movie coverI'd rather be watching TV![IMDB link] [Wikipedia link] [Not available on Netflix.]

PEOPLE: Created by Tom Root (Robot Chicken stop-motion animator and producer) and Matthew Seinrich (Robot Chicken creator, writer, and executive producer).

Voices:
Rachel Leigh Cook as Jodi (I’ve never seen a single one of her 43 movies). Eden Espinosa (unknown) as Sasha, who seems to be based on Sasha Grey. Seth Green, of course. Brekin Meyer (Jon in the 2004 Garfield movie, Go, Can’t Hardly Wait, the surfer from Escape From L.A., The Craft, Clueless, Joseph Gribble from King Of The Hill). Dan Milano as Willie Palmer (he was Greg The Bunny in Greg The Bunny! I totally didn’t notice this!). Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian from Star Wars) as Admiral Bitchface.

PLOT SUMMARY: Titan Maximum is basically Voltron, but his program was canceled. But now a new threat requires him to be awakened again. But two members are missing — so they are replaced with a geeky kid, and a stoic monkey.

UNCOMFORTABLE PLOT SUMMARY (inspired by this): [highlight for spoilers]→ Voltron fails at saving billions of grandparents.

QUIRKS: Voltron parody with a Robot Chicken attitude. Good characters, bit so-so plots. The whole series is, technically, one 9-episode serialized story. It might have worked better as a movie, but then nobody would have watched it. (Hardly anyone did anyway, but hey, that’s because AdultSwim is obscure for a lot of people.)

Sasha seems to possibly be inspired by Sasha Grey. I wish I’d realized that when I was watching this. Now you know, and knowing’s half the battle. To see a bit of what I mean, look at this picture vs this picture.

The monkey… is the most hilarious character I’ve ever seen that never makes an expression or says anything. He just looks straight ahead, calmly, never acknowledging anything. The most he will do is slightly turn his head, or blink an eye. It’s… really hard to understand why it’s so hilarious, but contrasted with every other character’s over-reactions and dramatic talking, his lack of, well, anything — is hilarious.

VISUALS: Stop-motion animation that looks just like Robot Chicken, but with more interesting camera angles.

WILHELM SCREAM: Yup, I think in the last episode! Debbie had emailed me to ask me if I heard a Wilhelm scream in Family Guy the night before, but I hadn’t watched it yet. I got to respond, “No, but I *did* hear it in *other* things I watched that night!”

BAD STUFF: Unfortunately, it just wasn’t as brilliant as Robot Chicken. The plots were a bit thin at times. The humor was always close to grade-A, but the action and story left a bit to be desired. The story was still interesting, but it’s kind of difficult to tell a serialized story in 11 minute chunks. This should have been a 22 minute show, but then it only would have lasted 5 episodes.

CONCLUSION: Definitely worth seeing for Robot Chicken / AdultSwim completists. I mean, it’s only about 2 hours total.

RATINGS:
Clint: Netflix: 4/5 stars. IMDB: 7.4/10 – A “high 7”.
Carolyn: Netflix: 4/5 stars. IMDB: 8/10.

No IMDB/Netflix rating — still awaiting 5 votes on IMDB.

RECOMMENDATION: If you don’t require your humor or story to be sophisticated, and want to kill 2 hours watching an adults-only Voltron parody… Here is the only show I know of in existence that will do that for you.

SIMILAR SHOWS: Voltron + Robot Chicken. But really: Super Adventure Team. Except nobody remembers that. Hell, *I* didn’t even watch it… Yet. (I own it.)

QUOTES:

“It’s like I’ve memorized every combo in the game and he just keeps hitting the A button.”

“We thought you’d given up on us. And by ‘We’ I mean ‘I’ and by ‘thought’ I mean ‘hoped’ and by ‘given up’ I mean ‘died’ and by ‘on us’ I mean ‘in a fire’ and by period I mean disappointed ellipses.”

Mood: annoyed
Music: Ozzy Osbourne – Now You See It