Author goldstar

TV Special Tonight!: Zolar – The Extreme Sports Movie

goldstar 2 Comments

Two things that kids like are space aliens and extreme sports (i.e., skateboarding, snowboarding, etc.). In 2004, Kids’ WB brilliantly and cynically combined these 2 elements by producing a made for TV movie about an extreme sports loving teenage space alien. Witness Zolar: The Extreme Sports Movie.

Mediocrity….TO THE XTREME!!!

Kids’ WB’s first (and only) live action movie,  Zolar tells the story of a blue-skinned teenaged extraterrestrial who possesses immense galactic power but is interested primarily in skating with his friends and reconciling his freakish exterior with the norms of society. And surviving attempts on his life by the evil interstellar overlord Hedion. That concerns him too.

Here’s the skinny: Fourteen years ago, a burst of galactic energy collided with Earth. This burst contained a blue skinned alien baby (I didn’t know energy bursts could do that). Said baby was found by a guy named Skip, who lives in a bus. Skip claimed the baby as his own and did what any human would do with an alien baby; teach it to skateboard to the max, man!

Here’s Zolar and his adoptive parent dude Skip. Skip is the one on the left.

Zolar’s  bright blue skin and the fin things for his ears are OK, but there’s something familiar about that nose…

Jimmy_Durante

“Ha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha!”

Moving on…
Fast forward to the present day. Four meddling kids (they’re names are Keiko, Dex, Hanson, and Chelsea, but you don’t need to know their names. I’m just going to call them by their character archetypes: Leader Boy Who Gives Everything His All, Nerd Boy Who’s a Technical Whiz, Wacky Dressed Girl Who Has Kooky Colored Hair and Ca-Razy Kewl Outfits and Little Sister Who’s Out to Prove She’s Not Just a Kid, Even Though She Is) are trying to break into the extreme sports circuit, be it rollerblading, skateboarding or snowboarding. Problem is, they all suck at all of them. One fateful day, they run into Skip and Zolar. Skip offers to train them in the way of awesome skateboarding, while also giving his adopted alien freak boy a chance to make friends with some normal kids.  Zolar also has a propensity for making the following ejaculation:
“BLUE-YA!!”
 
“Blue no!”
 
Seriously. Stop trying to turn “Blue-Ya!” into a catchphrase. It’s not going to happen.
There’s also a cameo by professional skater Jason Ellis, who provides lengthy exposition and makes the startling revelation that all extreme sports athletes are actually aliens in disguise!
Silver Surfer
“That sounds ridiculous to me, and I used to work for a guy who eats planets for sustainance!”

“File this under: bull crap.”

All of the world’s extreme sports athletes are space aliens. Really, that’s like saying that all of TV’s famous cooking show stars are actually mutant Morlocks.

You always wondered. Now ya know!”

 

Everyone immediately becomes friends. However, the evil Hedion (C. Thomas Howell), a powerful space bad guy, seeks the power that Zolar has within him. To capture Zolar and retrieve this mojo, he dispatches some cronies to Earth, chief among them some clown named Geommer.

Geommer puts together a scheme to trick Zolar and takes him prisoner. It’s now up to Zolar’s new friends to spring their blue chum, and prevent Geommer from taking over the universe.

Thanks to dvdverdict.com for the synopsis.

On the upside, Zolar is harmless family fare. There’s no blood, death or sexual innuendos. On the downside, the movie is very, very, very stupid. The premise alone opens the door for all kinds of unanswerable questions: How does a hippie guy living in a bus manage to hide an alien for 14 years? What’s with Wild Grrl’s look?

Zolar

Normally I’m all for chicks who wear wacky outfits and crazy colored hair, I actually liked the pink hair, but this chick was wearing FAR too much makeup. Seriously, no need to cake it on, sister; any more and you can officially qualify as a clown. Seriously, all she needs is a pair of big floppy shoes and a red honking nose and she’d be in the house.

“All of a sudden I’ve got somethin’ in my pocket. It’s as big as my shoe, but it feels just like a rocket!”

Where are these kids’ parents? Aren’t they concerned about their kids being chased and blasted by laser gun toting evil aliens from another planet? And how does anyone not notice a teen with blue skin and gills wearing street clothes? Yeah, sure. All you have to do is dress the space alien in a baseball cap, a plaid shirt and blue jeans and everyone thinks that he’s a normal person.

“That’s just stupid.”
 
“Real stupid!”
 
Zolar is nothing but a cynical attempt to cash in on two popular fads to make money off of gullible kids. It would be like making a movie about giant robots who know Kung-Fu. Or a movie about Wild West cowboys fighting alien invaders.

Oh, wait. That actually happened. Anyway, as evidenced by shows such as Prostars and “Hoop Squad”, arguably the single worst episode of Static Shock of all time, trying to pass off pro athletes as super heroes is always a terrible idea. I think that Chad Rocco (CR!) said it best, “Just because you can play basketball, that doesn’t make you a super hero!”

All of a sudden, the concept of extra terrestrial ducks who play hockey seems plausible.

