Studio’s legacy while forging its own modern identity, paving the way for Frozen and the current trend of revisiting Disney’s animated classics in live-action retellngs. It was even more of an enticement to hear that the film’s major principals, voice artists Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, and song composers Alan Menken and Glenn Slater would be penning some new tunes for the series’ debut movie which, as the title suggests, slots in after the original feature but before the Ever After short.

Thankfully, and to its credit, Tangled for television doesn’t attempt to copy the exquisite CG of the feature, and although it’s something of an odd thing to write that the visuals have a caricatured look when we’re talking about animation to begin with, the cartoony approach matches the more, literally comic tone, right from a whizz-bang recap of the orginal film’s plot for those that missed it. Told in stills, the visuals here remind of Mary Blair’s concept art for many a Disney picture, especially Cinderella, and it’s this approach that pretty much gets translated into the new animated style, which has a traditional look but, I’m guessing, is actually a CG hybrid of the Paperman and Feast technology, as seen in those two recent Disney short films, but refined to lose some of the Xerox-y look.

I know it’s not actually Flash Animation per se, but it still has that manipulated feel about it and, in full color, I was also reminded of the classic Little Golden Books, again which Blair was once a major contributor, as well as current CG Disney Princess shows Sofia and Elena in motion, though there’s a hint again of that initial Clone Wars series in the designs, too. In short, it’s a pleasing combination of what passes for decent CG animation on television these days with a more traditionally animated aesthetic, making for an overall attractive presentation that perhaps lies on the more over-saturated colorful side but gets away with it due to its storybook feel (even if the animation occasionally has trouble with that age-old toughie…galloping horses!).

With the visuals up to scratch, the perhaps bigger question is how do you follow up a fairytale story that has a definitive end? This hasn’t really bothered Disney in the past, where the likes of Ariel and Aladdin’s further adventures seemed to just occur without much regard to where they slotted into their respective timelines, but here there’s a clear attempt to create additional stories that pick up from where the original movie left off – in so this case having the issue of how you present the previously golden haired Rapunzel as we traditionally know the character, but who had to cut off that hair (and went brunette) as a story point in the movie! The answer is perfectly convoluted and nonsensical in a Frozen kind of way, begging the question of why she can’t simply cut it off again and how she must eventually lose it to tie in with the Ever After short.

It does feel like this happens just so the tie-in merchandise can feature the Rapunzel from the movie, and probably gives the writers some added room to work in future hair gags, but somewhat feels less organic than it should. In other areas, the film is often a little slavish to the precedent set by the first film, but this is no real bad thing in itself, meaning that the humor so prevalent in Tangled is in full effect again here, though there’s also a tinge of Frozen‘s early moments, especially in the opening song Life After Happily Ever After which, it has to be said, isn’t exactly Menken and Slater’s finest moment but could potentially be a grower. More of an immediate hit is Rapunzel’s later ballad, Wind In My Hair, and its reprise, which feels more authentically Tangled even if it does kind of repeat sentiments the character has already professed in her initial outing and somewhat stops the action dead in its tracks here.

Story-wise, things are fairly simple, and older viewers may sometimes be reminded of similar kinds of scenes and setups in everything and anything from the highs of Frozen (which it seems the series may feel like it’s more a sequel to, tonally) to the lows of DTV dreck Cinderella II (in Rapunzel’s getting used to the royal life) and Pocahontas II (as Rapunzel again has to contend with adjusting to different social etiquettes), and an out of nowhere revenge plot feels rote and more than a little bit of a stretch. Yes, it can of course easily be argued Tangled: Before Ever After is intended for kids, but as a herald for a major new Disney series promoted as a television event, and featuring the return of such high-profile talent from the theatrical film, I think it’s also fair to say it’s open to some scrutiny. Happily, this new iteration doesn’t stray too far from what made the original movie so enjoyable and, even if it does occasionally lapse into some of the pitfalls and trappings of television writing, it bodes well for Tangled: The Series‘ mission to provide new adventures for Rapunzel and Flynn on their way to their eventual wedding.

Is This Thing Loaded?

As a Disney Channel movie coming quickly, and only, to standard definition DVD, you probably shouldn’t be expecting much in the way of extras…and you’d be right! While it may have been nice to have even just a brief soundbite-heavy clip on how the artists translated the CG characters to a tradigital look, how the voice cast felt about returning to their roles, or the enthusiasm of Alan Menken to become involved in a television follow-up, that is sadly not to be.

But that’s not to say Tangled: Before Ever After is a totally vanilla disc since we’re treated to a handful of Tangled Short Cuts, a series of four mini-shorts running around two and a half minutes each and playing like television interstitials that probably fill a gap between shows on the Disney Channel. It’s an amusing enough bunch, created in the same style as the main feature and finding the supporting characters some fun, if random, things to do. Rounding the disc out are the Studio’s standard catch of Sneak Peeks, here including the new Disneynature Born In China movie and the usual Disney Channel, Movie Reward and other branded spots,

Case Study:

A bright and colorful sleeve (on which Rapunzel seems to look a little too fierce, I think) is replicated on an unexpected slipcover that bumps up any collectible aspirations for the title, while the younger target audience may well appreciate the bundled-in replica of Rapunzel Journal, which I didn’t assemble but that looks to be pretty durable for what it is; a nice touch in giving a little extra value to the title and making it just that little but more special.

Ink And Paint:

With a totally new animation production approach that’s highly stylised enough to potentially divide fans of the original, there’s still no denying that it looks splendid on this disc, the sharpness, color accuracy and overall short hour-long length of the digitally mastered content all going to make Tangled: Before Ever After look great even in standard definition, with a high bitrate and zero compression issues.

Scratch Tracks:

With the returning song composer (Menken doesn’t provide the score music) and feature vocalists, Tangled: Before Ever After‘s sample-orchestra soundtrack is nothing short of big-screen worthy and certainly plays a part in making what could have come off as a poorer cousin feel substantial. English, French and Spanish dubs and subs come as options.

