Just finished watching the first episode and it was pretty crappy.
Any point in spending time watching the rest? Does it get any better?
It's worth watching for the storyline only, and it's pretty good. With the exception of a few nicely rendered backgrounds here and there, the visuals are just embarrassing, and at least half of all the dialogue is delivered in a positively wooden fashion.
shareWhile I agree that the voice acting is pretty flat, aside from Henry Corden, the storylines are pretty good. The biggest problem is the animation budget, which was miniscule. Doug Wildey (Jonny Quest) gives it a good look, but it is fairly static. That doesn't change. However, the continuity and development of the story has always kept me interested, from the time I first saw it on Saturday morning tv, through bootleg VHS copies, to the dvd release.
Depatie-Freleng wasn't exactly the high end of the animation world. Their best property was the Pink Panther, but the tv version couldn't hold a candle to the theatrical shorts; they just didn't have the budget. Their Warner Bros. cartoons are horrible (done at the end of the studio's animation period) and their Saturday morning stuff varied from decent to awful. They were later bought by Marvel Comics and used to do animated versions of their characters and other licensed properties (mostly toys) before their demise.
Perhaps I am in the minority, as I cut my animation teeth on Space Angel, which has even less motion than this does. However, if you watch a lot of tv-produced cartoons from the 50's onward, you see that very few have much motion, from the scrolling backgrounds of H-B, to the stock footage of Filmatiion. The Marvel cartoons of the 60's were just still images with voice overs, the artwork taken directly from the comic panels. Filmation's Star Trek used the same shots over and over, and recycled the same music cues endlessly; the same with Flash Gordon.
Personally, I think the storyline is worthing sticking it out, as the migration of the humanoids and the P-40 Warhawk theft are good stories.
The choices which ultimately dictated how the show would look were poor ones, and I believe they prematurely shortened its life.
It's not the "Doug Wildey" look which is the problem. I'm a fan. His style will always look great. It's not the limited animation - that's understandable, and carries a charm all its own. It's the fact that, instead of applying his style to the distinctive, established and fascinating visual criteria for which the movies, and to a lesser extent, the TV series were recognized, the whole thing is made to look as if it's taking place in France, or maybe Italy, and during WWII. It's drab. And it's boring. The only reason I watched then, as now, is for the characters who came from the more legit source material.
Place the dubious look next to the unskilled, often clashing color palette. Only a few backgrounds and characters emerge without blunder. With the exception of Urko, who passes on sheer vulgarity of color choice, nothing exactly pops with life. Certainly not this version's Zira, with her bizarrely grey face, minty colored dressing gown, and inexplicably maize-colored hands(gloves?).
Add characters so inconsistently rendered from shot to shot within the same scene that sometimes they no longer resemble the intended player, and it becomes a big mess. Sure, there were problems with any Saturday cartoon running at that time; I remember shots of Hanna Barbera's "Perils of Penelope Pitstop" where she looked like she'd had plastic surgery, then reversed it, all in the same scene, but even other DePatie Freleng shows didn't suffer like this one did. There's even a brief shot where I'm pretty sure Zira hasn't got a nose.
Further, I will never understand how peachy-skinned gorilla soldiers with electric blue streaks on their noggins, and drawn with enormous, puffy dog noses ever made it to the table in the earliest stages of development.
Or why the commander in the last episode was drawn as a member of the 20th Century French Foreign Legion, complete with cheesy pencil mustache.
Or why the lady ape testifying in "Invasion of the Underdwellers" was made to look like Zara Cully's Mother Jefferson character from "The Jeffersons", a popular show at that time. The look is a unmistakable, from her diminutive stature to the purple old lady suit and signature coiffed hairdo. It's embarrassing.
And William Apespeare? I thought that was lame even back then. What about "The Apefather"? Crap on a cracker.
It's a shame that it doesn't look, or sound, nearly as good as basics of the storyline read, because that part really works very well.
Just checked youtube to see what its like think I would rather just read the books shame as massive apes fan and love the movies and Tv show.
www.youtube.com/eastangliauk