| "The
Ultimate Underdog Collection: Volume 1" DVD
There are times when
those who fail to learn from history are doubly blessed. They
don't see what crap used to go on, and they're not affected when
it comes back, because to them, it's new and interesting.
Anyone watching "The Ultimate Underdog Collection" should
hope to be one of them.
This is a collection of three two-episode Underdog installments,
and the shoe-shine dog turned superhero finds himself in a variety
of dilemmas.
First, "The Big Dipper" focuses on villain Simon Barsinister
as he develops a device to suck up all the water in the world
and compress it into a series of handy labelled vials. For those
of you saying "Bravo, he's just invented the Infinite Wet-Dry
Vac," know that you are not alone. I said that very same
thing.
Apparently, sixties cartoons thought much less of their audiences
than those of today--no one notices as this three-foot-tall misshapen
madman lummoxes his way around the planet systematically draining
the water out of everything from the Hudson River to the Pacific
Ocean. In fact, his device is so clever that he can drain the
Gulf of Mexico and leave the entire Atlantic Ocean for last, as
if there were some massive Plexiglas barrier stretching down past
Florida and arcing around to Mexico. Worse, despite the fact that
a crowd clamors for water outside Barsinister's lab, not one person
realizes that there's a CROWD of them, and ONE three-foot-tall
misshapen madman of him, and that they could very effectively
rush him, beat the hell out of him, and get their water BACK.
I found myself starting to wonder if this show was written by
a collective of chimps on typewriters.
I'd describe the other two episodes--one proving conclusively
that Underdog is an easy contender for Biggest Moron in Superherodom
and the other an impressive knockoff of "King Kong",
but I think you get my point: this show has aged about as well
as a gallon of milk.
Perhaps even worse are the extras included with the Underdog episodes,
a collection of short subjects about the various other characters
of the Underdog universe. The castoffs and dreck we have to work
with here ranges from the stupid (a turtle so inept he requires
wizardly help to see why he would fail at any endeavor he takes
on) to the patently offensive (a cop with a horrible Chinese accent
and slanting eyes and mustache named, of all things, "Charlie
Chin") to the downright insulting (Don Adams. As a PENGUIN.
God help us all.), but one thing remains throughout them all:
They all suck sour frog ass.
Not to be flippant, but even from a technical standpoint this
stuff should have been retired ages ago--minimal backgrounds,
horrible storylines, plot holes the size of Fearo the Ferocious,
pathetic voice-acting--and it all adds up to one thing.
Somewhere, someone was desperate for a summer movie, and dragged
this canard out of the meat locker for one final go.
At least, I HOPE it's one final go. If I never see Underdog flying
through the skies and being just a general idiot, it will be too
soon.
The
Ultimate Underdog Collection: Volume 1
*
DVD
Starring Wally Cox, Norma MacMillian, Kenny Delmar, Ben Stone,
Sandy Becker
120 mins
Not Rated
2007
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