Final Cut:

The animation style is all that pulls this Tangled continuation out from slotting in perfectly between the original feature and its follow-up short, with a fine new song for Rapunzel herself from Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, and largely solid production values. The swap to a hand-drawn, albeit digitally rendered, look suggests what the characters may have looked like had the Rapunzel story been attempted in the tradigital 1990s, and it mostly pulls off the approach, save for a few elements that just don’t quite make the transition.

But the artwork can be appealing at times and the vocalists are clearly enjoying playing their old roles again, even if the story is lightweight and only justs hold the attention of fans of the original, while a couple of new characters don’t quite make their mark and might need better explanation in the continuing series. I’m not quite sure how the writers will continue to explain Rapunzel’s golden flowing locks and how she’ll lose them again in time for the Tangled Ever After short that the series will eventually link into, but it seems it will be a fun adventure getting there, and Before Ever After (albeit in a convoluted fashion that feels intentionally but unresolvedly open ended) tees things up nicely for what is to come.

Storyboard:

Mickey and his friends drive around in transforming race cars. Yup. They made an entire show about that.

The Sweatbox Review:

It seems unlikely that anyone at Disney would’ve had any idea just how successful Mickey Mouse Clubhouse would be for them when it first premiered. Debuting in 2006, the series was an instant hit, quickly becoming Disney Channel’s most popular preschool show of all time. And while it would be an easy program for adults to make fun of, it understood exactly what its target audience wanted, which was bright colors, bouncy songs, and goofy comedy. Though it “officially” ran for four seasons, various TV specials kept the show going for more than a decade, making it Disney’s longest running cartoon series of all time.

During its run, however, there were dramatic changes being made in how the studio was producing its preschool programming. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse came from an era in which the majority of shows aimed at little kids were “interactive,” meaning that the lead characters would frequently stop the action and ask the audience “for help.” While it was a technique that had technically been used for television since at least Sesame Street, it was shows like Dora the Explorer and Bear in the Big Blue House–which were also struggling for the attention of kids thanks to the CD-ROM boom of the mid 90’s–that made it into a trend. As Mickey Mouse Clubhouse went on, the “fad” was dying down, perhaps at least in part due to Disney’s notoriously lazy Special Agent Oso, which stopped just short of using the exact same script for every episode, but only just.

But the real change came in 2011, when Disney completely reinvented their Playhouse Disney block by renaming it Disney Junior, and launching several new shows in the process. The poster child for this was Jake and the Never Land Pirates, which while still initially “interactive” was ultimately much more independent with its storytelling, relying on it less and less until it eventually abandoned the format entirely. More impoartant was the quality of the show, which had almost shockingly great animation and lively, Saturday morning-style adventures. Jake was sadly cancelled recently, but by the end of its run, it was no different from the cartoons which used to air on The Disney Afternoon, and would’ve felt right at home on that programming lineup back in the day.

The tradition of making more “grown-up” preschool programming continued over the years with shows like The Lion Guard, Miles from Tomorrowland, Elena of Avalor and to a certain extent Sofia the First. Maybe someone at Disney felt that Mickey was overdue for a “non-interactive” series of his own, but in any case they decided to “wrap up” Mickey Mouse Clubhouse last year with A Goofy Fairy Tale before moving on to what is essentially a spin-off, Mickey and the Roadster Racers. Though why they decided to “continue” the show in this way is a little beyond me, as the concept behind Roadster Racers (at least from a cynical standpoint) sounds more like a pitch for a toy line than a show. Basically, Mickey and his pals are all race car drivers now, traveling around the world to compete in various competitions. Meanwhile, in a sort of “sub series,” Minnie and Daisy run their own private business (called “The Happy Helpers”) in which they help their patrons with tasks which range from something as seemingly simplistic as pet sitting to more complicated jobs like giving guided tours around Rome. Roadster Racers plays out like “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 2.0” in many respects (the animation style is almost identical, although the characters have been slightly redesigned), but for better or for worse, it’s much faster, more hyper, and potentially exhausting for certain moms and dads. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but if parents are looking for a “before bedtime” video for their kids, Roadster Racers may be the equivalent of giving their tykes a cup of coffee. And Mickey’s not even asking them to get up and dance with him this time!

Part of the reason for this is that it almost never stops to take a breather. Of the eight 10-minute adventures included on this disc (two of which are included as “bonus episodes”), there are rarely moments where things aren’t going somewhere, with jokes and everything else coming forward at a breakneck pace. One episode, for instance, is centered entirely around Mickey chasing a runaway tire around town. Another involves Minnie and Daisy pursuing a baby gorilla (who, at least to my eyes, looks almost disturbingly like the one who was violently killed off at the start of Tarzan) following his escape from the zoo. These episodes race along from point A to point B, almost as if they are in a hurry to be over.

There is, however, throughout all that chaos slapstick comedy aplenty (some of which, I will admit, made me laugh), along with the occasional gag for the adults (including Gladiator references, which is something I’m seeing more and more of in family entertainment these days for whatever reason). Those “big kids” watching will have a hard time not smiling during at least some of this if they grew up with Mickey Mouse, especially when The Three Caballeros themselves make an appearance (though Jose is understandably without his trademark cigar this time). Jay Leno is also fun as a semi-regular who’s a fast-talking TV sports host, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why veteran Donald Duck voice actor Tony Anselmo isn’t playing him here, especially since he’ll be returning for the upcoming DuckTales reboot. But I suppose the target audience won’t care, and they’re the ones who really matter here, which is why this show ultimately earns a passing grade. Mickey and the Roadster Racers is fun enough and perfectly fine for kids, and most adults/parents should find it to be completely painless. But I still wonder how much mileage Disney will be able to get out of the race car craziness before they decide it’s time for a reboot of the reboot.

Is This Thing Loaded?

Mickey and the Roadster Racers opens with the super serious trailer for Cars 3, while previews for Tangled: The Series, Born in China, Elena of Avalor and Disney Movie Rewards can be accessed from the main menu. Among the extra features, we have the aforementioned Bonus Episode, which is probably among the best on the disc as it’s the one featuring The Three Caballeros. Two Music Videos are also included.

Case Study:

Mickey and the Roadster Racers arrives in a pretty spiffy slipcover, with extra layering on the cover art to give it a “3D” effect. But what really stands out is how heavy it feels when you hold it. Roadster Racers comes with a surprisingly sturdy “license plate” kit (pictured below) which kids can write their name on with included sheets of stickers. It’s a pretty neat little project, and the durability of the plate (which is made out of metal) is impressive. Also included are inserts for the Disney Movie Club and Disney Movie Rewards.

Ink And Paint:

You all know how this goes. Mickey and the Roadster Racers is brand new, and looks perfectly decent on disc. Disney hasn’t given this the sharpest transfer they could have, I suppose, but it still meets all demands for a title of this sort.

Scratch Tracks:

Once again, you know the drill. This is a brand new show, so naturally it sounds decent, even though Disney obviously hasn’t decked it out with a 5.1 surround sound mix given who the series is intended for. French and Spanish language tracks are also included.

Final Cut:

In some ways, this almost feels more like a product than a show, and it’s worth noting that Disney has rushed this to DVD much faster than is the norm for them when it comes to releasing their TV series on disc (Roadster Racers premiered two months ago). It doesn’t have the production values of The Lion Guard, the smarts of Miles from Tomorrowland or the sophistication of Elena of Avalor, but it’s just cute enough to get a pass, and should keep the tykes happy. The so-called “bonus episode” included here is a good one, and the license plate kit is pretty nifty. A brand new series, Roadster Racers appears to be finding its feet, and does have potential to grow as it drives along. But it also might quickly run out of gas if Disney’s not careful.

Storyboard:

Commander Blossom, fierce Buttercup and adorable-but-not-terribly-bright Bubbles are back to fight old enemies like Mojo Jojo and new foes like Manboy, all while dealing with elementary school, getting hungover on a candy binge, and a horse who dreams of becoming a unicorn.

The Sweatbox Review:

Long before My Little Pony: Friendshp is Magic, there was another cartoon series supposedly made for little girls that spawned a surprisingly large adult fandom. Premiering in 1998, The Powerpuff Girls was one of several animated shows Cartoon Network debuted in the late 1990’s in an effort to feature more original programming on their channel, and was far and away their most popular children’s show at the time. One of the reasons for its extreme success was that it broke all the rules of so-called “girls television” that had for better or for worse become the norm. Sure, its three wide-eyed heroines were as adorable as one would expect for the genre, but The Powerpuff Girls also had a razor-sharp sense of humor, countless homages to B-movies and Hollywood serials, and hilariously strange villains.

Unfortunately, the show’s popularity among its fans didn’t translate to the big screen. In 2002, Warner Bros. took a gamble and released The Powerpuff Girls Movie to theaters over a crowded 4th of July weekend that included blockbusters like Men in Black II and leggy hits such as Lilo and Stitch, and the film was a box office disaster, barely limping to a total gross of $11 million. While this wasn’t a fatal blow to the series, it was a sign to Cartoon Network that they’d better start pursuing the creation of “another Powerpuff Girls,” with the result being 2004’s Atomic Betty. Sort of a mix of Kim Possible and Star Trek, the series was fast-paced and fun, but extremely short-lived in the United States, and the majority of its episodes have yet to be released legally in North America (a Canadian creation, Betty did enjoy success in its native country). With that series gone and Powerpuff Girls also on its way out (even with a brief Anime spin-off that followed its cancellation), Cartoon Network had a void that remained unfilled for nearly a decade…until they decided to bring The Powerpuff Girls back. Kind of.

Here’s where things get a bit confusing. While officially announced as a “reboot,” the new Powerpuff Girls more or less plays out like a continuation of the original series. The origin story of the girls is never explained or addressed (at least not in this batch of a dozen episodes), nor is their relationship to Professor Utonium (who, as anyone who’s seen the older show knows, accidentally created the trio of superheroines from “sugar, spice, everything nice and Chemical X”). None of the villains from the first series are given any form of an introduction, either, which might make some of these adventures potentially baffling for newcomers. So why even call this series a full “reboot”? Perhaps one reason is apparently strong controversy from certain circles involving it even being made in the first place. The show was produced without the consent or involvement of Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken, and his wife Lauren Faust–who was heavily active in the original series before going on to reinvent My Little Pony for Hasbro–is also not on the team here. Things really got ugly with the press, though, when it was announced that Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles would all have new voices, causing veteran voice actress Tara Strong and others to express their heartbreak on social media. This meant that the new Powerpuff Girls was hated by many before even a single episode aired, which may explain why Cartoon Network chose to label it as a “reboot” instead of as a relaunch of the beloved first series.

This does, however, make the so-called “reboot” something of an odd beast. As it is, it simply doesn’t feel “complete” enough to stand on its own two feet without having the original show around to use as some form of a narrative crutch. The character designs are almost identical to the last show, with the most notable difference being much more “fluid” animation this time around, particularly during the fight scenes (the first series was made at a time when Cartoon Network was producing most of their shows on very tight budgets). As such, the new Powerpuff Girls struggles to breathe on its own, perhaps a little too dependent on the 90’s version in order to really find its own voice.

But with all of that being said, does the new series still work? The short answer would be yes, at least for the most part. For its target audience, The Powerpuff Girls should remain a blast of Saturday morning adrenaline. For adults, there’s the nostalgia factor going for it, even though longtime fans may find some of the changes a bit jarring, and not just because of the new voice cast (the narrator from the original, for instance, is barely present here). But there’s still a lot to enjoy here, and these characters are so charming that they remain entertaining regardless of which series they are in.

