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The Movie:
While occasionally passing through much of the cartoons that are offered on Saturday morning or otherwise, I find what's offered to be pretty depressing or at best, average. The exception lately has been the few times I've tuned into the "X-Men" cartoon, which apparently has become one of the more popular cartoon programs in recent years, and I can see why.
There are a number of cartoons today that are simply a number of fight or action scenes strung together. While "X-Men" certainly has its share of action, there is obviously an effort taken here to develop a strong story with well-written characters that the audience can find interesting to watch. Most who are just tuning in will find many of the characters famililar from the live-action feature from this past Summer, as well. Although I'm certainly not in the target audience for this series, I still find the episodes (there are 5 here) pretty entertaining, for an animated series.
As a side note, there is a bit of a situation with Universal (who released this DVD) where they've apparently released more episodes than they have the rights to. No further details have been given, nor has anything further happened over it, yet.
The DVD
VIDEO: The presentation here is in full frame, and not particularly great in any way. Considering that these episodes were done very recently, the rather unremarkable look is a bit dissapointing. There are some bits of shimmer a few times and some minor marks on the print used. Neither of these proves to be a big distraction, but were still noticable. Colors look very good, with no problems that I saw. A summary would be that, although these generally look better than they do on television, in terms of animated presentations that I've seen on DVD, these are not too thrilling.
SOUND: The original announcement for this disc said that the audio would be in both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1. Neither of those things are true - the sound format here is Dolby 2.0, and with all of the effects and how busy the sound generally is, the 2.0 sound really doesn't prove to be that exciting. The music is generally clear and enjoyable, but quality overall is average.
MENUS:: Like everything else on this disc, the menus are extremely minimal.
EXTRAS:: Uh, hmm....not a thing. With all of the "X-Men" stuff out there, it's strange that nothing was included here - not even a photo gallery of any way, shape or form.
Final Thoughts: The cartoon episodes that are offered on this DVD are entertaining, and I'm sure that there are some kids out there who would like this DVD. As a complete package though, it comes up short, with audio/video quality that isn't too special, and no extras at all.
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