Let's Watch This: An Episode of "ProStars"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

Where do I even BEGIN with this? A cartoon show about Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson - three athletes who don't even play the same sport - fighting crime. What? I get it, these guys were popular in the 1990s, but that doesn't automatically mean you should make a cartoon about them.

But hey, it's not like this sort of thing is anything new. Remember that cartoon in which the Harlem Globetrotters were superheroes? Or that one cartoon starring Chuck Norris where he fought evil? Remember those shows? SOMEBODY must've thought having celebrities fight evil was a good idea for a cartoon show, but after Jackie Chan Adventures, that belief seems to have subsided. Which is good, because imagine what kind of cartoons we'd be getting today if people STILL thought that...

Okay, so ProStars was originally supposed to air on ESPN, but they decided to put it on NBC instead because I guess they realized that no kid goes to ESPN for Saturday morning cartoons. It was created by Andy Heward and Douglas Booth at DIC Entertainment and received one season of thirteen episodes. For whatever reason - presumably either the silly premise or the fact that it was competing against Garfield and Friends airing in the same time slot on CBS - it was a complete flop. But does that mean the show itself is bad? After all, if being lousy was all it takes for a cartoon to be a failure, The Cleveland Show wouldn't have gotten four seasons.

Why don't we take a look at ProStars to see if it's as bad as it sounds or a show that could've been a slam dunk if given a better time slot? We'll be watching the fifth episode, "Valley of the Snow Falcon".

The episode starts off with a weird montage of clips of Michael, Wayne, and Bo in action, neon-colored words appearing at random, and the three athletes talking to the audience about the cartoon we're about to watch. This episode, it would seem, is going to be about saving the environment.

Okay, I get the mindset here... who better to teach kids about saving the environment than Bo Jackson and Wayne Gretzky? Nobody's going to disagree with THEM. Except for stock 1990s cartoon villains, presumably.

I wonder if either of them still have the "ProStars" jacket they're wearing, or if they sold
them to a pawn shop as soon as the show was cancelled.

Then it's time for the animated part to begin, and the show is taken over by the cartoon counterparts of Michael, Wayne, and Bo... who, by the way, are not voiced by the actual Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson. I don't know why that is. Maybe they were just too busy playing basketball, hockey, and football to record the dialogue? Or maybe it's because, as Space Jam demonstrates, Michael Jordan isn't much of an actor.

So instead, we've got Dorian Harewood as Michael, Dave Fennoy as Bo, and Townsend Coleman as Wayne. Wayne and Bo are having themselves a race, until Wayne winds up flying off the roof of the building they're racing on. Fortunately, Michael is there with his giant flying machine to save him. Was the intent for the flying machine to look like a giant Nike shoe, or is it just my weird mind? Michael does make a reference to Air Jordan, so make of that what you will...

I assume the real Michael Jordan does not have, nor has he ever had, a giant flying shoe.

"I hate it when this happens. The landings are always so complicated," Wayne laments as he falls, implying that he has fallen off the roof several times before. Wow, Wayne must be quite the klutz. Michael saves him, then tells him that the owner of the gym that serves as the ProStars' headquarters, Mom (voiced by Susan Silo), wants to see them.

"I swear to Walter Brown, if either of you make one more bald joke at my expense-"

"Who's Walter Brown?"

"Look it up, Bo."

Mom is not pleased by Michael's "busting up" the flying shoe, which as it turns out she invented. Fortunately, all it takes is a little flattery from Michael for her to calm down. "I know he's only sweet-talking, but he's so good at it," she admits.

Michael decided after this to stop using online dating websites.

Then in walks Denise (Diana Barrows), Mom's apprentice who Wikipedia describes as being kind of like the ProStars' groupie. She has a video from a girl named Chasay... or at least, that's how I think it's spelled. She lives near a Himalayan village called Terasue... again, I'm just guessing how it's spelled... and she needs the ProStars' help. How did her video get to the ProStars' headquarters? According to Denise, a bird brought it. Wow, and I thought storks only delivered babies. I guess they're branching out.

Actually, according to Michael Jordan, the video must have been delivered by the sacred Snow Falcon, so called that because its feathers are as white as snow.

You know the gym is owned by a girl because the walls are painted pink. If it were owned
by a boy, the walls would be painted blue.

And what's more, Michael knows that Terasue guards the entrance to a super-secret valley. The villagers there have never allowed any outsiders to enter. Bo's heard of it, too. If he and Michael both know about it, I don't think it's so super-secret after all.

Already in the Himalayas is this guy:

I don't know what his name is, but judging by the fact that he talks about how great it is to be away from the ProStars, Mom, and the gadgets that she makes for the ProStars, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that he's a recurring character. He winds up being startled by the flying shoe overhead and slides off the snowy cliff he's been climbing. When he lands at the bottom, he's covered with snow. I sure hope he doesn't get hypothermia.

The ProStars arrive in the Himalayas, where they locate Terasue (every time they say that word, I get hungry for tiramisu) and the entrance to the hidden valley. And what a welcoming committee is waiting for them - the Snow Falcon itself! Alas, it seems to be in a bad mood. I wonder what's got its feathers so ruffled... maybe it just really hates giant flying shoes?

"BRAAAAAAAAWK! I'VE ALWAYS LIKED SHAQUILLE O'NEAL BETTER!"

They manage to dodge the great white bird, but then a snowball comes hurtling towards them. They dodge it too, and Michael decides that the falcon must have been on their side because it saved them from being clobbered by a giant snowball. The source of that giant snowball? This lady and her minions:

Gee, I wonder if this is going to be the episode's main villain...

Say hello to Ice Mancuso (voiced by Tress MacNeille), a Joan Rivers soundalike who wants to get into the hidden valley and do eeeeeeeevil things to it. Specifically, she wants to build a hotel there.

"Bo knows birds, and I think that bird wants us to follow it somewhere!" Bo says, spotting the Snow Falcon again. For those unaware, this is a reference to a 1989 ad campaign for Nike shoes called "Bo Knows". The commercial had Bo doing random sports and people going "Bo knows [INSERT SPORT HERE]." And then Bo Diddley showed up. You're welcome, everyone else born after 1989.

Speaking of pop culture references, there's also an Arnold Schwarzenegger parody for some reason.

Rule of thumb: if it's a 1990s cartoon, chances are that an Arnold Schwarzenegger parody will
show up at one point.

The good guys follow the falcon through a chasm and wind up in what looks like the Ice King's summer home.

There's even a white-bearded dude dressed in blue.

As it turns out, the girl in the video is the Princess of the Valley of the Snow Falcons. Her father, the nameless king of the valley, explains to Michael, Bo and Wayne that Ice Mancuso wants to get into the valley like many have tried before to. Why? Because it's the last untouched spot on Earth - the Ice Volcano (so is that a volcano made of ice or a volcano that spews ice? If it's the former, wouldn't it melt every time lava came raining down on it?) makes it a paradise for the Snow Falcon and the multiple other rare creatures that live there. But Ice doesn't care about that - like most 1990s one-episode cartoon villains, all she thinks about is making money.

They can't destroy this place. If they do, Elsa will be homeless!

"It's game time!" Michael says, and then the three of them put on their rocket-powered skis. Honestly, skiing seems dangerous enough to me without the presence of ROCKETS making your skis go. Fortunately, Wayne has learned how to ski from watching the Olympics. Wow, I didn't know all that was needed for you to become a professional skier was to watch someone do it on TV! Hey, maybe just by watching this, I'LL become the world's best skier too!

Methinks that for Ice Mancuso, her day is all downhill from here. Get it? Downhill? Nyuck
nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck...

We cut back to Ice and her minions. A kid wearing a parka runs up behind them and starts throwing snowballs at them. "GO AWAY! I WON'T LET YOU DESTROY THE VALLEY!" they snap (so this kid knows about the hidden valley too? I thought it was supposed to be secret). But he didn't count on the Arnold Schwarzenegger parody having a laser gun that traps whatever it zaps in ice. Okay, here's a suggestion for you, Ice: you wanna make money? Leave the valley alone and patent that gun.

Michael, Wayne, and Bo find out that everyone else in the nearby village of Terasue has been frozen in ice too. Dang it, Frozone, there are better ways to vent your frustrations than by taking them out on random civilians...

"I WAS FROZEN TODAY!"

"I WAS ALSO FROZEN TODAY!"

"WE WERE ALL FROZEN TODAY!"

"Could you hurry up and save us?! We're getting frostbite!"

The ProStars had better get started on taking down Ice, because she's finally managed to get into the valley. "IT'S TIME FOR AN OPEN HOUSE!" she shouts, continuing to sound like an evil Joan Rivers. I wonder what made them decide that their villain should sound like Joan Rivers... did she tick off a producer or something?

By the time the ProStars show up, the villains have put up a sign reading "RESORTS UNLIMITED: GIVE US PARADISE AND WE'LL GIVE YOU A PARKING LOT". Then they have to dodge that laser gun that turns things to ice. They use pocket mirrors to deflect the lasers, which promptly zap the bad guys, freezing THEM like ice pops. Now they just have to deal with Ice and the Arnold Schwarzenegger parody. They have discovered diamonds under the frozen pond, and Ice is all "To heck with the resort, let's melt the valley and get those diamonds!".

Fortunately, the ProStars heard everything on Michael's basketball with a radar dish sticking out of it. What the heck did I just type?

"Jeez, what was I thinking when I bought this hideous thing?"

"Bo knows greed, but this lady makes Attilla the Hun look like Santa Claus!" Bo claims. The ProStars can't allow Ice to ruin the valley. They must stop her. Oh, and that guy from before shows up again to get his head stuck in a rock.

How does Ice plan to melt the valley? Apparently, she has heat rockets, which she's having her goons shoot out of a cannon at the ice volcano. It's a direct hit, causing what looks like mud to start leaking out of it.

Ah, so the ice volcano DOESN'T spew lava - it's filled with orange paint!

The king tells the snow falcon to do something to stop the bad guys. Why didn't the falcon do something earlier? It's huge. It's got a sharp beak and sharp talons. It could tear Ice limb from limb! It could carry her off to Alcatraz! It could take a dump on her like a bird on a car's windshield!

Anyhow, the ProStars start fighting the guy working the cannon by launching hockey pucks and baseballs at him (Bo Johnson was a baseball player at one point too, for those wondering why it's not footballs). But it isn't until the falcon shows up that the guy flees. But Ice isn't out of the way yet - she also has a heat bomb that she's placing on the volcano, which will cause it to erupt and melt the entire valley. Wayne tells Michael and Bo to meet him at the volcano in the flying shoe - he's going to fly there on his rocket-powered skis.

"Eat your heart out, Sidney Crosby!"

They manage to carry the car that's carrying the heat bomb off the volcano via grappling hook just before it goes ka-boom. Then Mom and Denise show up so that Mom can beat up Ice and the Schwarzenegger parody, tie them up, and tell them that they're going to jail.

The valley and its people are saved. The king and his daughter thank the ProStars for their help, and the episode ends with a segment where the real Bo, Michael and Wayne answer questions from kids. Thus endeth ProStars.

What's the Verdict?

I'm kind of disappointed that this wasn't worse. I was expecting something really corny and ridiculous, one of those "so bad it's good" kind of shows. But y'know what? I actually thought it was pretty good! Decent animation, good voice acting (although Tress MacNeille's Joan Rivers impression gets grating after a while), and it actually does a good job of getting across the "protect the environment" moral without being too preachy about it. Even the animated versions of Michael, Wayne, and Bo are engaging, and I expected them to just be obnoxious Gary Stus. Too bad this only got thirteen episodes, I feel like it had potential.

If you'd like to watch ProStars for yourself, you can find episodes on YouTube and the Internet Archive. A few episodes were released on VHS in the 1990s, and I think three of 'em were released on DVD as well, but I imagine that DVD is out of print.

I do have one small complaint: it's an episode of a cartoon taking place in the Himalayas, and there wasn't even ONE yeti?! You had ONE JOB, ProStars!