Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars the Voices of Cathal J. Dodd, Cedric Smith, Norm Spencer, Lenore Zann,
George Buza, Catherine Disher, Alyson Court, Chris Potter, Alison Sealy-Smith | Written by Various
UK Certification PG | UK RRP £14.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 101 minutes | Directed by Various
A childhood favourite for many, and for good reason, the animated series of X-Men was one of a number of Marvel cartoons in the early 1990s. My own personal best was the Spider-Man series from 1994 – I always preferred following the antics of one superhero rather than a group, ala X-Men – but with imaginative and creative storytelling, the fifth and final season, split into two volumes for its UK release, is by no means a poor finish.
The running theme of this short volume involves the X-Men being split up, so you don't often get to see a lot of variation with the characters and there's a lack of teamwork from the group in their entirety, but what the first half of the season does have, interestingly enough, is a short term alliance between members of the X-Men and the classic antagonists Mister Sinister and Magneto, as they battle to save the universe from an electronic evil, which opens the show's final stand with a two-part episode. The most prominent characters on the DVD are Storm and the morphed doctor Beast, who I could never take seriously thanks to the mix of his book-smart eloquence and physical appearance.
Volume 1 of the season contains five 20-minute episodes that provide little entertaining pills of colour and light for all ages. The stories are charged with enough intuition that they're not mind-numbingly dumb like the original Spider-Man cartoon, and feature a variety of perks to cover the field for different audiences. Comic books are truly universal and this show has a genuine comic feel to it, rather than some adaptations that are far separated from their source material.
EXTRAS None.