The original Jetsons cartoon was produced by Hanna-Barbera back in the early ‘60s. While it only lasted 24 episodes, most people grew up watching it in syndication and would eventually see some new episodes in the mid-‘80s. The show featured the misadventures of a family in the future where people lived in the skies, had vehicles that flew, was filled with robots, and every television set was actually a video phone. Unfortunately, voice actors George O’Hanlon (George Jetson), and Mel Blanc (Cosmo Spacely) passed away, leaving the beloved cartoon in a sort of limbo where it has remained until this year when Hanna-Barbera teamed up with professional wrestling outfit WWE to bring a new feature to audiences.
Big Show (Paul Wight) is one of the wrestling superstars of the WWE. It’s the night of the big Heavyweight Championship fight and a blizzard is heading to the arena, causing the match to be cancelled. Not taking “no” for an answer, Big Show flies his own plane to the arena, but before he can arrive, his plane is brought down by the storm, leaving everyone wondering what happened to him.
A hundred years later, George Jetson (Jeff Bergman) has been assigned to supervise the erection of new building-support pylons on the Earth. While digging the new holes, he stumbles upon Big Show frozen in a block of ice. Reviving him from his century-long sleep, George finds that the big man is much more difficult for him to handle than expected.
Being slightly perplexed by his new surroundings, the wrestler turns to the one thing that he knows, the WWE. But things aren’t what he remembered as all human wrestlers have been replaced by robots. Proving that humans are superior, Big Show defeats all the robots and wrestles control away from their owner. Now with these robots under his command, he not only takes the Heavyweight-championship belt but decides that he will now become the champion of the entire world.
George is horrified about what he has unleashed upon the world, and before he and his family can be forced into servitude, they hatch a daring plan to save the planet. They will fly their ship back in time using the moon’s gravity to slingshot them into the past where they will enlist some of Big Show’s former opponents to defeat him.
The DVD contains three special features.
- “Welcome To Orbit City” – A short featurette discussing the world in which the Jetsons live.,
- “The Dangers Of Button Pushing” – WWE stars discuss how lazy people would become pressing buttons and not working out. This is interspersed with their own training regimen and live clips from some of their wrestling matches.
- “My Favorite Memories Of The Future” – A discussion on what the cast remembers most about the show and what their own personal favorite parts are.
The DVD also includes three episodes from the original series:
- “Rosie the Robot” – The Jetsons hire a robot housekeeper that will become part of the family.
- “Jetsons Night Out” – George’s boss, Mr. Spacely, invites him to watch a football game while tricking their wives into believing that they are working late.
- “The Coming Of Astro” – This is the first introduction of the talking dog, Astro, that Elroy finds and decides to bring home.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the original show, but this new film has a very nice, familiar feel to it. The animation is a lot crisper and is a little more polished, but overall, it stays pretty true to its predecessor. The wrestling aspect is silly and entertaining, but that’s what it’s supposed to be. It’s nice to see some of the other wrestlers like Sheamus (Stephen Farrelly), the Uso Brothers (Jonathan and Joshua Fatu), and Alicia Fox (Victoria Crawford) arrive to fight it out against their robot counterparts.
While The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania is not going to win any award,s it’s fun to watch, isn’t boring, and brings back a sense of nostalgia at the same time. It’s everything you’d want and expect a classic cartoon series to provide.
