Action Man: The Movie

I used to have this on replay when i was a kid. Couldn't get enough. Looking back now I've come to appreciate this for what it is: a cheesy but cool kids action movie that might not hold up with todays animation but is still good nevertheless.

Warning: serious nostalgia kick of early to mid 2000s animation

I previously wrote a review for Action Man: Robot Atak, where I criticized that movie for its awful animation, laughably bad voice acting, and simplistic story. How does X missions compare? well... it's an improvement in some ways, but still not very good.

I'll get the positives out of the way first. The CGI and visual look decent this time around, so that's something, and the voice acting is also an improvement over the last film.

And now for the negatives. The movie's story is lazily recycled form G.I. Joe: Valor Vs Venom. If you've seen that movie, you've already seen this movie, because it's more or less a shot for shot remake of Valor Vs Venom, the only thing that's changed is that the G.I. Joe characters are replaced with the characters from Action Man. It just shows that Hasbro have run out of ideas for action man, which shouldn't be all that surprising, since the franchise did die a year after this movie was made. Dr. X's character is just as lame as he was in the previous movie, Robot Atak, spouting laughable dialogue that no one in real life says, and his voice actor, Steve Berkoff still gives him a razzie nominee performance, and for whatever reason, Dr. X now wears a sleeveless leather jacket with a skull on one shoulder, a business tie wrapped around his right arm, multiple X tattoos on his left arm, and a shark tooth necklace around his neck, that would would look badass on a motorcycle bandit or a WWE wrestler, but Dr. X is supposed to be a mad scientist, it's hard to believe the writers actually thought people would take a villain who dresses like that seriously.

Overall, I don't recommend this movie. It's just a lazy cash-in not worth your time. If you want something good from the Action Man franchise, watch the 2000 series by Mainframe, you can't go wrong with that.