BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
STUDIO: Warner Bros.
MSRP: $19.98
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 60 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Trivia challenge
• Music video
• Four mini-movies
The Pitch
"The
Fast and the Furious meets Pokemon and/or Dragonball Z!"
The Humans
The
voices of Kathleen Barr, Dexter Bell, Michael Donovan.
The Nutshell
Breaking Point is the third in a series of
hourlongs made for children. There is a bit of backstory that isn’t well
communicated in the introduction, which means that if you haven’t picked up the
other two you might feel a little bit lost by the relevant plot points.
And,
despite what you may be thinking, there is something of a plot: the Acceleracers
are a team of high-speed drivers who participate in a series of races through
realms at the behest of one Dr. Tesla. The victor of each race receives an
AcceleCharger — basically a day-glo rune that does… something.
Breaking Point sticks these racers onto two
brand new tracks, as well as introduces a new opponent in the racing leage: the
shape-shifting Silncerz.
*sniff* "Sunsets remind me of Ben. Oh, you big, beautiful polecat!"
The Package
Pretty
skimpy, but there’s enough here to keep an eight-year-old interested for a bit.
You get a trivia game in the form of a race through one of the realms, with
correct answers driving you closer to the finish line. There’s a music video
set to a mish-mash of shots from the show.
The real
bonus of note is the "micro-adventures" section. No, it’s not footage
of people racing their toy cars around a kitchen table. Instead, it’s four
little self-contained bonus bits. They’re not deleted scenes, just segments
from races in the ice realm and the ruins realm, neither of which are part of
the main feature.
The Lowdown
Does Hot
Wheels strike you as the kind of property that would adapt well to
children’s TV fare? It’s not as if they had any iconic characters. Nobody has a
favorite Hot Wheels, so their roster is pretty much every car ever. Nevertheless, here you are, confronted with a
review about a cheaply-animated show that no one asked for. You’re probably
just reading the screen caps.
Hang on,
though — this here consumer trash ain’t all bad. For starters, there’s the race
segments. They dominate the running time, and they’re fairly well put together.
The minor duels that break out between vehicles are fun to watch and have
enough tension to serve their purpose. Your kid will like the races, provided
he or she didn’t fall asleep during Episode 1‘s pod race.
The
inter-team politics are a nice touch, too. The Acceleracers have their obvious
antagonists, but the bad guys are only present on the race track. Off the
track, things stay lively with some good ol’ back-biting and intrigue. It’s
kind of different, having the character conflicts exist wholly separately from
the apparent antagonists — just imagine Optimus Prime fighting with, I dunno,
Goldbug or something and treating the Decepticons like an interruption.
"I know you want to reclaim your heritage, Yade, but… Dom’Z-on-Dom’Z?"
Unfortunately,
not everything can be treated with such benefit-of-the-doubt rosiness; for
example, the animation is atrocious, first-gen CGI stuff not much better than
we got on Re-Boot. The voice acting, poorly matched to characters in a
couple of instances, is even less synched to the movements of the characters
lips. The soundtrack is also blaringly awful, some club-footed nu-metal progeny
— not that I object to cartoons making use of popular music styles, it’s just
that nu-metal is objectively bad.
This sure
ain’t fun for the whole family, but featuring some inventive action and tangential
morals of cooperation gives it a bit more polish than other fire-and-forget
programming.
It am
what it am with:
6 out of 10