Animorphs

I can remember being a little tyke and sitting in the living room staring in total awe as these kids morphed. I used to be enthralled by this show, and I still am. I have the videos. OK, sue me. I can't help myself, this show, I loved it. It's sort of a guilty pleasure. The show didn't exactly do the books justice, but lets face it; most movies and TV shows never can. But it's not bad. Though I was kind of mad when they didn't find Ax like they did in the book, I let it slide because they probably had no idea how to do it.

I loved the books. I loved(and still do)the show.

But it loses points for Effects.

There was so much that could have been done to make this a quality show. For one thing, get rid of that Boris kid! Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the obvious choice, as his personality and appearance were both perfect! And Gregory Smith would have been amazing as Jake- he's always the actor I imagined in that part. That said, the other actors were all pretty good choices (and I loved the Tobias pick), so no more problems there.

Next issue: If memory serves me correctly (and it probably doesn't- I only watched the first episode before giving up on it), they did a weekly or nightly half-hour show on Nickelodeon. Wrong length, wrong station. If they had done what Farscape did and made it an hour-long special on Fox or some other channel, they'd have had a lot more flexibility to do it right. Nickelodeon is for brainless cartoons- they no longer know how to handle real quality programming.

They shouldn't have done it without better funding than they had- no sci-fi/fantasy story, even one for kids/teenagers, will work on a shoestring budget. Why not gear some of that book/merchandise revenue to the show, in turn getting good ratings and making more money as you increase interest in both sets of the series? Was their marketer on sedatives?

But even with everything as it was, I believe (and if anyone reads this who has seen the show will probably agree) what lost the fanbase was its nearly complete disregard for the books. It retained the characters, the aliens and the idea of morphing- and that was about it. And it failed utterly, being cancelled not long after it began.

Animorphs was an amazingly well-written series that hooked most of us by the mix of crazy humor and emotion-wrenching drama. Whether it was plausible or even entirely original didn't matter because the author (props to Mrs. Applegate) did such a good job. If anything, the TV show hurt that. From reading the posts, a lot of kids who got a glimpse of the show decided that the books must have been just as awful (or *gasp* unaware that there even were books). The show could have been so much more- it could have contended among the best preteen/teenager programming, and been a guilty pleasure for the adults out there. But it wasn't, so I bid it a wistful but otherwise indifferent farewell. I'll stick to my original sorrow over the book series ending.

My first thought when I heard they were making a television series out of Animorphs? "How the *beep* are they going to that?" Well, apparently I am a primordial gizmo-challenged dinosaur. Nowadays, there is a wonderful shitload of what folks call "Special Effects." Or, "SpEff," if you will.

With Speff, we have managed to create one of the most horrendously adapted small-screen projects ever.

No, I am not a book snob. But really, the only benefit I got from watching this television series was a newfound understanding of the pronunciation of Tobias' name, and an urge to bash open my skull and gouge out every lasting morsel of respect I had for the books.

I had never noticed this before, but the thought-speak is ridiculous! It's like Doctor Dolittle gone Spandex! One day, when the 'Speff' and creative teams for television are better, perhaps they will try again-- with slightly better results.

Till then... 4/10

Animorphs could have been a lot better. I have to say, they disappointed a whole lot of people, since the books sold pretty good. But as of now, the books are getting bad too. I suspect that KA is using ghost writers. The show could use better FX, and younger actors. Personally, I only watch it because I like Brooke Nevin.

My expectations of this show were rather low. It didn't look that great but I thought I'd give it a try. It was a pleasant surprise. The show's premise seemed very odd, but it appeared to be more original than most of the stuff on tv today. Give it a look. You might not be disappointed.