Review of Action Man: Robot Atak

Introduction

The last thing I was expecting was Action Man: Robot Atak through my letter box and I thought it a joke at the time, but no, it`s no joke. Someone has to review it, so it may as well be me. This is the all CGI version of the famous little boys` toy and he has more than just `eagle eyes` these days. He`s got toys of his too and a team called, Action Force. Oh, and he talks as well. I never knew there was an Action Man cartoon series until this came along and off to the bottom of the pile it went.

Video

Action Man: Robot Atak is a CGI movie, presented with a widescreen enhanced video transfer direct from the digital source. Except for a tiny, tiny amount of grain, there are no blemishes, no problems with artefacts or compression at all that I could see. As it stands it`s bright and sharp with well balanced colour. It`s great to look at and almost perfect.

Audio

Surprisingly for a kids show it comes with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and it`s impressive. You can feel the low ranges in the LFE channel and the dialogue is clear from the centre. There`s a good spread of sound across the front speakers, while the rears kick in with ambient effects and play a good part in the story. Music is appropriately funky and beat driven with good explosions.

Features

None.

Conclusion

I have something of an admission to make; I enjoyed this 45-minute Action Man offering. Yes it`s absolutely aimed at kids, but the camp voices, the hilarious dialogue as well as the characters made me laugh. And because it`s just 45-minutes it`s very easy to watch too, so I must have seen this twice already without realising it. The CG isn`t state of the art, as I`m guessing this show is knocked out in double quick time, which means that textures are rudimentary and functional, animation is a bit `stiff` in places and there are tiny glitches in the graphics, but this is what lends the show a bit of charm and the lack of these things don`t impede in any way.

The good versus bad storyline, complete with its clichés is in full force, with Stevhen Berkoff voicing the Dr X character. He must have had fun doing this, as I`m sure the other actors had. There`s no need to catch up on any Action Man history with a show like this, everything`s self-contained and wraps up at the end. Surprisingly this DVD has good 5.1 sound and a nice crisp video transfer making it even more entertaining. There are no extras features, but I can live without that. What I would like however, is another episode...yet I can`t seem to find any other Action Man CG DVDs out there.