I’m an old person –- I freely admit it. I’m old enough to remember the period where everything cool was in cartoon form: X-Men (92-97), Beetlejuice (89-91), Ninja Turtles (87-96), and Ghostbusters (86-91). And that’s where the Guardians of the Galaxy animated series appears to be headed: the first 10-minutes really felt like I was watching a Real Ghostbusters episode…
From the voice cast that just makes you miss the originals and the super cheese facial hair that Star-Lord is rocking to the lame dialogue, it’s everything that you wanted in a cartoon as a child of the 90’s. But I digress.
GOTG: The Animated Series takes our favorite space rogues –- Peter Quill (Will Friedle a.k.a. Bumblebee from Transformers: Robots in Disguise), Rocket Raccoon (My Little Pony‘s Trevor Devall), Drax (David Sobolov a.k.a. Grodd from The Flash TV show), Gamora (Star Wars Rebels’ Vanessa Marshall), and Groot (TMNT‘s Kevin Michael Richardson) –- and picks up an indeterminate length of time after the movie ended.
Groot is big again, and the group is headed to rescue Quill’s mentor/surrogate father/kidnapper Yondu (Hulk and the Agent of S.M.A.S.H.‘s James Arnold Taylor). Along the way they encounter Cosmo the Spacedog and henchmen working for Thanos (or as I like to call him, Evil Grimace). And, of course, Groot gets shattered back into baby Groot — because nothing gets kids to spend money like adorable dancing baby trees.
The animation is solid for a Saturday Morning Cartoon-style show, and the backgrounds benefit from computer involvement in animation. If you’re an actual child, GOTG would be a great way to get into the Marvel Universe; but for this kid at heart, it’s too hard to get past that bad facial hair.
Stop channeling 1990’s George Michael, Star-Lord.
Guardians of the Galaxy will premiere on Disney XD on September 26.