The biggest strength of the new show is that it’s very funny. Of the twelve episodes included on this disc, every one provides at least one really big laugh, and the zippy, rapid-fire jokes help make up for any confusion the show might have in other regards. It may or may not be somewhat telling that the two best adventures on this set–one of which is an extended parody of The Hangover, the other being one in which Bubbles (who’s always been my favorite character) gets more and more brutally mutated through one mishap after another until she decides to become a supervillain–don’t involve crime-fighting but instead focus almost entirely on gags. Old faces like Mojo Jojo are still as hilarious as ever, and new bad guy Manboy is an absolute hoot, an uproariously bizarre character who’s obsessed with his masculinity (as well as the quality of his front lawn).

Other episodes–particularly those which require the viewer to have seen the original series in order to fully “get them”–aren’t quite as successful, with some being restricted by the 11-minute running time when they let themselves become too heavy on plot. Others–such as one in which Bubbles befriends a horse who wants to become a unicorn–come close to tripping over themselves for other reasons, but even those are kept afloat by a zippy, energetic nature and plenty of humor. I do wish that this series felt more “whole” on some level than it ultimately does, but it is full of laughs even as it comes up short in some other areas, and skeptics might be surprised by how much fun they have watching it if they’re willing to give it a try.

This disc kicks off with the pilot episode, Man Up, which introduces the aforementioned Manboy who plots to destroy a carnival full of hippies. It’s amusing stuff, even if the feminism (Buttercup gets upset when Manboy makes the mistake of calling her “princess”) might be a bit too self-aware in this one. Next up, there’s Escape From Monster Island, in which the girls must rescue the town’s bumbling pickle-loving Mayor (thankfully still voiced by Tom Kenny) when he crash lands on an island full of creatures. This does have some pretty good gags regarding boy bands, although I’m not sure how popular they really are with little girls these days (to say nothing of the fact that Gravity Falls already devoted an entire episode to the subject). Princess Buttercup, meanwhile, reintroduces old enemy Princess Mobucks, who the girls inexplicably trust when she wishes to join their team (the highlight of this episode is easily a series of terrific jokes involving a “monster for hire” destroying the city towards the end).

Moving on, we have the two best episodes on the set, the previously addressed The Stayover and Bubbles of the Opera. In the first, Blossom and Buttercup search for Bubbles when they can’t find her after a hard night of partying (if you’ve seen The Hangover, you’ll be able to guess the ending), while the second finds Bubbles becoming The Phantom of the Opera after school picture day takes a disastrous turn for her. Both of these episodes benefit greatly from running gags (whether it’s a bus full of orphans who are constantly going through disappointment or an idiotic photographer who keeps crossing paths with Bubbles in order to give her more misery), and provide plenty of chuckles from start to finish. Painbow, meanwhile, is a Buttercup-centric adventure, as she tries to save the city when a mysterious force makes everyone suddenly abandon all their responsibilities. The climax of this one–which involves some sort of demonic panda creature–is potentially the stuff of nightmares!

Next up, we have Tiara Trouble. This episode is one where you’ll really have to have seen the original show in order to fully appreciate it, as it’s dominated by villains from that series. Viral Spiral is another one which struggles a bit, as the plot–which features the girls venturing into the internet–feels a tad rushed and overstuffed. Horn, Sweet Horn!, meanwhile, is probably the most uneven episode on the disc, with a message that feels a bit confused (though accusations that it is somehow displays inadvertent Trans-phobia are a bit extreme), but it still has some solidly trippy jokes (along with a great moment in which Professor Utonium is aghast that anyone could possibly hate science).

Wrapping things up, we have Strong Armed, which finds Bubbles breaking her arm and being given a cyborg cast which causes her to go mad with power. Then there’s Little Octi Lost, a very funny one in which Buttercup steals Bubbles’s octopus plush doll. Finally, Man Up 2: Still Manning concludes the set with the return of Manboy. This is another of the best episodes on the disc, filled with plenty of good/bad puns, making it a nice way to end the collection.

Is This Thing Loaded?

The Powerpuff Girls: Tiara Trouble comes with no special features. Trailers for Adventure Time! and We Bare Bears open up the disc, with neither preview being accessible from the main menu.

Case Study:

The Powerpuff Girls: Tiara Trouble arrives in a perfectly serviceable plastic case with no slipcover. Inside a free sticker sheet can be found, along with an ad for the show’s mobile game.

Ink And Paint:

The Powerpuff Girls is a very brightly colored show, making the cartoon almost seem to pop off the screen at times. It’s also brand new, which naturally means it looks great on disc. It’s hard to imagine a Blu-ray looking much better, as this is an extremely sharp and satisfying transfer.

Scratch Tracks:

Once again, The Powerpuff Girls is a brand new show, so naturally it sounds fine here, providing a strong if not remarkable audio track. No alternate language tracks are included.

Final Cut:

I love me some Powerpuff Girls, and while this series may not quite capture the absurd magic of the original, there’s still enough to like here to give it a recommendation. Kids will love it, and there’s enough comedy to please even the more reluctant of adult viewers. It would be nice if this set included a few more episodes (running at just over two hours, you can easily watch them all in one evening), and a few bonus features also would’ve been appreciated. Still, it’s nice that children today have their own Powerpuff Girls to enjoy, and though far from perfect, it’s welcome to see Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles make a much-deserved comeback.

Storyboard:

The cast, crew and fans of Back To The Future celebrate their favorite trilogy.

