"Heavy Meh... - tal"

On my DVR was the recently-aired HDTV-remaster of the 1981 animated cult favorite "Heavy Metal". It's probably been at least 15 years since I last saw it. And if it were any more difficult to get a hold of other than just clicking a button on my remote, I probably wouldn't have bothered.

Even back then, I wasn't all that impressed with it. Of course, I was an animation student at the time, so every little frame that strayed from the "basics" that I was learning stood out like a sore thumb, and let me put on my snobby "oh, even I could do better than that" act. Now-a-days, I'm a lot more forgiving of the obviously stylistic choices they made at the time, and am sympathetic to the fact that some of the groups working on it were actually rather small teams for such an ambitious undertaking.

That all said, I'm still not all that impressed with it.

It was really just so much fan-service for the aging 70's rock & hallucenigen crowd; the cynical & burnt-out inheritors of the legacy left by the mellow Robert Crumb stoner-peacniks of the 60's. It's not without it's moments of course. But it's dated for sure.

Technically, the imagery in hi-def was pretty reasonable, though the choice of colors and some of the designs were rather bland and indicitave of the era and the budget. The audio mix, for a show that is purportedly all about the rock music, was rather weak, with no oomph or immersion into the soundstage. A missed opportunity, for sure.

I've never seen the more-recent followup "Heavy Metal 2000", and frankly I'm in no rush. If it shows up on the DVR some day, sure... maybe.