Butt Ugly Martians (2001)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Directed by Egidio Dalchele
Written by David Garber and various
Starring the Voices Of Olgie Banks, S. Scott Bullock, Jess Harnell, Rob Paulsen, Charlie Schlatter

Features:

• Character Files
  
• "Martian Boot Camp" DVD-ROM Game Demo
  
• Trailer
  

Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format

My Advice: Drive a car over them...several times.

In the near future, The Butt-Ugly Martians, Do-Wah-Diddy (Harnell), B. Bop-A-Luna (Schlatter) and 2-T-Fru-T (Paulsen) were sent to Earth by the evil Emperor Bog (Bullock) to destroy the place. However, on their mission, they discover hoverboarding (the future's version of skateboarding...remember Back to the Future?), hamburgers and video games and decide that the Earth is a pretty cool place after all. So, they meet up with some human friends, Mike, Ronald (both voiced by Paulsen) and Angela (Kath Soucie) and vow to protect the earth from alien invasion.

This has to be one of the most horribly written kids series ever. There is no action, virtually no plot, and the characters are completely without any traits which make them different from each other. There are three discs to choose from: Hoverboard Heroes and Boyz To Martians have three stories on them. Best of the Bad Guys has only two stories. Hoverboard Heroes features "Damage's Little Girl," "Playback/Payback" and "Once in Love with Angie." Boyz To Martians has "Out of Sync," "This is...The Butt Uglies" and "Alien Games." And Best of the Bad Guys has "Bog's Not So Dumb After All" and "Jax, The Conqueror." None of them are really any different from the others and are really predictable.

The Evil Emperor Bog sends something or someone to the earth to try to destroy the place, the Butt-Uglies find out about it and using their special powers (which never really made sense to me) they destroy it or send it packing into outer space. There is also another character that I didn't mention because he seems to be some kind of attempt at a sub-plot. His name is Stoat Muldoon (Robert Stack--yes that Robert Stack). He's an alien hunter who lives in a converted missile silo in the middle of the desert. He usually winds up getting used by the Butt-Uglies, but he is either too stupid or too self-centered to figure it out.

The only thing this series has going for it is some fairly decent CGI animation. It's not great, and you'd never guess it was decent from the DVD cover, but it could be a lot worse. Anyway the bottom line is that none of it is any fun, and it makes no sense whatsoever. Watching this, it makes you realize why our kids are being left in the dust by the kids in other countries when it comes to education.

The DVDs are not really that much better. Let me start with the trailers, which are the same across all three discs. First of all, on the Main Menu, when you select "Play" (meaning play all the episodes), it automatically starts showing you this trailer which is listed as a special feature. You can fast forward through it or track beyond it, but in my mind, if you try to force people to watch it, it's probably not that special. Secondly, the layout of the DVDs themselves. The only chapter dividers on the DVDs take you from one episode to the next. There are no chapter divisions in each episode, so if you try to track forward, you simply go to the next episode. Which sucks. Royally.

The Character Files give you a sentence about each of the martians...and that's it. And, they're the same across all three discs, too. What's really funny about the character information given in that stuff does not come across on the screen.

Finally, the DVD-ROM game. Don't waste your time. The first game is like playing the old arcade game "Defender" and the other is just Vegas slot machine practice for young children. Not much excitement there. And guess what? They, too, are the same across all three discs. What a Butt Ugly Bummer.

Just avoid this series...it was doomed from the beginning.