Scolding Review: The Jetsons Movie

But is there rap? BECAUSE THERE HAS TO BE!

Who doesn't like the Jetsons? Lots of people. Let's face it, the Jetsons will always play second fiddle to the Flinstones. Where the Stone age family gets a duration record that wouldn't be broken in decades, two live action movies, and recent talk of a new, Seth MacFarleyized reboot, The Jetsons has merely a string of TV movies, a  development-hell movie that would star Will Ferrel, if it existed, and the odd videogame here or there.  There will never be a time where they won't be the  Rival Schools to the Flinstones' Street fighter, the Antz to their  A Bug's Life, the Neo Geo Pocket to their Gameboy.

Haha, stupid! In the future nobody's gonna do sports!

So, I don't know what's not appealing enough for these characters that they can't even shill cereal and vitamins(even though the first is done fairly effective by a dazed looking bear and anemia, respectively.). I was fairly young when this was on reruns, and I don't remember much of it, except for it stubbornly not being about neither Robocop nor Ninja Turtles. With those 2 strikes against it, let's look at the Jetsons movie, and rediscover what the future looked like in the 50's when remembered by the early 90s.

 As our story begins, as in the series we get a good look, and sung fanfare at, most members of the family. There's George Jetson, who dislikes going to work in the morning but does so. His wife Jane who is  a woman. It doesn't bring in any other traits for her than that. His son Elroy, who is  a kid prodigy of sorts, and also has A GAME that he would be SAD if his FATHER didn't get to it(not to skip ahead, but every time a movie presents a kid who has a game and wants his father to watch, it is for the purposes of him not showing up and getting the lesson that he needs to be more involved in his children''s life). And finally Judy, who is  a teenager girl, in the most broad, stereotypical form. There's Astro, the dog, combining the least endearing traits of Dino and Scooby Doo. There's also the Robot maid, Rosie. Sigh. I have never met someone who has a maid, so I'm going to assume everyone in America Circa 1950's had one. Rosie raises the building itself to get the family out of the smog, a quick set up for the themes of the movie and a reminder that everything needs to be postmodernist.

Middle Name Chopped. Last name Liver.

So George leaves this cardboard cutouts and heads for work in his Float-Car. But a traffic jam occurs, in complete defiance to the concepts that would make a flying car practical. In order to resolve this common man trouble with some ingenue he inflates a cop-shaped baloon, and makes siren sounds to convince everyone to make way. However a real cop comes along, and reprimands him.

While he's at work, his boss, MR Spacely, is holding a chairholder's meeting. Basically, the board pressures Spacely to reduce costs, Spacely points out his offplanet factory/mine  could do it, and all it needs is someone to run it,  and that the last 2  people to apply for the job ran away. Meanwhile, Elroy, who never evar convinces me his voice is a child's, is schooling some chumps in Spaceketball(okay, it's called Spaceball, but my version is more accurate.) and Judy and her friend, Bizarro Space Daria, are a at a teen kids music place(I assume she's skipping school.) when the coolest most handsome space singer there, Cosmic Cosmo, invites her for a date, set for a few days in the future.

But then they get some mood whiplash when George saunters into the home announcing he's now the vice president and they're moving. Elroy is now no longer sad his dad missed his game, and Judy is throwing a fit all over the place. This is played for laughs, but later we're gonna get a horrible song out of it.

Get over it. I moved like 7 times as a kid, and I turned out fine, for a man that argues with cartoons.

So the family moves and we get a few weak gags out of it. There's a zany family of green Wookies that they have as neighbors, and there's also also a family of robots.  I get a feeling both of these were meant to be black and we all know in the future-50's-90's there's no blacks. Seriously, I didn't see any.

The female of the robot family invites the women to a mall, which brings Judy out of her marasm. Meanwhile, George goes to work, because this is what men do. Men can't be bothered to go to their kid's games or loiter in malls all day, like women.

However, soon George learns that the plant is not all fun and games. There's also some ill(advised) early 90s rap about how the factory works. It's painful but quick, like being stabbed in the eye by a Kenyan.

Judy separates and heads off to the "nature zone" of the mall, so we can get her super sad ballad about being heartbroken. Look, I don't remember The Jetsons having any songs, and if it did, they probably weren't this terrible. Eventually she stumbles upon a new boy to love, who looks like the bastard son of Captain Planet and Two-Face.

So...dreamy?

 And Elroy is now getting schooled by his kid neighbor robot AT Spaceball. See, I told you. Black. Eventually all this set up leads to George Jetson ceremonially starting the factory, which immediately starts going bonkers and shooting sprockets around. Elroy who has been building animosity towards his neightbot, saves him, even though, well he's a robot. How much can he be hurt by a piece of metal?

With the pressure on him to somehow make the factory work,  George is ever more determined to get results. but somehow the plant keeps failing. Eventually George's coworker fesses up and reveals that the plant is probably being sabotaged. George decides that the best course of action would be letting the higher ups know so they can  launch a full assessment and investigation. Or wait at work while it's dark with a flashlight, like a jackass.

His kid, the Sasquatch kid, and the Robot Kid also launch their own investigation, worrying the parents of 2 of those kids because Space Sasquatches are terrible at parenting. Eventually George goes missing, and the kids stumble into the darkest truth, that the saboteurs are...CUTE LIL'  SPACE MONCHICHEES!

If it's smart enough to accessorize, it's smart enough to be tried for sabotage.

Indeed, under the factory, right next to the ore mining drill, live this happy go lucky, highly marketable  space babies, who are having their home destroyed by the BIG BAD CORPORATION! As intelligent beings capable of speech their only hope of survival has been to ecoterrorize  the factory! And to make sure we get the point that the monchichees are in the right, the hairy sasquatch baby hug-shields the monchichi from Astro. I think that moment gave me diabetes.

I have since learned that you don't get Diabetes strictly from eating too much sugar. I hope that makes the fact I got it from this funnier.

Then George Jetson comes out of the woods, tied and gagged. It's clear the furballs, much like their direct inspiration the Ewoks, meant to kill and eat George, as they probably did to the people he's substituting. But he's still the asshole who's supposed to understanding, and he's still the one who has to compromise with the Space Monchichees according to everyone, including Captain Planet looking dude.

To even further drive who the assholes here are, Mr Spacely arrives, and tries to start the machine. The robot worker insists that he don't  without ever pointing out specifically that he's probably killing  a few people. Spacely kills the robot, and  goes on with the drilling, sending deadly rock debris flying at the Jetsons and putting them all in perilous risk.

Eventually  Jetson and his family get out, and try to stop  the machine, which his boss does not allow. Now, I think the roughly 5 people involved could take on Spacely, since he's like 3'5, has  like 50+ years, and wields no weapons. But because that would be too direct, George jumps  into a hole where a series of gags occur, and busts the machine.

Forced  by this space mutiny, Spaceley is strong armed into a deal were the Monchichi's do all of the work for nothing(because destroying the environment bad, sweatshops good?), the factory is exclusively are recycling plant, and  I guess all the Sprockets go on be part of Bono's hype machine. However, the family must return to Earth, and leave behind all their new friends. With tears in their eyes, they travel on. Awful 90's rap aaaaand scene!

So uh, that sure was some movie, huh? Never even nearly as clever and funny as it thinks, The Jetsons movie is abrasively progressive with it's politics while having some pretty retrograde characterization. The characters are a little too dull, and don't have consistent motivations, or in the case of Jane Jetson just plain have no motivation at all. The animations is mostly so-so, and the songs...are fucking terrible.  So what can I say? It's kind of subaverage at best. So perfect for the Jetsons, I guess.