Back to the Future

While this animated series if BACK TO THE FUTURE is not as good as the BACK TO THE FUTURE movies, it is still entertaining! It's pretty good for an animated show from 1991, but the animated shows today are better. This is one of the few animated shows from the early 1990's that doesn't make me groan.

There was this odd trend in the 80's and 90's where if a movie was popular, it would get a cartoon series. Even if the movie was more for adults than kids (like "Spaceballs" and "RoboCop") it got a cartoon. And one of those movies was "Back to the Future". Now, I'm not saying all cartoons based on movies are awful, just look at "Real Ghostbusters", but this one isn't that good. I'm a hard core "Back to the Future" fan, but even I can't defend this as a great show. However, it is a guilty pleasure for me. I do find myself watching it every once in a while, and even chuckling at some of the jokes. I even try to watch the "Christmas Carol" episode around Christmas. If your looking for an animated show based on a movie that's just as good as the movie, this is not for you. But if you're a hard core "BTTF" fan and can enjoy anything with Doc and Marty in it no matter how silly it is, feel free to give this a shot.

This little animated series came about a year after the third movie, either an attempt to keep Back to the Future in the public eye or just to cash in on the films. Either way, this was a fun series. Some of the stories were very fresh and clever. One story that comes to mind is Doc, Jules and Verne traveling back and accidently preventing the extinction of the dinosaurs. Those live action bumpers of Christopher Lloyd are clever and funny. The series vanished after it's production ended and has sometimes appeared on a cable station. Watch it if you can.

We really wanted Marty didn't we? We wanted Fox.

Instead we got Doc Brown and his family. Bumber. I mean, Marty was in it, but he wasn't the center, central driving force of the story and as kids we didn't like that one bit.

Sure...it was still fun. It was still funny, and Marty was still there, but the focus was on the Brown children, likely because the people that made the cartoon decided that--despite the fact that there were tons of cartoons about teenagers and adults--that children wanted a cartoon about kids their own age.

And because of that it really wasn't Back to the Future.

You couldn't buy us off that easy.

Back to the Future: The Animated Series is far from a perfect animated adventure of the Back to the Future world. It has enough humor, color and happiness to entertain younger 5-9 year old fans of the franchise, but for ages 9 and up, it isn't good enough.

Cons: The animation is typical Saturday morning, the jokes usually fall flat, and the two new kids of Doc and Clara, Jules and Verne, really make the show worse. They are super annoying and unfunny, and if they weren't even in the show, it would be 3x better, and i would give it 8 out of 10, but they just aren't good. I also don't understand why Christopher Lloyd couldn't be Doc in the animated segments, but can be Doc in the live action segments.

Pros: It is at least trying to give you good entertainment. The episode Brothers is pretty good, and is one of the only good episodes in the short lived series. It has more laughs, more plot, and better Jules and Verne, surprisingly. Doc actually sounds like Doc in this episode. But those are the only pros in the show.

Overall, I have mixed to negative reception to this animated show. The mixed part is the plot. Its sometimes pretty good, but some of the episodes have a really bland one. The negative is everything else. At least try new animation. It would be better. I won't really recommend this if you love the movies, but I guess its enjoyable for the young ones.