Movie:
Disc:
Oh,
for the joyous days of youth when you didn't care how lousy your
entertainment was!
Oh, for the days when superheroes had problems that were easy to solve and
didn't leave any lingering psychological scars! Oh, for the days when
Batman was your buddy, Superman taught you magic tricks, and Wonder Woman
balanced crime fighting with important lessons about eating your
vegetables. Wouldn't it be great if superheroes could go back to being
like that?
Okay, no, it wouldn't. At all. But for those of us of a
certain age, the undeniably cheesy Super Friends cartoon was the
first step on the road to ultimate Christian Bale-based bad-assery. The
Super Friends appeared on Saturday mornings off and on for over thirteen
years, which covers quite a swath of youthful demographics. Warners has
been slowly releasing individual seasons, the latest of which arrives on
DVD on January 27th 2009. It covers the second half of the All-New
Super Friends Hour, part of a series reboot after a
less-than-successful first attempt. From an adult perspective, it's hard
to say there was much improvement? and ironically, that forms a key part
of its appeal.
The format was pretty straightforward. Each hour-long
episode involved five of DC Comics' biggest heroes - Superman, Batman,
Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman - along with the new addition of Wonder
Twins Zan and Jayna (plus their "space monkey" Gleek who served as the
series' designated Scrappy-Doo). Every episode had four distinct segments.
The first featured two of the five heroes teaming up to thwart some
villain or another. The second involved Zan and Jayna, dealing with a
"teen trouble" crisis like drag racing or hitchhiking. The third gathered
all seven heroes together against some larger menace: it was the longest
and most involved of the four segments. Finally, one of the five heroes
would join up with a special "guest hero" culled from the DC files (such
as Green Lantern or the Flash) or a new "minority" hero (such as Black
Vulcan or Apache Chief) to thwart some natural disaster. A series of
shorts about health tips, arts and crafts, word puzzles, and safety would
be interspersed between them all.
By today's standards, every episode remains shockingly
crude. Some of the blame lies with overzealous parents' groups of the
time: so dedicated to protecting our fragile young minds that they refused
to allow any fistfights, intra-team arguments or, you know, drama in the
storylines. (You can almost hear Helen Lovejoy crying "Won't someone
please think of the children!" over the soundtrack.) The heroes are
thus reduced to one-dimensional nice guys, differentiated only by their
particular powers and catch phrases. Plots involve a lot of
less-than-lethal threats (freeze rays and mind control devices are
favorites), and everything ends with a gratingly cheerful group laugh back
at the Hall of Justice.
In their Herculean efforts to weave around such
obstacles, the writers went down some truly bizarre paths: one episode has
Zan saving the day by transforming into a giant pile of Jell-O, while
another entails an evil feminist (?!) named Medulla turning the women of
the world into her zombified slaves.
The dreadful dialogue was dumbed down
to keep anyone from becoming lost: the heroes would largely either repeat
what they've just seen, explain what they're about to do, or deliver
condescending lectures of the "crime never pays" variety. And while the
rogues' gallery included a few DC stalwarts (including a not-at-all-black
Black Manta and the Gentleman Ghost), it was mostly boring mad scientists
and generic costumed freaks? pretty tame when compared to the Legion of
Doom in subsequent seasons.
Hanna-Barbera, which produced the show for the entirety
of its run, didn't help matters by putting its own spin on the concept.
They held the intractable belief that anything worth doing was worth doing
with a kooky animal sidekick: hence Gleek, one of single most annoying
creations ever inflicted upon an unsuspecting Generation X. Zan and Jayna
were little better, a duo seemingly conceived on a cocktail napkin and -
in Zan's case at least - possessing one of the least useful superpowers
ever (seriously people: a giant pile of Jell-O). Low production values
meant a gaggle of visual continuity errors as well, with characters
popping up in two places at once and costumes changing colors seemingly at
random.
And yet - like any good piece of camp - all those flaws
actually make the series more endearing. Adults who grew up on the show
can remember how enchanted they were by it and laugh quietly at such
child-like wonder springing from such a rickety source. The colorful
settings are no less pleasing for their shoddy workmanship, and though the
new "minority" superheroes are pretty embarrassing these days, the
intentions behind them were the very best.
And in our dark and cynical modern age, the Super
Friends possess a resolute cheerfulness that can be quite disarming. The
brilliant adult complexities of Frank Miller and Christopher Nolan sprang
from those innocent roots - roots which time has erased, but are still
hugely entertaining if watched in the right frame of mind. It's nice
sometimes to remember a period when Superman was your pal, when Batman
never had to hit back, when all the world's difficulties could be solved
with just a little teamwork and a guy who talks to fish. For all its flaws
and foolishness, The Super Friends remains an ideal repository for
such emotions, wrapped in a candy-colored surface and waiting for that
unique form of embarrassed affection that Saturday morning syndication was
made for.
Also, Medulla? She's kind of hot.
THE DISC: The disc contains the second eight
episodes in the fifteen-episode All-New Super Friends season (the
first seven are already available on DVD). Image quality is first-rate:
sharp, clear, and magnifying all of the animators' original mistakes
beyond any capacity to hide. Extras are limited to a single featurette
about the Wonder Twins, full of Gen-X comic book pros like Paul Dini and
Alex Ross who are clearly in on the joke. It sets the mood perfectly, but
offers little beyond that.
WORTH IT? Played straight, probably not. But as a
throwback to an earlier era - and when viewed in your jammies with the
most sugar-laden cereal you can find--the nostalgia factor is impossible
to resist.
RECOMMENDATION: For Gen-Xers, it's close to a
must-buy. Parents with small children will enjoy it too, as well as
stoners, comic buffs, and anyone with an affinity for old-school
animation.
- Rob Vaux