The Sweatbox Review:

It was one year ago today – on October 21st 2015, to be exact – that typical all-American mid-80s time-travelling teenage adventurer Marty McFly and his crazy old pal who claims to be a scientist, Dr Emmett Brown, skipped 30 years to arrive in our present, a future for them back then that dreamt up flying cars, hovering skateboards, multi-channel television and any other number of fantastical inventions. As is always the case when dealing with the future, the specific movie, Back To Future Part II, actually got more right than it did wrong: while we may not have flying cars, driverless are on the way; hoverboards (no, not those ones with wheels!) may currently be big and bulky, but they do exist, and connected TVs with picture-in-picture screens and videocalling are practically an everyday occurrence. Even Doc and Marlene’s wearable tech and VR headsets come off better than the ones we have for real.

2015 may not be the day-glo and pastel color-popping Hill Valley of the film’s location (it does often seem that, given the series’ multiple timelines, perhaps the likes of villain Biff did win out in the end, instead of Doc Brown being able to bestow his crackpot genius on the world back in 1985), but thank goodness that at least inflation hasn’t blown up as big as the film suggests – yet! On the sequel’s release in 1989, the future still seemed a far-off place. We were told by the Doc to make it a good one, though as the date loomed closer and closer – not helped by various internet sites proclaiming the wrong date each year – there was as much disappointment at the inventions that never came along as much as there was excitement that we were nearing the date that Marty and the Doc would arrive.

Coinciding with the original film’s 30th anniversary, Universal Pictures made sure to make the most of the media hoopla surrounding the date and, as well as their going all out with a new Blu-ray release, Jaws 19 spoofery and many promotional appearances by stars Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd and creators Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, Nike got in on the act with a limited edition self-lacing sneaker, and USA Today went the whole hog and printed up the 2015 newspaper that sets the sequels’ events in motion at the end of the first film, amongst a large amount of other, hugely enthusiastic tie-ins. After all, when else are we likely to meet up with another movie future-date anytime soon, aside from the dystopian 2019 of Blade Runner, which doesn’t seem to have elicited the same kind of fervor.

Part of all these celebrations was the Kickstarter-funded documentary Back In Time, deftly borrowing the title from the first film’s Huey Lewis song to pay tribute but also encapsulating what this piece sets out to do, which is ostensibly to swing a retrospective eye over the making of the trilogy which, for me, remains the most entertaining, intricately plotted and rewarding such series of films (yes, even besting the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones pictures for want of comparable titles). You see, I love that Back To The Future isn’t about saving the world: it’s just a small-scale story about a small-town kid who disrupts his own timeline and has to put things right just as history repeats itself and he gets the chance to accidentally change things for the better. It’s as simple as that, but told on a massive scale thanks to Zemeckis’ deft directorial hand and a defining music score by then-up and coming composer Alan Silvestri.

It’s a film and subsequent series that’s deserving of the amount of attention it received on October 21 last year, and although I was thrilled that a new documentary had secured interviews with all the primary cast and crew, I was also surprised that the resulting film hadn’t found a home within Universal’s official boxset release, just as The Shark Is Still Working, a fan-film about the impact of Jaws, had turned up in the same company’s Blu-ray release for that blockbuster. On catching Back In Time on Netflix in 2015, as part of a marathon that saw a full trilogy viewing on the day itself alongside various other programming, I must say that I was ultimately underwhelmed by the documentary itself and could then understand why Universal perhaps passed over any opportunity to include it in their official set.

As I’ve mentioned in reviews for other Kickstarter-funded fan-films, there’s a danger of these kinds of programmes being made by people too close to the subject, without the necessary structure of extra eyes in place to suggest cuts or where missing context may be needed to produce a more fully-rounded result. Sometimes, the lack of a true professional polish on the technical end can be clear giveaways to a project being more of a high-end amateur proposition than a glossy, studio-backed or even independently realised release. While not suffering too deeply from both of these shortcomings, Back In Time doesn’t exactly escape from them either, especially in its focus on its subject.

Fair play to Jason Aron and his colleagues in landing the likes of Fox, Lloyd, Gale and Zemeckis as interviewees, not to mention Back To The Future’s executive producer Steven Spielberg and a whole host of other famous fans, as well as managing to get someone to pull some favors and having Universal allow them to use clips from the films, which does lend a certain amount of authenticity to the project. Kudos must go, too, to the editors and graphics handlers, who adapt the classic BTTF logo for their name stamps and bring depth to the various still images throughout, as well as unique arrangements of Alan Silvestri’s theme. But after an excellent initial half-hour that retreads over the well-worn origins and making of the first film, Back In Time takes a somewhat unexpected detour into the impact of the film on its fan community.

There’s nothing inherently problematic with this in itself, but rather than slot the stories of everyday fans in with the further making of the sequels – and after all, isn’t Part II‘s October 21 2015 date the whole reason we’re all focusing on the franchise again? – the documentary almost eschews much on Part II (actually probably my favorite of the three) and Part III for a lot of talk from people that are obviously huge fans and do great work for Fox’s Parkinson’s Foundation, but otherwise just aren’t as interesting. Further to this is an examination into how the “hero car” DeLorean from the original film, which had been standing outside the Back To The Future ride attraction at Universal Studios, had fallen into disrepair, leading to a charge to restore it for the film’s 30th anniversary and the sequel’s future date (a popular topic, it seems, going by the fact that there is now another feature doc dedicated to its restoration).

Again in itself, this is perfectly acceptable information, but both of these aspects would seem to work better as their own extras, without having the effect of wanting to get past these moments to get back to the stuff we’re really interested in. It’s fair enough to credit the filmmakers with finding these people, and telling their stories is a unique aspect to yet another Back To The Future documentary, from a band inspired by the film (and interviewed in front of the Doc’s house) and those who have customised their own DeLoreans, to even a marriage proposal with an Enchantment Under The Sea Dance theme, but too long is spent on these aspects, especially a segment for a prototype “flying car” that just feels like an inserted commercial.

