FINGERBOBS FOR PRESIDENT! - review by Stew.

Right then. 'Battle Of The Planets'. Out now to buy on DVD. I got punted a preview disc by an amigo a few weeks ago to take a shot at; despite the fact it doesn't really qualify for review here as (A) I could swear its actually been out on DVD for ages, and, (B), we're All About The Films, Baby, and this is an old TV show, well… fuck it, this is partially my site to do with as I wish and I dug the show when I was little, so I was more than happy to settle back and give this old classic its moment in the sun…

Anybody our age will recall this 70's Japanese cartoon fondly - I used to rush home and watch it every day, and seem to recall it being utter, utter genius; I'd almost pee my pants with excitement as G-Force, teenage guardians of the galaxy, formed into a flared-trousered pyramid, span around and transformed into bird-helmeted paragons of justice, fighting against that evil Batman-masked Darth Vader rip-off in their super-charged spaceship Phoenix, capable of rendering itself a craft of pure flame whenever the action called for such a display of its mighty power. Whoa!

However, having viewed this DVD, it appears that I have spent 22 years in a state of abject confusion - its fucking shit! Nothing to it at all - badly animated, terrible scripts, utterly derivative, just poxy through-and-through. Casey Kasem, voice of Shaggy in 'Scooby Doo' and the fake-tan public prune-face of 'America's Top Ten' for a number of years during the 80s on late-night ITV, dubs the voice of the lead hero, (who might be called 'Mark', I'm not sure), thereby causing a degree of dislocation from the action while you sit there waiting for him to warble "zoinks Scoob! It's Yellowbeard's ghost!" at an inopportune moment, or introduce 'I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight' by The Cutting Crew. And the regularity with which G-Force resort to turning their craft into 'The Fiery Phoenix' to get out of a tight spot is downright fucking alarming! Every time something seems unwinnable, they just set the fucking spaceship on fire and bomb it out of there, somehow scaring the bad guys into giving up in the process - presumably, the bad guys must reckon if you're nuts enough to set yourself alight, you're not right in the head and clearly capable of anything, therefore not one to be fucked with; by this measure, G-Force are kind of an intergalactic Kray Twins.

They set the bastard on fire three times in one 22 minute episode I saw. The final time they did it, they scared Darth Rip-Off (who, as an adult, I now realise is transsexual - no joke!) to such a degree that he turned off his sonic weapon, (powered by the furious rhythms of fucking 'Andromeda' or something like that, 'the galaxy's greatest rock band', kidnapped and forced to play dreadful French-sounding electro prog-rock with some bird screaming, and I quote, "oooh baby baby!" over the top of it, completely out of time, under threat of death); while watching this occur, I couldn't help thinking that seeing as how Phoenix was being shaken to bits by the sonic weapon prior to their act of self-immolation, Darth Rip-Off may as well have just left it on. Just because they became The Fiery Phoenix, doesn't mean they automatically become impervious to heavy-duty sonic assault - use your head, Darth! As God is my witness, G-Force did no more than set on fire, and he gave up his plan to destroy the earth with le musique rock. That is all they did - set on fucking fire. No air-to-air weapons, hand-to-hand combat, not so much as a harsh word - wallop, out with the lighter fluid, strike a match, Darth fucking tosses in his chips. Hermaphrodite ponce.

And another thing; you may recall a wacky little character called 'Cheop', a member of G-Force prone to un-coordinated behaviour and making weird chirruping sounds as a substitute for words. Now, when I was four, Cheop was one groovy cat, crazy as a shit-house rat, the member of G-Force all the kids at my school did impressions of the next day. Now, older, wiser, it becomes blatantly apparent to me that this poor bastard is suffering from Tourettes, and there's G-Force letting him run about unguarded, spluttering and bleeping like some brain-damaged gibbon, when they should have had him under medical supervision. The only reason they ever turned into The Fiery Phoenix in the first place was because they left the little fucking nutter unsupervised with a box of matches.

So there we go: a warning to you. 'Battle Of The Planets' - just like chalky white dogshit, just because you haven't seen it around since the '70's, doesn't mean when you do happen across it you need to pick it up and take it home with you…