Why Twilight Sparkle is Awesome!

goldstar 4 Comments
  1. She’s a unicorn, and unicorns are naturally cool.*
  2.  She’s purple, my favorite color.
  3. She has a big ol’ brain. Anyone who studies magic and science is OK in my book!
  4. Prior to moving to Ponyville, she was an anti-social recluse. I can relate.
  5. That mane and tail. You’ve just got to love the streaks.
  6.  She’s voiced by Tara Strong.
  7.  Until recently, she lived in a tree house with a magical lightning rod so’s not to get struck by lightning. Now that’s thinking green!
  8. I just plain like the name “Twilight Sparkle”. It rolls off the tongue nicely.
  9. She has purple eyes.
  10. She has mad organization skills.
  11. She hangs out with a dragon, which makes her cool by association.
  12.  She’s got that bitchin’ cutie mark.
  13.  She was mentored by Princess (should be Queen) Celestia, babysat by another princess (Cadence) and her brother (Shining Armor) is a member of the Royal Guard, so she’s connected.
  14. Her Element of Harmony is Magic. The other Elements are OK too, for the “hippy-dippy” stuff, but magic can actually kick ass.
  15. She can do the Elaine from Seinfeld dance.
  16.  In an alternate reality, she looks like this:
Equestria_Girls_Twilight_Sparkle

You’ve got the look!

*Yes, I know that Twilight Sparkle is an allicorn now, but honestly, I prefer Twilight before she became a princess. I think that the whole allicorn princess thing should have been saved for the series finale, but that’s just me.

Reviews on the Run and TV Special Showdown

goldstar Leave a comment

On the 10th of this month, Silverstar wrote a looking back review of C.H. Greenblatt’s Chowder and labeled it as a segment of “Reviews on the Run”. This got me thinking; that’s a good way to execute the RotR segments and keep them as reviews. From now on, Reviews on the Run will remain about reviews, but we’ll only be reviewing the shows that we’ve seen or care about. In other words, we’ll only be covering the shows that we choose to cover. We now know that we can’t please everyone and trying to do so by attempting to review every new series that comes down the pike was too much work for too little payoff (keep in mind that we are lazy) and that’s something that we definitely won’t be continuing.  Also, they won’t be blow by blow reviews, hence the name “Reviews on the Run”. Said shows don’t have to be new, nor do they have to currently be airing. In addition, the reviews don’t need to be limited to just shows; we could review a short or just a single episode of a series, if we so desire. Just general musings and us being geeky about cartoons. So it’s business as usual then.

Cue the rimshot.
Anyway, what about segment on TV specials then, you ask? Well, I’ve decided to do the TV special riffs as it’s own separate segment which  I’m tentatively calling TV Special Showdown. The Hanna-Barbera All-Star Comedy Ice Revue was the first of these segments, but it won’t be the last. So stay tooned.

Retroville: TMNT Cereal

goldstar 2 Comments

There are signs that let one know when they’ve truly arrived in the entertainment industry. Your franchise gets a big budgeted movie. A Saturday morning TV series. A line of clothing with your name on it. However, you know for certain that you’ve made your mark on Hollywood when your franchise comes out with it’s own cheesy breakfast cereal. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are no exception to this honor. Yes, the Ninja Turtles had their own breakfast cereal. We now present you with the glory that is the first TMNT cereal ad:

Is it just me, or did Michelangelo sound kind of stoned in that? Anyway, just a minor inquiry: Did the Shredder have some sort of grand master plan that involved the possession of this one particular box of cereal? Or was he just doing this to screw with the Turtles? Honestly, I don’t know what’s more embarrassing for Shredder; the fact that he’s been reduced to stealing breakfast cereal from a couple of kids, or the fact that he completely failed at accomplishing this task. This is right up there with the time when Shredder opened up a pizza restaurant and operated it for several weeks, possibly months, in the hopes that the Turtles would show up as customers. There’s a little thing called food poisoning. You might want to look into that.

At least the Ninja Turtles managed to escape from this mostly unscathed. This ad was hardly the most embarrassing career move for them. The following bit comes to mind:


I’m curious as to why an amphibious creature needs to travel by rowboat anyway? And what was that weird thing you were doing with your arms there, Leo?

“Listen, things were a little tight and I needed pizza money! The studio emptied a dump truck full of money in front of my door! I’m not made of stone! Stop looking at me!!!!!”

"Reviews On the Run" is Back!…Sort Of

goldstar Leave a comment

Hey, guys.

As those who have been following us know, as of this year we decided to no longer post reviews of current shows, thus retiring our Reviews On the Run segments. Well, today we’re pleased to announce that RotR will be returning to The Twin Factor!

But we’re still done posting reviews of current TV shows.

Instead, we’ll be using RotR to review the weirdest, kookiest and campiest one-and-done TV specials, something we’ve been wanting to tackle for a little while here. (Since RotR’s subject matter will be getting more specific, I considered changing the segment’s name, to ‘A Very Special Special’ or something similar, but I kind of like the name Reviews On the Run, so we’ll be sticking to that for now.) We’ll be starting with our snarky review of Hanna-Barbera’s “masterpiece”, Hanna-Barbera’s All-Star Comedy Ice Review. Expect this and other TV special riffs coming soon.

Reviews On the Run is back, babeh!

5 Stars!