And there’s the rub in such a fan-film project, when the possibility of including everything is too tempting to pass up. When Goldie Wilson actor Don Fullilove mentions a bit-part he previously had, we get the obligatory soundbite clip, and although the exhaustive research for such elements is commendable, the quality isn’t always first-rate and probably wouldn’t pass muster in a professional production. These are largely just quibbles, though, since when Back In Time fluxes it fluxes well, and the large roster of talking heads is impressive as it is extensive, even if I felt famous fan Dan Harmon came off as a major jerk when I first saw the documentary last year and it’s a feeling that has only grown with this repeat viewing.

It’s that people like Harmon – the only one who feels he has to curse to look “cool” (it’s bleeped out) – gets airtime, and that so much time is spent on some admittedly hardcore fans over documenting production on the sequels where Back In Time falters, and not only for me given other reactions to the film. Literally, it’s as if the filmmakers had reach their end and only just remembered to add in, “oh, yeah, there were a couple of sequels, too”. Not that there’s isn’t true goodness in here: it’s especially poignant to see the eternally youthful Fox, now triumphantly pressing on through his Parkinson’s, remembering the Royal Premiere where he watched the film next to Princess Diana, and the good work done by the folks at his Foundation, and fun to be reminded of the expansive Secret Cinema recreation of Hill Valley for a limited run.

It always amused me that in a trilogy that actually stuck to its rules pretty well and is widely regarded as being a pretty solid time-travel story, not many people seem to have picked up on the fact that, had Marty, the Doc and Jennifer flashed into the future in 1985, then they would have effectively disappeared (“erased from existence”) and wouldn’t have been around in 2015. How ironic, then, that come the actual date, Marty and Doc Brown’s adventures are still very much with us. Back In Time attempts to celebrate the series, ostensibly presenting itself as something of an official 30th anniversary documentary but ultimately coming off as too densely packed with too many tangents, and at least ten or twenty minutes too long. There is a lot of good stuff in here, but there are also long, long stretches of less engrossing material. Perhaps if they could go back in time themselves, the filmmakers might have chosen to keep their aim more focused.

Is This Thing Loaded?

As with most of these MVD “standard edition” discs, Back In Time doesn’t come loaded with any extras. The company continues to release these kinds of discs, but I’m still perplexed as to who the audience is for a vanilla DVD when a Blu-ray edition (albeit of the BD-R variety in this case) includes additional content and, surely, the kind of people attracted to this niche stuff are the kind of obsessives that crave the features-packed versions?

Perhaps in the case of Back To The Future that niche may cast its net a little more widely, and seeing a budget DVD on the end of a shelf might cause an impulse buy from Auntie Mable for her BTTF-freak nephew? Even then I still think the price point of $20 is too steep, given the barebones status and standard definition, when a friendlier $9.99 seems more in line for what is actually on offer.

Case Study:

The widely spread “poster” image for Back In Time, showing off a DeLorean license plate as its focus, looks the part on the front of the sleeve and, for anyone who even barely knows that iconography from the films, it illustrates its subject exactly.

Ink And Paint:

MVD seem to be a distribution company who, I’m guessing, largely have to deal with the masters they are presented with. I was most impressed with their handling of the Star Wars documentary Elstree 1976, which was shot in HD to begin with and survived the downgrade to DVD rather well, without any compression issue to speak of.

Their most recent title, All Things Must Pass: The Rise And Fall Of Tower Records didn’t fare as well: a presumably intended aged grain effect might have worked on the HD master, but the standard definition compression often struggled to keep things clear from macroblocking and the like. Here things are close to being near perfect again, for DVD at least, with a clear image that’s touched only by occasional interlacing that creates a moire effect here and there.

Scratch Tracks:

As usual with MVD’s disc issues, both 2.0 and default 5.1 tracks are supplied, each sounding about the same as each other, as one would expect from a talking heads movie. The surround track possibly has a little more predictable kick from it, with tighter dialogue coming from the center and the film clips and music sounding a bit more enveloping, but there’s little between them. English subtitles are also included for the hard of hearing.

Final Cut:

What often feels like a DVD extra gets its own disc here, almost a year after its debut through Netflix and on Blu-ray in HD with its own supplements. I’m again curious as to where the audience is for these issues when the films are either available to stream (in HD) or feature additional bonus features on Blu-ray for only five or ten dollars more than the asking price for a barebones, standard definition disc. After store discounts, a cost of under ten bucks is more reasonable, though again those that are really interested enough to make a purchase surely are the kind of people interested in better image quality and an extras package, if they haven’t already sampled the film in the twelve months it’s been out already. By the time of this somewhat belated DVD, Back In Time has also already been rated by most of the BTTF fan community as being only a so-so endeavor, something that, while I have to give credit to those that have produced this obvious labor of love to a film they clearly adore, I do ultimately have to agree with.

Storyboard:

The history of the original packaged media superstore is told through anecdotal interviews with those who were there, from its meteoric rise to its unfortunate decline in the new millennium.

The Sweatbox Review:

So, yeah…what’s a site like Animated Views doing in covering a documentary about a record store chain in the first place? Well, indulge us for this brief review, if you will, since Tower Records was the formative place that many of us would have purchased our first CDs, LaserDiscs and DVDs of all the films, animated or otherwise, that we loved. I was very lucky to have been able to visit flagship stores in Los Angeles, New York and – a store I used to spend way too much time and money in – London, which for a long time in the late 1980s and into the 1990s (before it was bought out by Virgin Megastores), was the only place one could find US imports of Criterion’s revolutionary LDs without huge shipping charges and levies.

Racks upon racks of the latest and greatest catalog Lasers lined up waiting to be taken home, from my favorite film of all time, Superman: The Movie, to the Ultimate Oz collection and any number of Disney’s impressive big box sets, right next to a huge selection of old and new original soundtrack vinyl records and newfangled Compact Discs. This was the way us old-school collectors dabbled in their hobby, before the internet came along and made ordering online the easier route, practically wiping out such brick and mortar stores in the process. Amazon and the like replaced the smaller book chains first, but it wasn’t long before packaged media followed, although this wasn’t the only thing that led to the mighty Tower Records’ demise.

Filling us in on the whole story is Colin – Son Of Tom – Hanks’ warm and heartfelt documentary, All Things Must Pass: The Rise And Fall Of Tower Records, which smartly uses a George Harrison song as its title most appropriately. I’ve been a fan of Hanks the younger for a while now, and was pleased he got good exposure as one of the leads in the first season of the incredible and quite exquisite television reimagining of Fargo. I don’t want to keep making comparisons with his Beatle-fan Dad, but it’s clear the appreciation of music has been passed down, from this film’s title (actually borrowed from a final poignant note left of the marquee of one of the last stores to close) to its subject and treatment thereof, with a deep rooted authenticity apparent for not only the music itself but the collecting culture and the genuine feel of someone who knew what it was like to frequent and hang around good old fashioned record stores.

But while Hanks manages to convey the warm and fuzzy feeling of what it was like to operate or shop in even the hugest record store, the documentary’s approach itself doesn’t exhibit too many unique touches, running fairly linearly through the life of the company without too many fancy visuals and only occasional graphics, something that Hanks may simply not have been too interested in pursuing anyway or that the Kickstarter budget may not have stretched to. Not that this is a particularly negative point, since the result is a coherent run through Tower’s chronological history, from starting out as a stack of records in the corner of founder Russ Soloman’s Dad’s drugstore to being a worldwide brand itself, and the film pretty much never lets up a very zippy and fun pace from the outset.

There’s also a terrific amount of archival footage and photographs, charting not only Tower’s highs and lows over the years but that of the record industry and packaged media in general. It’s true that the film does begin to slow down after the chain’s expansion and eventual collapse, a result of a combination of new personnel in the executive ranks and emerging audio formats rather than the death of brick and mortar stores superseded by online retailers. But one gets the feeling that it was a fun ride getting there, and is again through the genial tone of this film and its participants, with many crazy shenanigans behind the scenes and stories of various acts of debauchery and other goings on that one might expect told through the anecdotal interviews from a host of Tower people, from Solomon himself through various clerks, executives and such famous faces as David Geffen, Bruce Springsteen, previous employee Dave Grohl and perhaps Tower’s most well-known frequenter, Elton John, who famously bought three copies of everything for each of his houses, and there’s an amusing radio ad narrated by none other than John Lennon, too.

However, just as one feels the digital photo world should be dominated by a Kodak or Polaroid company that saw change coming and jumped on the future, it’s a somewhat abstract feeling that we can’t buy this kind of film from a Tower Records website when the likes of Amazon came along only afterwards to fill the gap left by this previous Goliath of stores. It seems that huge expansion coupled with management missteps and a board that didn’t see a potential in embracing a move into the online realm was what drove the company out of business: nowadays even the smallest stores promote themselves and sell their wares via the internet. Tower, it seems, was the victim of its own success, although pleasingly the film does conclude with a rebirth of sorts, with Solomon visiting Japan, where the Tower Records name remains a strong brand and still stands for the place where music lives.

Is This Thing Loaded?

This being one of MVD’s “standard edition” DVDs, the answer is, sadly, no. A slightly more stacked Blu-ray is available, as with many of their titles, but the idea with these discs simply seems to make the same content available on the older format in extremely basic versions.

Case Study:

As basic as the disc, with plain but uncluttered disc art and a front poster image that immediately tells you what the film is about.

Ink And Paint:

Again as a simple, barebones disc designed to show off the main feature and nothing else, you’d hope that the compression monkeys would allow the film to breathe in even just standard definition, but the results here seem to be a little more restricted than usual. Certainly MVD’s Elstree 1976 disc looked as pristine as DVD gets, while here things are a little more digital looking, a surprise for a film that’s largely static talking heads.

Even the black text screens exhibit a general amount of mosquito noise, with an understandably low bitrate that might have been upped a bit more to accommodate the inherent (and apparently intentional) graininess of the images. It’s not something that would be off-putting to those just wanting to see the documentary just one time, but those seriously interested in this film in the first place would probably be looking at the Blu-ray or a Digital HD file anyway.

Scratch Tracks:

Available in 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround configurations, it’s only in some of the music that any real discernible differences may be felt, since this is such a talk-heavy soundtrack to begin with. When the music kicks in, it makes itself heard with adequate punch, although both can be said to be true of either mix. English subtitles are optional.

Final Cut:

Since MVD are continuing with the issue of these vanilla versions of recent documentaries, there’s no denying there’s probably a market for these titles just for those curious to see them, and who don’t have Netflix or other kinds of digital accounts or want to shell out on higher-cost Blu-rays just for a one time viewing, which is kind of why I find the list price of $20 to be on the costly side when a better edition is available for just five or ten dollars more. I’m not sure who exactly might spring for these discs since, as mentioned above, I think those hardcore Tower fans would be just the type of people that would seek out such a Blu-ray edition. Placed lower as the budget versions that they are at, say, a $9.99 price point, I think even more people might be curious enough to click on a title and add it to a larger order, although naturally the subject matter will be the biggest attraction one way or another. Tower has a long and interesting story to tell through the origins of packaged media, and Hanks has fashioned an entertaining trawl through this history. If you’re still the kind of guy or gal who gets excited when Record Store Day comes around, you might just get a kick out of revisiting Tower Records again.

Storyboard:

Superhero High is getting ready for its annual “Hero of the Year” award ceremony. But when the sorcerer Dark Opal arrives and starts stealing the school’s most powerful possessions, it’s up to the students Batgirl, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Poison Ivy (yes, you read that right), Harley Quinn (again, yes, you read that right), and Bumblebee to save not just their home, but possibly the entire planet.

