Being a fan of Tiffany (see my reviews of her albums), I naturally had to see Jetsons The Movie when it came out, because she was doing the voice of Judy Jetson and singing three songs in it. So I saw it in the theater on its opening night, and later bought the videotape of it when that came out. However, that video was one of the many things the moving company lost in my move to Florida earlier this year (see my review of Allied Van Lines elsewhere on Epinions), so I'm stuck having to review it from memory now.

The three Tiffany songs, "I Always Thought I'd See You Again," "You And Me," and "Home," were good. (I still have the soundtrack CD, so I can listen to them.) I do wonder, however, why they were chosen for the Jetsons movie; there's nothing particularly futuristic about their sound. Anyway, the song "You And Me", as presented in the movie, was accompanied by a pretty neat animated sequence, with lots of wild abstract art. I could never understand why they didn't release that as a music video; it could have been a big MTV hit.

Tiffany's performance as Judy Jetson was OK, but I think she's a better singer than actress. It also wasn't nice of the producers to kick off original Judy Jetson voice Janet Waldo (Where's Waldo? Not in this movie!) at the last minute as they did. Apparently they did this at the insistence of Tiffany's exploitative manager of the time, George Tobin, who wouldn't let her songs be used unless she also did the voice acting. I like to think Tiffany herself wouldn't have initiated something this mean, but she was at the time doing everything her manager said (though she ended up dumping him by the time the movie came out).

So how was the rest of the movie? Well, I didn't hate it as much as some of the other reviewers did, but it wasn't really great either. The plot was rather predictable: Spacely's new automated asteroid plant was mysteriously failing, and Jetson had to go investigate; it turned out it was being sabotaged by creatures who lived inside the asteroid because their habitat was being destroyed by the factory's mining. In the usual sort of cartoon-movie happy ending, a solution was worked out that made everybody happy, with the kids playing a major role in finding the problem and solution and convincing the grownups to implement it.

The animation actually had some innovation for its time, involving more extensive use of computer animation combined with traditional hand-drawn cels than was typical for its time (1990). Of course, technology has gone way beyond this level since then, and other studios like Disney have taken the leads to advance it; the more penny-pinching Hanna-Barbera studio, with its emphasis more on quantity than quality, seldom figures in the ranks of state-of-the-art leaders. Still, they did some interesting effects in this movie.

Various new characters were introduced in the movie alongside the familiar Jetson family, but they were never to be seen again since there was no sequel (and anyway, the movie ended with the Jetsons moving back to Earth, away from the new friends they'd met on the asteroid). There were the cute creatures in the middle of the asteroid, there was the robot manager of the factory (and his robot family), and there was the Jetsons' new next door neighbors, the Furbelows (no connection with later toy sensations the "Furbies", as far as I know), who were purple furry creatures. In a rather preachy lesson of racial tolerance, the Jetsons had to learn that despite their different look and different culture, the Furbelows were... well, not actually human, but whatever species they were... and they could be helpful and good friends if you only show tolerance and understanding for one another.

Well, it was a fair movie... nothing great, but not really any worse than the Jetsons TV episodes I loved when I was a kid. (But with the much bigger movie budget they could have done better.)



Recommended:
Yes