
Not As Good As I Remembered, But Not Bad
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.
When I was a kid, I couldn't wait on Saturday mornings for the Wacky Races to come on. My sentimental favorite was the ConvertaCar driven by Professor Pat Pending and my pet hate was Peter Perfect's Turbo Terrific - but I harbored a sneaking admiration for the Double-Zero Mean Machine driven by Dick Dastardly and Muttley the Snickering Hound. The absurd road rallies the Wacky Racers ran in lent themselves to rule-bending and cheating, and not merely by the show's villainous duo in the Mean Meachine. As with his avatar Wile E. Coyote, Dastardly would go to extremes in an attempt to win by cheating using ingenious plots and bizarre devices worthy of the master, and of course would never win.
Except for the times that he actually did. In the pilot episode, he crossed the finish line and won by a nose in a photo finish and a cloud of dust if you view the finish in frame advance mode; but as aired, the show's version of the finish had him advancing the Mean Machine's nose with a scissors extender. Personally, I think Dick got robbed. And there was the time he decided to race honestly while everyone ELSE cheated like mad, and he STILL lost because the judges wouldn't call the rest of the Racers on their actions! Okay, the premise doesn't work as well if the bad guy wins sometimes, but still...
This series, like The Great Race before it, is a forerunner of the cult classic racing movie The Gumball Rally and the horrid Cannonball Run movies it inspired. The animation is 1960s Hanna-Barbera simple, sometimes Tom Terrific simple it feels like, not in it with what Warner Brothers and Disney were doing and nowhere near as spohisticated as the current state of the art. But if you want to while away a few hours with an enduring, endearing villain and a bunch of the screwiest racing cars ever conceived, Wacky Races will keep you nicely entertained.
Review ID: 10000000003921547

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