Producers:
Jay Ward & Bill Scott
Cast:
William Conrad….Narrator
Bill Scott….Bullwinkle
June Foray….Rocky & Natasha Fatale
Paul Frees….Boris Badenov
Genius Home Entertainment and Classic Media present The Best of Rocky & Bullwinkle – Volume 2. Running time: 132 minutes. Unrated. Episodes aired from 1961-1964. DVD released Sept. 18, 2007.
The Show
Rocky and Bullwinkle are a rare breed of animated creatures. Most cartoon shows are fun to watch when you’re a kid, but you grow out of them. When you watch them as an adult, most of the fun comes from Saturday morning memories. Nostalgia takes over for the lack of true entertainment value. Can you really enjoy Inch High Private Eye and Peebles and Bamm-Bamm when you’re old enough to vote? Such is not the fate of Rocky and Bullwinkle. This cartoon is goofy enough for a kid, but smart enough for an adult. How was this done? Like the best of the Looney Tunes cartoons, Rocky and Bullwinkle were created by irresponsible adults instead of marketing losers and educational content clowns.
It’s been nearly two years since the last Rocky and Bullwinkle boxset was released. Instead of piling the remaining segments from the show into a final collection, Classic Media has been putting out single DVDs. The Best of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Vol. 1 was frustrating for fans since two of the three adventures were on the season sets. It’s as if Boris had programmed the disc. Luckily everything on Vol. 2 is new to DVD. Instead of complete episodes, we’re given just the Rocky and Bullwinkle segments without being broken up by Fractured Fairytales, Mr. Peabody and Bullwinkle’s Corner.
“Wossamotta U” (44:52) has a college that ignores academics so they can build up their football program. Doesn’t that sound like a certain NCAA school that’s become a football hotbed? Wossamotta University bends over backwards to lure Bullwinkle into enrolling so he can quarterback the team. Turns out the Moose has a rocket arm, but only if Rocky is his wide receiver. The episode hints that college football players take slack courses in order to stay academically eligible. Shocking! Boris shows up as he attempts to fix the big game. Four decades after it first aired, “Wossamotta U” plays like a segment on ESPN’s Outside the Lines.
“Goof Gas Attack” (31:10) has America’s top geniuses turn into babbling morons. There’s only one person immune from the Goof Gas: Bullwinkle. It’s not that he’s immune so much as there’s not enough intelligence between his antlers for the gas to attack. He is our last hope to find out what evil agent is destroying the greatest minds of his generation.
“The Treasure of Monte Zoom” (30:58) is pretty lightweight. Boris forcibly drains a lake to expose the buried treasure of Monte Zoom. Rocky and Bullwinkle get to the treasure chest first. To hoodwink them into coughing up the contents of the chest, Boris disguises himself as something lower on the food chain than an international evil spy: a used car salesman.
Unlike Volume 1, The Best of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Volume 2 truly has one of the best installments in the show’s history with “Wossamotta U.” This was the Saturday morning cartoon that gives us a great understanding of the gridiron action of Saturday afternoon. If you love college football or making fun of the “student-athlete” mythology spread by major football programs, you’ll adore seeing the Moose skewer the leatherheads.
The DVD
VIDEO:
The picture is 1.33:1 full screen. These cartoons weren’t animated in a clean room so there’s plenty of dirt and dust on the cells. No matter how rough the picture, the genius shines from the paint.
AUDIO:
The soundtrack is in Dolby Digital Mono. There’s also a Spanish dub. There are no subtitles.
EXTRAS:
Bullwinkle Puppet (4:45) combines several intros that were used when the Bullwinkle Show first aired on NBC. Instead of creating new animation, they just had a Bullwinkle puppet talking nonsense to the kids. It’s easy to see how the puppet upset the suits in Burbank. The puppet enjoys talking trash about Walt Disney. He explains the kids how they can get their own TV set for free.
The Best of Rocky & Bullwinkle – Volume 2 |
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The Inside Pulse
“Wossamotta U” makes this set a buy for fans of the Moose and Squirrel.
