Pembroke W. Korgi's LJ

Boomerang Loves Me! Oh, and a meme.
Sunday hasn't been too kind to me. I woke up quite sick this morning. Vomiting, aches, and potentially the worst headache I have ever had. I decided to spend my morning in bed with my good pal, Boomerang, and boy was he a good friend to me. As mentioned before, Boomerang has been showing marathons of Josie and the Pussycats all this month. Seeing as that's my favorite Hanna-Barbara cartoon, I've been more than happy with it. This day was no different. I was greeted with another Josie marathon. Granted this time around it was the sequel series, Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. I am much more fond of the original series, than it's sequel, but the sequel is still a lot of fun (at least for me). Even if it's a downgrade.

When the marathon finished Boomerang announced it was going to show a "Boomerang Theater Movie". Most of the time this is announced, I find myself turning the channel as soon as it begins showing the movie. This could be because it usually shows horrible stinkers like "Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf."

Anyway I heard the TV's announcement and responded with "Unless that's Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats", I ain't interested. Well, guess what? It actually ended up being "Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats", and thus I watched it.

After Josie and Scooby-Doo, Top Cat is my favorite Hanna-Barbara cartoon, and while I knew this movie existed, I had never been able to see it. It was part of the Hanna-Barbara Superstar 10 line of syndicated telefilms produced in the late 80s. A batch of films that were... well... in all honesty... questionable in quality. Does that go the same for TC's first and only movie, let's see.

It has a very basic plot. TC's right hand man, Benny the Ball, saves the life of a bag woman. A few days later TC and Co. find out that the woman Benny helped was a rich billionaire and that she has now recently passed away. Her will states Benny inherits the fortune, unless her missing niece is found or if Benny winds up missing/dead within 48 hours. If the latter happens, the butler and his Russian wolfhound will receive the fortune.

The movie in a word is random. A lot of plot threads are created almost randomly and end up completely solved by the end of the movie. More so by happenstance than anything else. Though the movie does retain a lot of Top Cat's usual wit, it seems to go more on slapstick humor and less on actually witty wordplay that made the series popular.

Also this movie was done in the 80's when Hanna Barbara was getting a lot of their animation done overseas. Something that caused their 80's cartoon venues to lose a lot of the charm of their limited animation forefathers. The overseas animation maybe more versatile and less limited than the pre overseas HB cartooning, but unlike most overseas cartoons, these entries always end up being inconsistent, clumsily animated, and incredibly off model. For every scene where the animation looks decent, there's several scenes were it just look awkward, sloppy, or clumsy. Causing the animation to look very unbalanced and bad.

Here's some quick points on the movie:

The Good:

- TC and Co. steal the tires off of Officer Dibble's police car
- TC makes a joke or two about wishing he bought life insurance on Benny
- TC's offhand comments and fast talking are still in play.
- Most the original voice actors return for their roles.
- Frank Welker has a field day taking over unfilled roles and incidental characters.

The Bad:

- Character designs are horribly inconsistent and sometimes really sloppy looking.
- Same goes for the animation.
- The writer of this movie really needs to look at a map. TC and Co. jump from New York City to Beverly Hills an back so much that you'd think they were neighboring cities, when the are on the opposite sides of the United States. This is made further clear by TC making a comment about packing and moving within an hour via a garbage truck. Either that's a fast grabage truck or there's something not quite right in this cartoon.
- Someone needs to inform Frank Welker that their is more to having a Russian accent than just adding "-sky" to the end of random words.
- There's a lot of scenes and plot threads that feel tacked on, and like there's no reason for them to be there other than to waste time.

The Weird:

- Frank Welker does a rather bad Eddie Murphy imitation in a rather weird and out of place Beverly Hills Cop reference.
- Maurice Gosfield (the original voice actor for Benny the Ball) and Allen Jenkins (the original voice actor for Officer Dibble) are both credited as being in the movie when they were both dead at the time this movie was made (and it wasn't a recent death, we're talking decades). It's made further obvious by the fact that Benny and Dibble don't sound anything like they did in the original series. If I didn't know better, I'd say Frank Welker was doing Benny's voice and either Welher or Jon Stephenson (who's also played Fancy Fancy) was doing Dibble.

Overall:

I'd rather watch the original series, this movie seemed to focus more slap stick and less on witty wordplay, but overall it was still fun. Despite haphazard writing and sloppy animation, it still maintained to keep my attention and keep the characters true to their personalities. I give it a 6 out of 10. If anything, it's better than Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf.

( Now for the Meme part of our show )

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