A Mézga család különös kalandjai

A Seventies (or early Eighties?) Hungarian cult series that is still very popular and widely quoted in Hungary. It tells about an average middle class Hungarian family with father, mother, teenage daughter and a younger son. The son always experiments with electronic apparel and thus draws his family into sci-fi adventures in time and space. The highly original and comic dialogue (probably too complex for young children), the well recognizable types, and some famous, regularly used lines (like the line the mother always says at the end of each episode: "If I had only married Pisti Hufnagel instead!") make "Mézga család" good and intelligent entertainment for adults and older children.

I used to watch it on Italian TV in the 80s, and I remember it as a very good cartoon, full of humour and inventions.

At that time, TV used to show mostly Japanese anime, so "La Famiglia Mezil" offered quite a refreshing diversion. I would have never imagined it was written in Hungary, since the western propaganda usually painted the eastern block as dull and repressed populations. Well, this cartoon could have been made in Italy, and it would have been just the same.

The animation looks very good too, especially if compared to other eastern European productions of the same period. Well done, Pannonia Studios!

This is a very good and funny animated series and it was made in 1974 (there is four question marks in the year's place) and is still airs sometimes in TV. It is still very popular and has got two spin-offs, the first "Mézga Aladár Különös Kalandjai" is about the son who travels wackiest and wackiest planets with his spaceship and his speaking dog.

...but about half of the jokes have their meanings only in Hungarian so it might be really hard to translate it into English.

The Unique Adventures of Mézga Family is about a family where the son (Aladár) invents lots of stuff (well, like Dexter in his laboratory but in a less idiot style) and gets in contact with his great-great-greatson from the far future. In each episode, they try to solve some (quite simple) problems not by solving them by common sense but by asking for special future objects, machines etc to help - and of course, they get in a much bigger trouble...

The first spin-off series was about The Adventures of Aladár Mézga, who made a spaceship for himself and secretly travelled to space in every episode. The second spin-off series was The Mézga Family on Vacation where the Mézgas were invited by Hufnágel Pisti (see in the review below) so they travelled across the world in 13 episodes. I don't even understand why these masterpieces can not be found here on imdb...

Nice show. Very nice indeed. Much of the stuff in it (e.g., the wife's worries about the "small apartment" the family lives in, the "contact" with the neighbor, etc.) is still part of the everyday jungle we here at the east of Europe live in. You see, no American film can capture Eastern European life so good. And putting this together with fantasy makes this a very wild series which we in BG find closer.

This film initially aired here a long time ago, and now it's rerun on cable TV (interestingly, with The Scooby-Doo Show (1976-1978), a show that was made around the same time but was never broadcast here back then). The other thing that amazes me is how good the show's currently airing copies (in Bulgaria) look like. Our own films are of much worse quality, so I can only say to the Hungarians: You're the best!