BEAST MACHINES TRANSFORMERS: THE COMPLETE SERIES

Beast Machines Transformers: The Complete Series

Starring: Kathleen Barr, Jim Byrnes, Gary Chalk, Ian James Corlett, Paul Dobson, Patricia Drake
Director: William Lau, Gino Nichele

Format: Box set, Color, NTSC
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)

Movie: * * ½
Disc: * *

About ten minutes into the first episode I realised that despite my Peter Pan complex I was simply too old for Beast Machines Transformers. Since I wasn’t eight years old and never saw any of the original Transformers shows, I realised that I had no reason to be watching Beast Machines Transformers.

Some children’s shows you can watch and some are so rooted deeply in their target demographic that they are unwatchable unless you have some awkward psychological obsession to relive your childhood at all costs.

Still I stuck it through the next three or four episodes: but the repetitive action sequences and thumping techno soundtrack soon grew wearisome. The animation (CG) isn’t too bad — for a TV show, but it looks clunky and lacks detail. Also, the dialogue and characters weren’t that interesting despite an attempt at sketching a story arch that tries to go beyond the standard TV kiddies show format of superheroes foiling the same bad guy’s evil master plan for that week.

So what’s the show about? Well, you have superheroes foiling the same bad guy’s evil master plan for that week . . . Seriously though; the show involves a group of talking mutant animals who can transform themselves into giant fighting robots. Each episode they battle the same supervillain named Megatron.

THE DISCS: Fans of the previous TV shows (which ran 1984-1989, 1996-2000, 2001-2002, 2002-2004, and 2005-2006) will probably find this latest incarnation entertaining. Since it is the first collection of the entire series in one collection they’d want to check it out. Special features are on the meagre side, but the CG animation transfers well to the digital format of DVD.

WORTH IT? If you’re an eight-year-old boy or fan of the show, yeah sure.

RECOMMENDATION: Buy it for Timmy on his tenth birthday . . .