The Sweatbox Review:

Let’s get this out of the way first: DC Superhero Girls: Hero of the Year’s target audience is children. It turns all of your favorite characters into not just teenagers, but high schoolers. And it takes Poison Ivy–usually one of Batman’s most formidable foes–and gives her the timid personality of My Little Pony’s Fluttershy. All of these things, needless to say, might not sit especially well with certain adult fans, but they aren’t who this movie is trying to please. DC Superhero Girls is attempting to serve a market that is usually ignored by the comic book genre: girls. And in a year in which female Ghostbusters inexplicably became the subject of “controversy” (for reasons that are still beyond me), that’s enough to earn it a compliment in my book.

Still, if you’re a newcomer to this franchise (as I was), you might be a tad confused going into this. Hero of the Year is clearly a sequel to another entry in this series, one which, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to get a disc release. And despite premiering on DVD, this film was rather obviously intended to debut on television, complete with numerous cuts to black for non-existent commercial breaks. With that being said, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that Hero of the Year feels more like a double-length episode of a cartoon show rather than an actual movie, especially since it begins with a theme song and ends with a brief credit crawl.

Of course, all of those things are really just observations, not criticisms, and the “Saturday morning feel” is ultimately what gives Superhero Girls its charm. It’s light on its feet, fast-paced, and full of appealing characters. In a striking contrast to the more “serious” content that DC Entertainment is normally associated with, everything here is warm, colorful, and reassuringly non-threatening. Sure, there is a little drama involving a subplot which has Supergirl becoming convinced that her parents are still alive, but for the most part, Hero of the Year never allows for itself to get too heavy. Most parents probably have nothing to worry about here (even though the movie is ominously “not rated”), although it’s possible that Dark Opal’s army of shadows might be enough to frighten the film’s youngest viewers.

This isn’t to say that DC Superhero Girls isn’t offering anything aimed directly at the “big kids” who might be watching. While the sophistication and adult-pleasing humor of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or Nick’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot isn’t really to be found here (though the line “I never should’ve become a super villain! I should’ve followed my heart and become a theater major!” is good for a smile), there are Easter Eggs and cameos galore for longtime DC fans. I got a big kick out of Gorilla Grodd being Super Hero High’s vice principal (especially when Lois Lane tries to squeeze an interview out of him), and a location called “Booster’s Gold Mine” is also a nice touch. Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are still BFFs, and appearances by Giganta, Commissioner Gordon, and Johnathan and Martha Kent are appreciated.

The movie does also manage to have a little fun with its high school concept (which does seem to be lifted from Disney’s very underrated 2005 comedy Sky High, but I digress), even though its main characters don’t appear to spend much time in class. Wonder Woman’s mother, for instance, is now overbearing and anticipating for her daughter to win every major school competition. And it is pleasing that the film has no shortage of action, something I was worried might be an issue given the “women don’t care about this stuff” mentality that studios unfortunately seem to go by when making so-called “girls entertainment.” Still, part of me wishes that there was slightly more ambition being shown here, as DC Entertainment has produced much stronger “children’s entertainment” in the past (Batman: The Animated Series, this ain’t). But at the end of the day, Warner Bros. has seen a need and filled it here, finally giving some of their female heroes a chance to shine in the spotlight. And that’s just super.

Is This Thing Loaded?

DC Superhero Girls: Hero of the Year opens with a trailer for Scooby-Doo! & WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon (which looks…not as bad as it sounds?), while previews for LEGO Friends, LEGO Nexo Knights, LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Gotham City Breakout and the quite fun-looking Storks can be accessed from the main menu. The only true special features are seven DC Superhero Girls animated shorts (curiously labeled on the DVD packaging as “featurettes”) that were previously released online. They are All About Super Hero High, Fall into Super Hero High, Hero of the Month: Poison Ivy, Clubbing, Hero of the Month: Bumblebee, Saving the Day, and Hero of the Month: Wonder Woman. Like the movie itself, they are all cute enough, and run about three minutes each.

Case Study:

I was pleasantly surprised that DC Superhero Girls: Hero of the Year arrived in a slipcover, complete with “texturing” that makes the cover appear to be 3D. A sticker apparently added at the last minute proclaiming this an “All-new original movie” does look a bit out of place on the cover, presumably there just to let buyers know this isn’t the pilot movie that aired on television. Supergirl also dominates the packaging, appearing on both the front and the back. No inserts of any kind are included.

Ink And Paint:

DC Superhero Girls: Hero of the Year is bright. Some might say too bright. Colors are extremely crisp, and since this is a brand new title, there are naturally no notable flaws to be found anywhere. No problems here (unless you have an issue with bright colors).

Scratch Tracks:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Warner Bros. DVDs over the years, it’s to always have your remote control handy when watching them, as the volume will constantly need adjusting as it alternates between too soft and too loud. DC Superhero Girls: Hero of the Year is no different, although it’s still a serviceable audio track, with dialogue and audio never overpowering each other. As an aside, I’m not sure if this was because my disc was faulty or because my player was acting up, but the audio and animation seemed to not quite be syncing correctly at certain points. Still, since it could’ve just been my laptop, I won’t lower the score by much for that. French and Spanish language tracks are also included.

Final Cut:

I love these characters, and while DC Superhero Girls: Hero of the Year might not exactly be a “home run” per se, it’s still breezy fun that should easily get top marks from its target audience. The high school setting–which could’ve been terrible if handled the wrong way–actually works for the most part, and heck, by the end of it, I even kinda liked “nice girl” Poison Ivy. It is unfortunate that more extras aren’t included (from what I’ve heard, there are several shorts that aren’t featured here), but children are unlikely to mind, and the disc’s visuals and audio are decent if not nothing to write home about. I’m not sure if this franchise will have staying power or not, but going by toy sales, it seems as though DC will keep it going for at least a while (the movie’s ending is already teasing another sequel). And given how little female superheroes have taken center stage in the past, that’s more than fine with me.