The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

Out Tuesday is the latest collaboration between Warner Bros. Animation and WWE Studios. Following in the footsteps of Scooby-Doo! Wrestlemania Mystery, Scooby-Doo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon (which gets a one-line callout), and The Flintstones and WWE: Stone Age Smackdown comes The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania. (I’ve previously posted the trailer.)

We open at a WWE show in Denver. Big Show comes out bragging about being the next champion by defeating Sheamus, but a massive snowstorm is shutting down the next match. Big Show, determined, flies his own tiny plane through the storm, but he crashes and gets frozen.

George Jetson (voiced by Jeff Bergman) then digs him up a hundred years in the future during a drilling expedition for Spacely Sprockets. His wife Jane (Grey Griffin) is ticked that George didn’t go to Elroy’s (Trevor Devall) science fair, where his project was about time travel. (This, as you may have guessed, will be important later.)

The Jetsons in The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

Tough guy Big Show is defeated by the automatic devices that supposedly make future life easier, like automatic forks and a tooth-brushing machine. (Comedy!) Then he finds out wrestling still exists.

“You telling me you got WWE in the future?” Big Show asks a kid.

The Big Show and George Jetson in The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

“Of course”, comes the response. (“Who can envision a world without WWE?” thinks the viewer.) So the Big Show heads off to the Orbit City World Wrobot Entertainment event, but humans are no longer allowed to compete. WWE is run by Mr. McMoon, the great-great-great-whatever of Mr. McMahon, and the competitors are robots decorated like various wrestlers from our time. (The Taker-Bot, wearing the Undertaker’s hat, was a favorite among our viewers.)

Soon, Big Show finds that beating robots at wrestling isn’t enough, so he takes over the city. (I guess being frozen in a snowstorm isn’t very good for the brain.) The Jetsons head off to our time to round up Alicia Fox, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Stardust, the Usos, and Dolph Ziggler to fight their robot versions. They need more “big people” to fight Big Show.

WWE wrestlers in The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

The animation is classic Hanna-Barbera style, in keeping with the original source (and Vince McMahon has Fred Flintstone’s nose), but more colorful. Many of the wrestlers have huge torsos and little legs, while the women have big heads on stick bodies. The voices aren’t the originals — they couldn’t be, at this point — but similar enough to go with. And it’s great to hear the traditional jazz-influenced soundtrack.

Unfortunately, also carried over from the original show are the stereotypes. Dad is henpecked at home, alternately bullied and slacking off at work. Daughter Judy (Danica McKellar) is a cheerleader only interested in chatting with her friends.

Judy Jetson in The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

This movie is very much for the kiddies, with broad strokes of plot, predictable roles and reactions, and old-fashioned jokes. Thankfully, just when I was about to throw something at the TV because Elroy was making fun of Judy for being dumb again, she comes up with the answer to their problem (because they’d been studying the WWE in her 21st century history class, apparently).

The wrestling fans in my house laughed throughout at some of the jokes, particularly with the exaggerated sound effects. The dumber it got, the more they liked it. But the overall feeling was that, for a non-child audience, the Scooby-Doo movies are better in both story and animation.

The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

Special Features

There are three short featurettes in which the real Big Show, Sheamus, Alicia Fox, and other wrestlers participate.

  • Welcome to Orbit City (5 minutes) – Discussing favorite future inventions.
  • The Dangers of Button-Pushing (4 minutes) — More of the same, but with a bit more concern over people becoming too lazy and advice to spend some time outside and eat healthy.
  • My Favorite Memories of the Future (2 1/2 minutes) — How the wrestlers loved the original Jetsons cartoon.

The Jetsons and the wrestlers in The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

Also included are three Jetsons episodes, “Rosie the Robot”, “Jetson’s Nite Out”, and “The Coming of Astro”. (The studio provided a review copy.)

Vince McMahon, Rosie the robot, and Astro, "not the first talking dog he's met", in The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

Vince McMahon, Rosie the robot, and Astro, “not the first talking dog he’s met”, in The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *