Anyone in the same age group as the DtheRH team will remember He-Man with a certain misty-eyed nostalgia. This kid's cartoon, replete with Mattel toys, may not have had the longevity of Star Wars but was nevertheless a big part of our primary school days. I can remember my dad taking me to see Masters of the Universe and me thinking it was quite good. But then again I used to think that the Krankies were funny when in hidsight the notion of a cabaret act featuring a schoolboy played by an adult women whose husband doubled as her dad is unnerving on so many levels that Freud would be puzzling over it for months.
He-man's big screen adventure doesn't start too badly actually, although it's been transplanted into a pseudo-futuristic Eternia with more laser guns than swords. The whole thing gathers pace quite quickly with He-man and co. as resistance fighters trying to overthrow Skeletor but just as rapidly moves downhill as the action is moved to Earth when some tripe about magic keys and interstellar travel is patched together into some kind of a plot.
The main problem is trying to reinvent the whole affair as a sci-fi actioner but it offers nothing new and is just too removed from the original cartoon. Skeletor is no longer a slightly comic villain, but more like the Emperor from Star Wars; he even shoots electricity from his fingers. His makeup is decent though, making him look like a cross between Michael Jackson and Edward & Tubs from The League of Gentlemen - I kept expecting him to proclaim Greyskull as a 'local castle for local people, there's nothing for you here'. But he didn't.
The recognisable characters are too few - where's Battlecat, Mossman and the rest? the ginger Gordon Strachan-a-like gnome Gwildor is a poor substitute for Orko and only Teela is remotely like her cartoon equivalent in that she is really quite fitter than she has any right to be, completely outshining Courteney Cox (here looking a lot less like Skeletor than she does in Friends). If you want to relive your childhood you'd be better off renting Transformers: The Movie, an altogether more respectful adaptation which isn't quite as outdated as this. |
