Star Wars-Animated Adventures: Droids (1985)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1985
Running Time	166:03
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Version Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Raymond Jafelice Clive A. Smith Ken Stephenson
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Anthony Daniels
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	Marco D'Ambrosio

    The Star Wars droids, C3PO and R2D2, have a special place in the Star Wars universe, as I believe they are the only characters to appear in ALL nine episodes of George Lucas' saga. However, based on the characters created by Lucas, these Star Wars Droids animated adventures are shallow, boring and overly-long cartoons aimed solely at kids.

    Anyone who read my review of the Star Wars Extras Disc would know I'm a Star Wars nut. As a fan, I find it annoying when Lucas allows the Star Wars world to be prostituted and compromised for a quick dollar.

    This DVD contains two lengthy animated adventures featuring the beloved droids:

   The Pirates and the Prince (81:24)

    C3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2D2 are sold to a good-hearted miner. When they rescue another droid from its evil master, the miner and the droids become embroiled in an intergalactic adventure involving a wronged prince and evil, marauding space pirates.

    Treasure of the Hidden Planet (84:39)

    With its theme of exploration, C3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2D2 are now serving a swashbuckling explorer and merchant. Their latest exploration for roonstone crystals attracts the interest of the Emperor. Soon the droids are dodging stormtroopers and the Empire's spies in their quest for a hidden fortune.

    The quality of the animation is poor for both these titles. The artwork is very crude and the clean-up work is awful with some mistakes and pencil lines clearly showing. The backgrounds are dull and done with little thought or effort. Most Saturday morning cartoons would put these to shame.

Video

    The transfer is acceptable for what it is.

    It is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is soft throughout. The colour is garish and inconsistent, with characters changing colour from one scene to the next. I assume this sloppiness is due to the crude animation of the source material.

    There are no problems with MPEG or film-to-video artefacts. Film artefacts appear throughout but most are small.

    There are English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles present and they are mostly accurate. Some mistakes occur when the subtitles attribute dialogue or sounds to the wrong character.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio is flat and sounds almost mono.

    There is only one audio option on this DVD, this being an English Dolby Digital stereo 2.0 soundtrack (192Kb/s).

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are fine for a cartoon.

    The musical score is credited to Marco D'Ambrosio and is pretty forgettable.

    As a two channel track there is no surround presence or LFE activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are no extras.

    This title was released in Region 1 in November 2004. Apart from the PAL/NTSC differences our version is the same.

    If you have young Star Wars fans at home save this DVD for a rainy day.

    The video quality is disappointing though the kids might not mind.

    The audio quality is flat.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall