Back to the Drawing Board: The Live Action "Jetsons" Movies, Part 2

Part 2: "Altair and Judy Sittin' in a Tree" or "The Perfect Plutonian Putz"

In the first screenplay for a live action Jetsons movie that never got off the ground we looked at, George was mistakenly implanted with some sort of "human potentializer" that was supposed to turn him into the perfect human being, Judy hooked up with a cute guy who could change colors like a chameleon, Elroy got arrested for shoplifting, and there was a chimpanzee for some reason. Now, onto the 1987 draft of the film's script by Chris Thompson!

This script begins with a beautiful sunrise over the Jetsons' home turf of Galaxy City... in the cartoon, the name of the city is actually Orbit City, but I don't recall them bringing that up much so we'll let it slide. A mechanical rooster standing on a fence crows and then lays a square egg (the script acknowledges that roosters don't lay eggs. They're not mechanical either, of course) that falls into a cylinder that takes it into the Jetsons' kitchen. We basically get the breakfast machine sequence from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and for some reason there's a human face on the wall and the nose on it pops off and inhales the smell of the pancakes. I don't recall any disembodied noses in the cartoon...

George gets out of bed and deals with the weird technology that shaves his face (it winds up shaving his feet), brushes his hair (it brushes his face), and put clothes on him (it puts them on backwards). Jeez, are people in the future really that lazy? They can't even dress themselves? We really ARE on our way to becoming the humans from WALL-E, aren't we?

After that, George heads into the living room and trips over Astro, who turns to the camera and says, "Reet Reorge Retson." Get it? The first line of the theme song? And it keeps going. As we meet Elroy, Judy, and Jane, he says another verse of the song. Elroy's having trouble with his closet, too - it dresses him in girls' clothing because he shares the closet with Judy. Jane uses a beauty shop hair-dryer called Mr. Enrique 1200 to do her makeup. It has an attitude, but you probably would too if your only purpose in life was to put lipstick on women.

Rosey serves everyone breakfast. George realizes that he's late for work, at which point his neuronic talking watch apologizes for not telling him what time it was. "I'm a failure as a watch, aren't I? Do me a favor, just don't tell my union," he pleads. "I'll get demoted and wind up as an egg timer." I imagine this watch likely would've had the voice of Woody Allen. Anyway, George then jumps into his car, which can ALSO talk. The watch is still lamenting what a loser he is, and the car says that he needs professional help. I don't recall the car talking in the original show, but I'm okay with it talking here. The car takes George to Spacely's Sprockets, and once he reaches his office it's revealed that the chair can talk too. Everything in this script talks, apparently. It's like the entire Jetsons world is an episode of Blue's Clues.

I wish Blogger wouldn't make the resolution of my artwork so crummy.
You'll have to click on the picture for a higher-quality version...

Back at Casa De Los Jetsons, Elroy is building an antigravitational-transkinetic-hypermolecular-transponder (if you were able to read all that out loud, major props). It moves stuff, which Elroy demonstrates by having it move Astro's food bowl. Like in the previous script, Elroy really wants to go to Spaceball Camp, but it's apparently really expensive because they can't afford it. They've had to spend money on stuff like a new liver for Judy and speech therapy for Astro. After Jane assures Elroy, Judy, Rosey, and Astro that they're not as poor as they appear to be at the moment, Elroy and Judy head off to school. Jane decides to check out the "Help Wanted" section of the newspaper. Looks like she's looking for a job in this script too.

At work, George has to deal with a guy named Greg MacGravity, who he claims is a "management trainee". "Jetson, you're a space schmuck. You're just jealous cause you're bogged down in a nowhere job and you have to watch me rocket to the top while you linger at the bottom," MacGravity claims. George's response is, "Actually, what I'd like to watch is a rocket linger up your bottom." That sounds dirty. Apparently the director thought so too, because this line is circled and there's a "No" written next to it in pen. From this scene, we learn that MacGravity is an arrogant tool. And the watch continues to be the funniest character in the script thus far.

For those wondering, no, Greg MacGravity did not appear in the cartoon, he's an invention for this script. There was a character called Dr. McGravity in at least one episode, though. Here's a picture of Dr. McGravity:

We then cut to Judy's high school, where she's complaining to a friend that somebody named Sheldon Spacesludge tried to kiss her. "Gag me with the moon," she complains - remember, this was written in the 1980s. Then just as Judy and her pals are dancing to a Jet Screamer song, a "little matron maid" shows up and tells Judy she is wanted in the Vice Principal's office. Meanwhile, at Elroy's school, he has to put up with a bully named Butch - or rather Arthur "Butch" Spacely. Hmmm, it would seem that in this script, Butch is Mr. Spacely's son. Mr. Spacely had a son in the show, but I don't think he was the school bully.

Here's a picture of Mr. Spacely's son in the show. His name was indeed Arthur, although
I don't recall if anyone ever called him "Butch".

And back at the house, Jane... gets a visit from Dorothy and Toto? No, really. Dorothy and Toto show up. I was not expected a cameo from those two...

In the Spacely Sprockets laboratory, three scientists, only one of whom gets a name, are watching someone play the piano. One scientist tells the only named one, Moone, that the "surgical implantation of the actualizer" has created what may be one of the greatest geniuses of their time. That piano-playing genuis is... a rabbit. His name is Puff. And he has a god complex. And yes, he DOES make a reference to how good rabbits are at multiplying. Meanwhile, George is told that Mr. Spacely wants to see him right away. "Are we in trouble?" he and all the furniture and gadgets in his office ask.

I was originally going to draw Puff, but I think you'd all much rather see
a photo of a cute real life rabbit.

Another similarity to the previous script pops up as we cut back to Judy's high school. The Vice Principal wants her to show around an exchange student. From Korrinian 3. Named Altair. Who looks exactly like Jet Screamer. But this time he's blue as opposed to lime green. Of course, Judy goes gaga over him.

George walks down the hall to Mr. Spacely's office, talking to his watch about how much he hates MacGravity. "Look at him, all young and smug," he says. "Sure, it's easy to be a big success if you just concentrate on work. I'd like to see how he'd do if he had to take care of a wife, two kids, and a great dane with a speech impediment. I hate that son-of-a..." Whoa, George, watch the language. As it turns out, MacGravity is going to see Mr. Spacely too. He says that he'd LIKE to be friends with George, but doing so could put his career at risk. For some reason. Still, he invites George to play with him on the rocketball court that afternoon. As soon as MacArthur is out of earshot, George announces that he's going to "kick [the] asteroids" of that "perfect Plutonian putz".

It turns out that George isn't just meeting with Spacely, but with the board of directors and those three scientists from before as well. Spacely called the meeting because there's rumors being spread around, mainly by Cogswell Cogs, that their company is having financial trouble. Moone shows everyone else how they implanted "the actualizer" into the brain of a rabbit. I guess Chris Thompson thinks that rabbits are funnier than primates, because this rabbit serves as a replacement for the chimpanzee from the previous script. "Alright, Spacely, Moone. Are you saying that you have extended all of the assets of this multi-galactical corporation in order to create a RENNAISANCE BUNNY?!" an executive named Liftoff demands. "Liftoff, you have the brains of a german shepherd and the imagination of a socket wrench," Spacely claims. "Do you think I've spent trillions of solar dollars, just to have a rabbit that can sing Rigoletto?! Let me show you something." He tells MacGravity to stand up, then explains that he holds eight degrees, he's a superb athlete, brilliant, ruthless, and all in all a very fine specimen of a human being. And yet he only uses ten percent of his brain - this is actually a myth, for those wondering. Maybe Spacely just doesn't know that. "Can you imagine what this man could achieve if he was given access to the other ninety percent of his mind?" he asks. "Of course you can't imagine, cause you all have brains that fall somewhere between lungfish and fungus."

MacGravity adds that this is what the actualizer does: once it's implanted in the brain, it allows the recipient to use all one hundred percent of his mind. If it could make a rabbit a genius, it could also make a human being a god of sorts. Which brings Spacely to George, much to his confusion. Spacely dubs George "the most average of the average", and says that once they get the actualizer inside MacGravity's brain, he will become something truly exceptional. Joke's on MacArthur, though - we all know the actualizer is somehow going to wind up in George's brain instead.

We then see Elroy and his friends playing spaceball, and once again Butch creams Elroy. Then we see George and MacGravity at the rocketball court, where MacGravity is acting like the perfect Plutonian putz that he is and making George look like a fool. Not that George needs much help to look like a fool, mind you. As for Jane, she heads to a convenience store called the "7-Squared 11-Cubed", which has a "Help Wanted" sign out front. The store is run by a hairy purple alien in a red smock named Zaxxor, who makes a reference to Michael Jackson because, again, 1980s. Then he makes a reference to Jerry Lewis before giving Jane a job. I reaaaaaaally hope this character doesn't have the hots for Jane like that Mr. Darrow guy from the previous script...

In Mr. Spacely's office, Moone is telling him that they probably won't be ready to implant the actualizer in a human in six months. Why? Because the actualizer has side effects: sudden rages, bouts of melancholy, partial amnesia, an entire rage of emotional quirks, meglomania, and possibly even the creation of suicidal tendencies. Before the conversation can continue, who should show up at Spacely Sprockets but W.C. Cogswell. He offers to buy Spacely's company, to which Spacely refuses. But Cogswell has a note from the bank claiming that if Spacely can't pay them in thirty days, they'll let Cogswell take over the company. Banks can do that, I guess.

"Listen, Fat Boy..." Spacely snarls, "I'm developing a product that'll knock you out of of the solar system." Cogswell reveals that he already knows about the actualizer and that he knows it won't work, to which Spacely says that they're about to implant it into a human being. In fact, he's so sure of its success that, if a month goes by and it DOES fail, he'll sell Cogswell the company. Spacely, you fool. Since there's no turning back now, Spacely tells his secretary to tell Dr. Moone and MacGravity to get ready for the insertation of the actualizer at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

At dinner that night, Jane tells George about her new job. George advises her to hold off on the job because he thinks they'll get through these financial troubles. He's also miffed that nothing unusual ever goes on in their lives. Well, that settles it... George is definitely going to be implanted with the fancy smarts-boosting device in THIS script, too.

George comes out of his bedroom looking as though he has a new purpose. When he gets to work, he runs into MacGravity again, who boasts that he's going to get the actualizer implanted in his brain. And you'd expect this to be the part where George somehow gets the actualizer implanted in HIS brain by accident, right? Well, not quite. Instead, George knocks out MacGravity and stuffs him into the trunk of his car. Then he barges into the laboratory and tells the two assistants in there that he's MacGravity. I don't know whether George is really brave or really stupid. They put a helmet on his head so when Spacely shows up, he doesn't know that it's George and not MacGravity.

While George is getting the actualizer implanted in his brain, we cut back to the house, where Jane is talking to Marsha (remember her from the previous script?) about how she loves George "just the way he is". Uh oh, you jinxed it, Jane. Elroy, meanwhile, is talking to his friend Vladimir about spaceball camp and dealing with Butch. And Judy is making out with Altair, and as she kisses him she also begins to turn blue because he's giving her his essence. Judy's not exactly on board with that because she's only sixteen, to which Altair tells her that a lot of sixteen year olds on his planet already have offspring (eeeeeeeeeh...). "Altair, I really think you are cool to like the maximum velocity. But I've only known you a couple of days," Judy points out. "I don't know that I'm ready to settle down with you and start having, like little Smurfs." Is that an example of Hanna-Barbera cross-promotion? Say, is Altair the evolved form of a Smurf? That would be a pretty funny twist...

Just as the operation on George is wrapping up, MacGravity bursts into the room, meaning that Spacely now knows it wasn't MacGravity who they implanted the actualizer in but rather George. Way to go, George. You just got yourself a pink slip. On the bright side, George is now an expert rocketball player, so it seems as though the actualizer is working. This makes Spacely very happy. According to Moone, it's going to take thirty days or so for the actualizer to advance George to one hundred percent brain potential. So far he's only at twelve percent.

"I'm finally going to be somebody special. I'm going to give my family everything they've ever wanted," George vows. "You won't regret this, Cosmo. I promise. I know you didn't want to use me, but think about it. You wanted to end mediocrity. Well, what better way to demonstrate that, than to use a mediocre man. Cosmo, I'm gonna put on a show for the board of directors that will blow them from here to the Big Dipper, and then, when I'm ready, we're going to grind Cogswell into teeny atomic particles, and scatter them across the galaxy."

We then cut to the Galaxeria Mall, where Elroy and Vladimir run into Butch... again. Just as he's about to clobber Elroy, George swoops in and lifts him off the ground. He reveals that he's been promoted to Senior Vice President of New Projects, so there's no risk of being fired if he stuffs a corn dog on a jet in Butch's mouth and sends him into a tub of mustard, which is just what he does. Also at the mall are Judy and Altair, who mentions that he'd love to take her back to Korrinian 3 with him... just as George shows up and declares that Judy must be taught a lesson. Then he gives her his Spacy's Department Store card and tells her to buy a new wardrobe. See, he wasn't actually mad at Judy for making out with Altair! It was a bait-and-switch! George, you sly dog!

Coincidentally enough, Jane and Marsha are just leaving the mall, and in the parking lot they see George with a red Corvette Space Car. "Plant your hips inside and we'll take a spin," he tells Jane. Back home, when the family learns about George's new promotion, Jane says she knew they were just waiting for the right position for you. "I always thought the right position for dad was upside down, or on his butt," Judy quips. George then gives Elroy a spaceball with "Congratulations, Elroy Jetson, on your acceptance to Willie Mars Baseball Camp." written on it.

At Cogswell Cogs, Cogswell is getting a massage... and having a meeting with Dr. Moone. Apparently Dr. Moone is actually a mole, planted in Spacely's company by Cogswell because "the boys in Las Venus" are mad at him for welching on his gambling debts. When Moone tells him what's going on, Cogswell tells him to keep him informed of George's progress - if he continues to succeed, they just might have to take matters into their own hands.

At the Spacely Training Laboratory, George is doing some training. He breezes through an obstacle course, wins a dozen games of 3D Chess, lifts weights, and paints a Rembrandt and a Picasso at the same time. Then George moves the family into a deluxe condo that looks like "something out of a magazine". By now, he's using forty-one percent of his brain. However, he does want Spacely and Moone to tell him why he hasn't been informed of whatever side effects the actualizer might have. "I have all the data on your research into the actualizer," he explains. "You took quite a chance putting it into a man. The device is dangerously crude, and rudimentary. Too bad you couldn't build this little baby now. I could show you how to fix it." In fact, if he were to TELL anyone about the "piece of junk" that Spacely put in his head, he'd have a lawsuit that'd have him owning Spacely Sprockets in no time. It should be pretty clear by now that George is getting too big for his britches, but he does have a point. He SHOULD know about whatever side effects the actualizer has, lest he wind up turning into a crystal robot thing again.

George comes home from work with a large human-sized box. When he opens it up, standing inside is a robot in a tuxedo with an English accent. He's their new "Robo-Serve", who he bought to "lighten the load" for Rosey. Instead of falling madly in love with the Robo-Serve like you'd expect her to, Rosey fears that she's being replaced. Then he heads back to work, despite Jane's protest that the kids haven't seen him in days. Oh, great. We're doing THAT cliche now, are we?

This is what I think of when I think of a robot butler.

Judy can't decide whether to go with Altair to his home planet or not. "This is as complicated as shopping for bathing suits," she laments. Elroy and Astro suggest that she ask their father, which gives Judy an idea: she'll ask George when Altair comes to dinner, and when he refuses, Altair will give her credit for trying. It's foolproof!

Cogswell calls up Spacely to "give [him] the chance to sell out now while [his] company [is] still worth something". "I've got a bright new executive that's taking this company to the outer limits of the universe," Spacely tells him. "He'd better do it in ten days, Spacely. Then, if you're lucky, I might give you a job..." Cogswell says - a job in the mail room, that is. Actually, George's behavior has Spacely worried.

Altair shows up at the Jetson household for dinner. Judy says that she's decided to go with Altair to his home planet, but first she has to ask her father. George arrives home and walks past Rosey, who was going to offer him a pipe, Elroy, who holds a paper and smoking jacket, and Astro, with a pair of slippers in his mouth. This, as the script points out, is a way of showing that George has let his success go to his head.

When they sit down to dinner, George says that he got something special for Altair from his home planet - Blue Korrinian Lobster and prime Saturnian steak. Or, as he likes to call it, "Smurf and Turf".

Altair can't bring himself to eat the lobster because he used to have a lobster named Scooter as a pet. George continues to act like a tool, and when Judy asks him about going to Korrinian 3, guess what? He's okay with it, to Jane and Judy's shock.

Scooter.

Later, Jane demands to know why George is letting Judy go off to another planet to get her freak on with a boy she just met. "Jane, do we really want to inhibit her potential for achievement?" George asks. "There's that word again. Achievement. Since when did the word achievement become more important to you than words like family, or responsibility, or human warmth?" Jane wants to know. Why are smart people so often portrayed in movies and TV shows as emotionless robots? That seems unfair to smart people.

We cut to Elroy's big spaceball game, and initially it seems like George is, of course, too busy at work to watch him play. But then he DOES show up in a large Spacely Sprockets rocket, followed by a bunch of guys in suits and lab coats. He gives Elroy a new spaceball that he reconfigured to make it impossible to hit. Elroy protests that they're supposed to play with the equipment they already have so nobody has an unfair advantage, to which George insists that winning is more important than playing fair. Who is he, Dick Dastardly? Then he only stays for about a minute before rushing off to another board meeting. So even though Elroy strikes Butch out, he's not happy. In fact, he's crying. Way to go, George. You've made the cutest Jetson cry. You are officially the most evil Hanna-Barbera character ever.

George's reign of terror is summed up by Moone. He's developed forty-eight new patents in two weeks, fired over a hundred people because he thinks he can do their jobs better, and is scaring the pants off of Moone. And the side effects? There don't seem to be any yet. As for George, he is currently telling the board of directors that he is for all intents and purposes a god and that they should - and I'm quoting this verbatim from the script - "bow to [their] knees and tremble". Cogswell, meanwhile, tells Moone to build him an actualizer that he can implant in one of his employees, but Moone says he can't because George took over the entire project and destroyed all the files and momorized them.

George tells the board of directors that they are now obsolete. When Spacely protests, George declares that he took majority ownership in Spacely Sprockets yesterday so he now dictates what goes on at the company. Sheesh, even Fred didn't become this awful when HE became drunk with power in the Flinstones movie. Spacely says that he never should have put the actualizer in George's head and that he thinks they should take it out before things get worse. George promptly uses his... psychic powers, I guess... to split the conference table in two. Dear lord, he's becoming a supervillain. It's like that episode of Jimmy Neutron where Sheen became super-intelligent and turned evil.

"You should've stopped that crazy thing when I told you to,
Jane."

Back home, Elroy has decided to run away. When George is about to jump into his limo, a bunch of security robots show up to apprehend him, but he uses his psychic powers (again, I don't know when he got psychic powers, they weren't mentioned among the side effects earlier, but just go with it) to melt them. Judy is talking to Altair about how she doesn't think she's ready to go to Korrinian 3. Cogswell decides that if he can't beat George, he'll make him a better offer at his company - coincidentally enough, George's limo is pulling up to Cogswell Cogs right now. And Jane? She has to put up with the unwanted advances of Zaxxor.

It should be pretty obvious that I'm not very good at drawing females.

George tells Cogswell that he's going to buy out his company, but he may continue to work there as his employee. Then he shall take over the entire galaxy. Before he can continue to rant about how everyone in the universe will bow down before the one known as George Jetson, he suddenly grabs his head and screams.

At the Jetson house, Judy, Jane, Astro, and Rosey are watching the video Elroy filmed before he ran away. A crazed George barges in and informs them that now he controls everything and they shall have everything they ever want. Astro tells him to watch the video, which they promptly play for George. In the video, Elroy says that he used to think they were "a pretty happy family who got along kinda good", not knowing that they weren't "acheiving enough" or "making enough money" or "actualizing [their] goals". "Dad, I think something happened where you felt that you weren't everything we thought you should be. Like being normal was some kind of crime or something. But, Dad, I never wanted anything more than just what you gave us," he says. "Love and attention and stuff. I guess you felt like you were disappointing us, but then you got all smart and everything, and then we started to feel like we were disappointing you. Well, I don't like that feeling. So I'm gonna go out and try to achieve something, you know, 'cause that's what you want, okay? And that's why I think it's better that I just go. I'm sorry, Dad... I love you."

Seeing this snaps George out of his, for lack of a better word, evilness and he shouts Elroy's name in anguish, a shout so loud that Elroy can hear it just as he's about to climb aboard a bus.

Then things take a REALLY dark turn. You thought George turning evil was dark? Think again. George runs onto the roof of the building and laments, "I wanted to give you things. They put something in me. In my head. I am powerful. I am brilliant. And yet I am a failure..." Astro tries to stop him from jumping off, but that just causes him to fall off the roof. Fortunately, Elroy saves him.

When George comes to, he's inside the house with the others hovering over him. And now he doesn't recognize any of them. Rosey suggests that they just need to recharge his memory, and fortunately Altair has some sort of ability to give people his memories just by touching their hands. So everyone holds hands and thinks about good times with George, and guess what? It works! George sits up and says, "I know you. You are what matters. You are my family." Hooray!

But then he says, "I would like to stay, but I cannot. I have a destiny, a destiny to rule." To get George back to normal, they need to remove the device in his head. So what does Jane do? Honestly... words can not describe what Jane does next. Here's what the script says:

"Jane grabs her husband's head, and throws a liplock on the back of it. She noisily sucks on his skull. We hear a loud 'POP'. She removes her mouth from his skull and spits. We see the actualizer fly out of her mouth across the room. It lands in Rosey's hand. She looks at it a beat, and crushes it in her metal paw."

...yes, Jane randomly turns into a lamprey and somehow sucks out the actualizer from George's skull. Why she has this ability is never explained.

An actual photo of Jane Jetson.

But it does the trick, George is back to normal. He then trips over Astro and falls onto the sidewalk, which carries him over to the vacuum tube. And then the script just... ends.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but this wasn't as good as the previous script. It feels less polished, with a lot of things and plot points that don't go anywhere: George taking over Spacely and Cogswell's companies, Elroy's spaceball stuff, even the stuff with Altair just kind of fizzles out. The ending is extremely abrupt. And I don't think anyone wants to see an iconic cartoon character like George Jetson become a diabolical villain who wants to take over the universe.

I will say, though, it's pretty surprising that this script and the first one have so many of the same plot elements. Did Chris Thompson read the first draft for inspiration? I wonder if the third script will be about George getting something implanted in his brain that makes him a supergenius too. I guess we'll just have to wait until the third part to find out...

Back to the Drawing Board: The Live Action "Jetsons" Movies, Part 1

Part 1: "Some Things Should Just Stay Animated" or "Astro's Tail... Sorry, TALE"

You know, I really would like to do more of editions of Back to the Drawing Board. I really would. Problem is, it's really hard to find things to do full posts about on the internet. For example, I wanted to do a post about Joe Jump, the movie that eventually became Reboot Ralph, which in turn became Wreck-It Ralph... but there's little to no information about Joe Jump online. All I could find was some concept art. Okay, well, how about the first draft of an animated movie's script? Maybe there's a script for Shrek? Nope, nothing. It's very frustrating. But what luck! I've found some stuff on the Internet Archive that I can do Back to the Drawing Boards about. Huzzah!

To start this one off, I have a message for the people of Hollywood: DOING LIVE ACTION ADAPTATIONS OF CARTOONS IS A BAD IDEA. The only times I can think of where it actually turned out fine were George of the Jungle (I really need to rewatch that movie at some point) and Yogi Bear (yeah, I honestly didn't think it was that bad). But more often than not we get complete crap. The live action Flintstones was mediocre. It amazes me that the live action Scooby-Doo movies are so well-liked (it's because of these films that Matthew Lillard is doing the voice of Shaggy now, even though he sounds nothing like Casey Kasem). And the less said about those Smurfs movies, the better.

There's a reason why these animated things you insist on doing in live action are animated in the first place. When you attempt to pull them off in live action, it doesn't translate very well. For example, let's take a look at Scooby-Doo:

He's not very realistic-looking, is he? No, but that's part of his charm. It's an appealing character design. Now, let's take a look at the "realistic but still cartoony enough that you can tell it's supposed to be the same character" Scooby from the live action movies:

I'm sorry, but that doesn't look like Scooby-Doo. It doesn't even look like a DOG, much less a Great Dane. And how about the Smurfs? How exactly do you translate tiny blue big-nosed gnomes into live action? The mindset was "given them realistic-looking skin and facial features", and this was the result:

Those are not cute. They are nightmarish. I'm amazed the films made so much money, you'd think those designs would be enough to scare kids away. And this doesn't just apply to the CGI non-human characters. When I watched the live action Flintstones movie, I didn't see Rick Moranis, Elizabeth Perkins, and Rosie O'Donnell as Barney, Wilma, and Betty. They didn't look like them, they didn't sound like them (although Rick at least tried to imitate Mel Blanc)... maybe it's just me, but I just saw people COSPLAYING as the characters, not the characters themselves.

The charm of these cartoony characters goes out the window when you give them a more "realistic but still exaggerated" design. Animation allows you to do goofy stylized character designs, weird locations, wild takes, bizarre shenanigans, and exaggerated movements. You generally can't pull these off in live action, at least not without it looking silly.

So, how exactly could you make The Jetsons in live action? In a cartoon, all the futuristic buildings and technology looks cool, but in real life it'd just look like a garishly-colored pizza parlor. The CGI Astro would look just as bad as the CGI Scooby, or that CGI Hong Kong Phooey they were going to do (remember when that leaked online?). Everyone would look more like people on their way to a Halloween party, not characters in a big budget movie. Even if you had a good script, you'd be better off just making an animated film. But over the years, there have been attempts.

First, Paramount attempted to get a live action Jetsons movie off the ground in 1985. It went nowhere, and Hanna-Barbera decided to do an animated theatrical Jetsons movie instead (which wound up being a flop).

Yes, this is the movie that replaced Janet Waldo as Judy Jetson
with Tiffany.

Then in November 2001, it was announced that Paul Foley and Dan Forman had been hired to write a script for a Jetsons movie, with Rob Minkoff and Denise Di Novi attached to direct and produce it respectively. In 2003, Adam Shankman entered negotiations to direct and co-write the film. In 2004, Denise Di Novi claimed that the most recent draft of the script was written by Sam Harper (who also worked on Open Season and Rio, incidentally). In 2006, the project was relaunched with Adam F. Goldberg chosen to be the new screenwriter and Donald De Line (the producer of The Italian Job) joining as another producer.

2007 saw Robert Rodriguez enter talks with Universal Studios and Warner Brothers to do a Jetsons movie. Denise Di Novi explained in 2011 that "His version was fantastic, but honestly, it wasn't a mainstream studio version. It was kind of his version of what he would shoot at his studio in Texas. He's got a great set-up down there, and I think part of it is that 'it may be fun to play with all those big toys at the studio' but he has a pretty good system going."

So the film was still languishing in Development Limbo, even after Van Robichaux and Evan Susser were hired to rewrite the script in 2012. Even as recently as 2017, it was announced that they were going to do a live action Jetsons TV show, but nothing has come out of that so far. Oh, and in 2015 it was announced that Warner Bros. was planning a new animated theatrical Jetsons movie, but that seems to be in Development Limbo at the moment too.

The good news is, at least three drafts of the film's plot have wound up online. I have found a 1986 draft by Terrence H. Winkless and Alec Lorimore and a 1987 draft by Chris Thompson on the Internet Archive and a 1996 draft by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Adam F. Goldberg's draft has not surfaced yet, however, I have found a comment from somebody on Reddit who claims to have read it. According to them, "Goldberg's draft is terrible. It fails to capture the spirit of the original show despite borrowing directly from the storylines of several episodes, it's full of lousy puns and out-of-place juvenile humor (including Astro farting in bed and Spacely's son being named Uranus), and the family drama is so poorly handled that it makes George Jetson look completely unlikable."

Now, reviewing all three screenplays in one blog post would make it needlessly long, so we're going to have to do this in three parts. We'll look at them in chronicalogical order. Everybody ready? Let's take a look at the 1986 draft for the live action Jetsons movie that wasn't.

The script starts off with us hurtling through the "outmost reaches of the universe". The script's narrator says, "I suppose the universe existed before I did, but who knows? Until you've personally seen a place, is it really there?" Well, I've never been to Tahiti but I know it is, in fact, a place that exists. So no, I don't think you need to personally see a place for it to acually be there.

We hear "Hound Dog" by Elvis Presley echoing through space as an alien space capsule appears... one that looks suspiciously like a doghouse. Apparently, the narrator is in that capsule. And they're a Great Dane puppy. Say, isn't Astro a Great Dane? I wonder... anyway, the narrator who might or might not be Astro says that he was headed for an uncharted planetary system thousands of light years from his own. And what planet in that planetary system is he specifically headed for? Why, none other than Earth!

Then we cut to a city park in Denver, Colorado. I didn't know The Jetsons took place in Denver (do they ever specify what state the characters live in?). A trail of clothes leads to some bushes where George and Jane are... oh, jeez, are they doing what I think the script is implying? I thought The Jetsons was a kids' show!

The capsule hurtles to Earth and towards the bushes, splitting open upon impact. Out pops the puppy, who is quickly discovered by George and Jane after they put their clothes back on. So, yeah, it's pretty clear by now that this is Astro. Apparently Astro is an alien dog? Really? Is that just supposed to be a way of explaining with he can talk? I'm sorry, but this just seems pointless to me... why do we have to make Astro an alien? Can't he just be a normal dog who has the ability to talk?

Here's my attempt at drawing a puppy Astro (he's mostly based
on Scooby's design in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo).

Jane wants to keep Astro, but George says, "We're trying to start a family, not an inter-galactic zoo, and we're barely making the rent as it is. Sorry, it's just impossible." Of course, he changes his mind a few seconds later. In nine months, Judy is born. Then when she's seven years old, Elroy is born too. Time to play the theme song!

After they recreate the intro, the camera takes us to the Spacely Space Sprockets building. It's nighttime, and all is quiet in the "Psycho-Biological Research Lab", where a bunch of technicians are having a chimpanzee types out Hamlet... I guess this is supposed to be a reference to that whole "if you put a bunch of monkeys at typewriters, they'll eventually type out the entire works of Shakespeare" thing. In this case, it's an ape at a computer, not a monkey at a typewriter, but the principle's the same. But what's this? One of the technicians is a huge "genetic throwback" named Knuckles Nuclear, and he sneaks off to the supply room and steals one of the two clear-plastic cubes from a cryogenic freezer. After he makes his getaway, he drives to the home of Mr. Spacely's arch-enemy, W.C. Cogswell... oh, wait, he's called ARTHUR Cogswell in this script. Maybe Terrence and Alec forgot what his first name was?

Why, yes, he DOES look a lot like Mr. Slate from The Flintstones.

Cogswell is having a cocktail party at his house, and Knuckles meets him over at the hors d'ouevres table and gives him the cube. So I guess Cogswell is going to be the villain of this script. From what I recall, he was already a pretty sleazy guy in the show, so why bother creating a new bad guy like the Flintstones and Yogi Bear movies had to?

We then cut to the Jetsons household. Judy is now sixteen, and Elroy is now nine. Rosey the robot is making breakfast. George is watching Jane model outfits in their bedroom before Rosey barges in and forces George to get ready for work. Judy, who is a goth now apparently (but still obsessed with Jet Screamer), is subjected to pranks from Elroy. She's also taking Driver's Ed, but she still isn't very good at driving, which doesn't stop George and Jane from letting her drive Elroy to school. When they arrive at the school, Judy attempts to murder Elroy by unfastening his strap-on anti-gravity belt. I know Elroy pulled a prank on you earlier, but that does not justify murder, Judy. I should not have to tell you that.

Next George, Jane and Judy head to the People Mover Station, which is described as "a multi-level network of moving sidewalks ala LAX which take people to and from the urban center". They're there because Jane is starting a new job. Then it's off to Judy's high school, after which George goes to Spacely's Sprockets and recreates the scene where his car folds up into a briefcase. Also there is a guy with a Ferrari (Luigi and Guido from Cars would approve) that folds up into a Gucci wallet. "This is the '80s!" he claims... he doesn't mean the 1980s, does he?

We then cut to the city where Jane's new job - botanical design - is set up. Her boss, Mr. Darrow, has the hots for her (even though the script describes him as being younger than Jane). Disturbing.

Back at Spacely's Sprockets, Mr. Spacely and Mr. Cogswell are playing a rousing game of indoor golf. You ever notice that bosses in movies and TV show play indoor golf a lot? Do all CEOs have indoor golf courses set up in their offices? Anyhow, Spacely asks Cogswell how his "Expotech" project is going, to which Cogswell says that they likely won't have an entry this year because there's "simply no way to compete with you". After Cogswell drives off with Knuckles in a golf cart, Spacely inspects the damage done to the research lab. Head researcher Dr. Boone suggests that they have the chimpanzee be their "Expotech" entry, but Spacely says that he's convinced Cogswell stole "the F-202" (presumably the cube Knuckles swiped earlier) and that, since Cogswell has no morals or conscience, he's going to put it in a human being and exhibit them at "Expotech". So they decide to put the "F-202" into the guy with the Ferrari - "Mr. Ferrari", the script calls him - and have HIM be their entry to "Expotech". And you thought they were going to put it in George, didn't you? After all, he IS the main character. Speaking of George, he's waiting to talk to Spacely in his office's waiting area, but he doesn't get the chance because Spacely is too busy.

Don't you love it when you find a screencap from the actual show you can use
as a visual aid here, saving you from having to draw one yourself?

Meanwhile, Elroy is playing with his little league Spaceball ("like baseball but played in off-the-ground anti-gravity conditions on a transparent forcefield") team. On the opposing team is school bully Butch, who is apparently the Alex Rodriguez of Spaceball and clobbers Elroy. At the high school, Judy is given a special assignment by her vice principal to snap her out of her goth phase: show around an exchange student from the planet Korrinian 3. His name is Altair. Judy is not happy because she expects him to look like a Star Trek villain, but fortunately for her, it turns out that he's one of those aliens that looks almost exactly like a human being - in this case, he looks like Jet Screamer except he's lime green. Zhe odds, vhat are zhey?

That night, Elroy asks to be excused from dinner so he can practice his Spaceball with the help of holographic technology. When George pops in, Elroy tells him about how Butch won the game that day and how the coach says he could still be a starter if he went to Spaceball Camp. George knows what he has to do...

We cut to him marching right into Spacely's office, only for Spacely to assume that he's the guy they chose to put the F-202 in and whisk him off to the spaceport - like an airport, but futuristic - so they can go to Las Venus. Odd that in this script, Spacely doesn't know who George is. If this is supposed to be canon to the cartoon, you'd think he'd remember the guy he fires once an episode. One flight in a shuttle later, they're in Las Venus, a metropolis with various research and hospital facilities, casinos, hotels, and even a Six Flags. This probably would've all looked very impressive on the screen. I'd put a drawing of what it might have looked like here, but my drawing skills are limited, so instead, here's a photo of the actual Las Vegas:

George is then thrust into an operating anteroom, where he's injected with a drug that makes him act like he's on laughing gas. When he comes to, he's on a chaise lounge, and Mr. Spacely explains that he volunteered to have "the human potentializer - Spacely Sprockets Research Project F202", a computer-imprinted organic crystal, implanted into his head. George is furious, as is Spacely when he's informed that George just wanted to get a promotion, and they start strangling each other. Eventually, George shoves Spacely away, sending him flying into a pool, much to his shock. The F202 works! But Spacely can't swim. George is about to dive in and save Spacely, but then he decides to make Spacely promise him a promotion first. And a raise. And half a year's salary in advance.

For thirty days, the company is going to put George through a training program until he's the first perfect human being in the galaxy, and Spacely says he's not allowed to tell anyone about it - giving new meaning to the phrase "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." Or rather, what happens in Venus stays in Venus, I suppose. First they play some blackjack, which George wins because he is now the smartest person ever. He also now has a blonde stewardess madly in love with him. But what's this? Jane's friend Marsha, who helped get her to her new job earlier in the script, just so happens to be in Las Venus because... I don't know, and she spots George with the stewardess. Something tells me that George is going to be in trouble with Jane at some point...

The next morning (apparently the Las Venus trip occurred all in one night, and George was able to get back without anyone noticing he was missing?), Jane suggests that they go on a family vacation to Las Venus. George initially says they can't, but then when Elroy enters and becomes excited over the prospect of going to the aforementioned Six Flags in Las Venus, he does a 180 and says yes. After all, he's been promoted, which means he and his family will have everything they've ever dreamed of. Also, Judy is back to her usual self - apparently meeting the Jet Screamer lookalike has snapped her out of her goth phase.

We get a montage of the Jetsons' lives improving. George gets a new car, then gives the old one to Judy. He arranges for Elroy to go to Spaceball Camp. Jane gets a new outfit. The living room is redecorated. Jane gives George a kaleidoscope that Elroy identifies as being Cassiopeian - he learned all about them in galactic history class. According to legend, the Cassiopeian race was dying and they thought the kaleidoscope has magic powers and that it had failed them. One day, when things looked their darkest, the purest of the race's leaders looked into the kaleidoscope and discovered the answer to all their problems. "He found... hope. They say that even now, a person can find it again with this if he loves enough," George explains. "But that a person who doesn't love, finds nothing but blackness." I wonder if this kaleidoscope and its message of hope will be important later on...

While George is relaxing in his new office later, Knuckles (remember him?) sneaks around outside disguised as a robot window washer. Apparently, he's been sent to do something to Mr. Ferrari that involves aiming a remote control unit at him and pushing it. Mr. Ferrari doesn't respond, but in George's office, HE'S receiving the signals. So now it looks like he's hitting himself in the face, his leg is vibrating, his back arches, this probably would've been the big "LOL he's acting like a cartoon character but he's a real person" scene that most movies based on cartoons are required to have.

Next, Spacely takes George to a domed coliseum where he'll be doing some physical training. His training partner is... the chimpanzee from before. Presumably only because primates are funny, amirite? George is sentenced to an obstacle course, a game of 3D Chess, and a calculus class alongside Albert, who makes him look like a loser. George continues training at home by running on the treadmill with Astro. No, they don't recreate the iconic "JANE, STOP THIS CRAZY THING!" gag. Instead, Astro loses his footing and is flattened in the speeding mechanism. Odd how this isn't quite as funny when it happens to Astro (maybe because we're more sensitive with dogs getting hurt than human beings?).

George discovers that he is, in fact, a monkey's uncle. Well, an APE'S
uncle, anyway...

In case you're wondering about Judy, things are going well between her and Altair. He uses some sort of mind-merge power to take Judy to his home planet. This scene is pretty much pointless, so let's cut back to George and Jane. The anniversary of the day George proposed is tomorrow. This doesn't stop Marsha from setting Jane up on what is for all intents and purposes a date with her boss. So much infidelity in this screenplay, isn't there? I'm reminded of the Flintstones movie having that subplot about Halle Berry seducing Fred. What is it with film adaptations based on Hanna-Barbera films and infidelity?

More training! George is now doing much better, we get more "LOL primates are funny" stuff with Albert, Knuckles unknowingly makes George's body freak out with the remote, and then George "re-enacts the St. Vitus routine" (whatever that means) in the research lab. Dr. Boone tells George that the auto-cranial command system was originally designed by Cogswell Cogs for use in remote-controlled computer satellite - he knows this because he worked on it before he joined Spacely's Sprockets. "When the F202 started going over budget, well, we cut a few corners," he explains. "We copied the satellite circuitry, miniaturized it, and put it in your head." George asks if this means Cogswell is remote controlling him, then says that they have to tell Spacely about it. "It's not that easy, George," Dr. Boone says. "Look - next to beating Cogswell at golf, the potentializer is Spacely's one great dream. He's got everything tied up in it - he's second-mortgaged his house, hocked his life insurance, his kid's college tuition, even his wife's jewelry! The thing is - that in spite of all his bluster, Spacely's actually a decent human being. And if he knew you were in real danger he'd call it off. Naturally, the experiment fails, everybody's out of a job and they all hate you. On the other hand, if you could stick with it, get to the bottom of this, let the experiment succeed, well - need I say more?"

The technicians strap George under a device "which resembles a beauty shop hair-dryer on acid". Spacely dubs this device a teaching machine from Hieronymus 12, and once it's activated it makes George for all intents and purposes a walking encyclopedia. When George gets home, he discovers that Judy invited Altair over for dinner, and thanks to his now being a walking encyclopedia he winds up... rambling definitions of random things and embarrassing Altair by bringing up the reason why his species can change color like a chameleon.

After Altair leaves, Judy and Jane chew out George for... what exactly is George doing wrong here? I'm not sure. Well, anyway, Jane forgives him for a second but then Spacely calls him up and tells them that they're going golfing on Saturday with Cogswell and Senator Zachary. This makes Jane MAD! Again!

George's new smarts might be ticking off his wife, but it makes him a great golf player. Alas, Knuckles is there, and he starts to figure out that something fishy is going on with George. After the game, we cut to Elroy, who's depressed... presumably also because George is acting weirdly... and that leads to him getting involved with Butch and his pals' attempt to get their hands on Playboy "girlie-o-grams". It's just as disturbing as it sounds. Long story short, Elroy and Butch wind up getting arrested. Yeesh, this script took a dark turn all of a sudden...

That night, the Jetsons attend Judy's high school play. Marsha and Darrow are there, too, for some reason, and Marsha tells Jane about what she saw in Las Venus... uh oh. And Knuckles has snuck in as well. Double uh oh. Unsurprisingly, he starts controlling George with the remote, resulting in George jolting to his feet, back-handspringing into the orchestra pit, knocking away ushers, climbing onto the stage, and dancing like Gorbachov (the script's words, not mine). Then George is subjected to some sort of Rube Goldberg shenanigan that leads to a laser beam hitting his forehead in the exact spot where the potentializer was implanted. Judy and Jane are humiliated. Fortunately, Elroy saw Knuckles and the remote device in his pocket, puts two and two together, and is promptly threatened by Knuckles, only for Astro to show up and scare Knuckles off.

George is taken away by the paramedics. Nobody listens to Elroy when he claims that it's the fault of that "neanderthal in the lobby". Judy disowns George and leaves with Altair. Marsha and Darrow lead Jane and Elroy away from George, Elroy desperately telling George that it's not his fault. Back at Cogswell's office, Knuckles tells him what happened and Cogswell decides that they must make certain he goes through with Expotech. "Perhaps there are other ways to long distance remote a fellow..." he says.

Cogswell gets a wonderful, awful idea.

Inside Darrow's car, he and Marsha are telling Jane that she should divorce George. Jane divorce George? Why, that'd be like Minnie leaving Mickey! As soon as they hit a red light, Elroy jumps out of the car and flies off with his anti-gravity belt. This leads to Jane snapping and guessing that Darrow and Marsha are just jealous of her marriage and demands that they get her to a phone so she can save it. Meanwhile, George is in a bar, telling an offscreen voice his tales of woe. The offscreen voice is revealed to be Astro, who - now that he knows about the potentializer - helps fill him in as to what, exactly, Cogswell wants out of Senator Zachary. "Don't you read the paper I bring to you every morning?" he asks. "What he wants are those galactic exploration contracts - there's an article practically every day. Zachary is the head of the Senate committee that decides who gets them. That's why he's buddying up to him, playing golf and all that." And if Cogswell can remote control Zachary like he did to George, then Zachary gives Cogswell the contracts and Cogswell gets richer. George was just a guinea pig to them to fine tune the device on. He urges George to patch things up with Jane (and not to be afraid to beg. "Believe me, you get used to it.").

Do you think they would've stuck with Don Messick as Astro or tossed the role over to a celebrity who was popular in the 1980s? I'm curious...

Elroy returns home to find Rosey with her feet where her head should be and vice-versa - and Knuckles, who promptly kidnaps him. No, don't hurt Elroy! He's the cutest Jetson! After giving Jane his demands, she calls up George to tell him about it. "He said you have to go on with your program at Expotech or else," she says. Will Elroy be saved? Before we can find out, we cut to the Research Lab, where we discover that the chimpanzee got jealous of George's progress and tried the teaching machine on his own, but he turned it up too high and the laser conductor coil exploded. Now Spacely, Dr. Boone, and the physical trainer have a chimp's corpse on their hands. They put the corpse under a scanning machine that tells them it is now ninety-seven percent crystal... the more he used the powers, the more the crystal replicated itself throughout his system, with the laser acting as a catalyst. Say, wasn't George zapped with a laser earlier? It would seem that Mr. Ferrari dodged a massive bullet...

George makes like a kangaroo to Cogswell Cogs... say, this is ANOTHER thing the script has in common with the Flintstones movie, doesn't it? The kid gets kidnapped by the villain and held hostage? Did the writers of that movie read this script and take inspiration? Well, anyway, Elroy is imprisoned in a force field, with Knuckles guarding him. George bursts in... only for Knuckles to put him in the force field as well. "We know Cogswell's going to implant the stolen potentializer in Senator Zachary, then remote him into awarding him the galactic exploration contracts," George declares. "You're supposed to keep us under wraps till the operation's on the ice - but there's a problem... we'll always be a threat to blow the whistle. You've got no choice - you've gotta kill us." But then he gets Knuckles to explain HOW they're going to implant the potentializer in Zachary, and once Knuckles tells him that they're going to get Zachary drunk and then shipped off to the zero gravity hospital while he's too drunk to realize what's going on, George bursts through the force field and pulls Knuckles into it, allowing him and Elroy to make a run for it.

At the spaceport, Judy and Altair are in the check-in line for a flight to Korrinian 3. But then Judy realizes that Altair doesn't have a sense of humor - apparently, once his species eliminated pain and suffering, they saw that laughter served no purpose. She decides that she doesn't want to live without emotions because then her life will be boring and leaves. She arrives home just as George, Jane, Elroy, and Astro are putting Rosey back together.

The next day is Expotech, described as having "a state fair atmosphere". A sign at the Spacely Sprockets booth reads "Meet George Jetson: Today - 3:00 - In Performance Hall". Everyone is showing off non-futuristic things like a classic nylon string guitar, seeds, and pulling taffy by hand. When it's 3:00, Senator Zachary makes a keynote speech since he's the honorary chairman of Expotech. Backstage, Jane tells Spacely about what's going on. Spacely suggests that they get George to a hospital so they can reverse the process and get the gizmo out before he turns into a healing crystal, but Jane insists: "Don't you get it? You started with a dream of making the world a better place. That dream can still come true - but only by letting the world see just how wrong this all was to begin with. If George doesn't go on, if we don't go ahead with this plan... then you truly will lose everything." Then she goes onstage to tell Zachary the plan.

Jane, this could be your future. Are you okay with that?

Spacely and George begin their presentation. "You've all read the press releases. You know that until a few weeks ago I was an ordinary guy," George, hidden in the shadows, tells the crowd. "And then, I was implanted with a device to make me a perfect human being." While George is talking, Cogswell slips something into Zachary's drink. But Judy, disguised as a robot waitress, spills champagne on Cogswell, distracting him so that Zachary can swap the drugged drink with a fresh one from her tray. "We all have faults. We have imperfections. We are irrational," George continues. "But it's our ability to rise above these flaws, to accept ourselves, and care about one another that makes us human beings. And perfectly imperfect. Unlike me."

The lights turn up and we see that George has basically turned into a robot: he has crystal shapes in place of pupils, brittle fiberglass for hair, skin the texture of shale, and his features chiseled and mechanical-looking. The crowd gasps. Are you sure getting the potentializer taken out wasn't the better idea, Jane? Suddenly, Zachary keels over. Secret Service and ushers rush over and put Zachary on a gurney. A doctor shows up. Cogswell says that Zachary has "angio endothelioma"... at which point Zachary gets up and the doctor is revealed to be Dr. Boone, who asks Cogswell how he knew that unless that's what he wanted it to look like. Realizing that he's been PUNKED, Cogswell makes a run for it. Spacely says that they have to get George to a hospital, but George wants to stop Cogswell and gives chase. Elroy rides Astro after his father.

They all wind up on the roof. Cogswell jumps into his craft and tries to fly off, but George grabs a landing gear strut. Elroy identifies Cogswell's craft as a Lear, which he built a model of earlier, and figures out that "it's a GB451 with an anti-gravity thrust of 100 G's per second, an alternate conductive hyper-drive - and - yes! - an exterior twin can overhead automatic reverse!" Using what he learned from spaceball practice, he throws an apple at the craft's reverse button. Down onto the roof it falls.

While Cogswell is being arrested, George is put onto a gurney and Dr. Boone says that there isn't any more of his humanity left. Jane insists that George is in there somewhere and puts the kaleidoscope to George's eye. It works - George sees the pretty colors and changes back to normal.

Huzzah!

George is rewarded with a Congressional Medal from Senator Zachary. Spacely gets the contract that Cogswell wanted. Elroy gets a lot better at spaceball. And Astro tells us that he now knows the universe DID exist before he got there. "It's not a question of seeing something yourself, but of believing in something that you can't see," he says. "Well, do you believe? What the heck, sure you do."

So, what did I think of this hypothetical Jetsons movie? Well, as a whole, it's not a bad effort but it tries to do a bit too much. There's a lot of stuff that could easily have been cut - Elroy getting involved with shoplifting, Jane having to put up with her boss' romantic advancements, whatever conflicts George and Jane have in the middle... even Astro being the narrator has potential, but he isn't given much to do aside from the scene in the bar. And I think we're all very lucky to be spared the image of George turned into some sort of crystal robot. Imagine how nightmarish THAT would've been.

Still, as far as live action adaptations of a cartoon go, this script wasn't too bad. I give it two and a half Spacely's Sprockets out of five. In Part 2, we look at Chris Thompson's 1987 script.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Pig City"

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.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the show I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

Why have most of the cartoons I've reviewed in January been about farm animals? Ponies, sheep, and now pigs. And on top of that, they all take place in the city. Very peculiar...

Pig City was created by Andy Knight, also the creator of a show I've previously reviewed twice on my blog, Ned's Newt. It was co-produced by CineGroupe, AnimaKids, and Red Rover Studios and aired on Teletoon in Canada, ProSieben in Germany, and Fox Kids internationally - believe it or not, however, it never aired in the United States. Apparently, it was originally going to be called The Three Pigs. Maybe they thought that title was too on-the-nose.

The show is about a pig from the country named Mikey Hoggins (voiced by Thor Bishopric), whose parents send him to live with his cousins Martha (voiced by Emma Campbell) and Reggie DeBoar (voiced by Philip LeMaistre). After its premiere in April 2002, thirty-nine episodes were produced, making for a total of three seasons. Pig City's only home video release says that it's "more than 60 minutes of pure pleasure in the company of the most sophisticated and funniest pigs in the world", "a series that manages to be witty, worldly and warm at the same time", and "hilarious, original, and sophisticated".

Is it indeed all of those things? Well, you can find episodes of the show on the Internet Archive, so why don't we find out? We'll be watching the ninth episode, "Raising a Stink". This is Pig City!

The episode starts off with Martha having just returned from the mall. Mikey shows up with a phone in his trotter, telling her that the credit card company wants to speak with her. Martha initially assumes that they want to congratulate her for all the shopping that she's done, because credit card companies do that a lot. She is wrong - they tell her that she's overcharged her card. Teenage girls in cartoons... always going hog-wild at the mall. Get it? HOG-wild? This is the first of what will likely be MANY pig puns in this review...

With those long ears, Mikey and Martha kind of look more like aardvarks than pigs.

Martha calls up her parents to see if they can clear things up. Wouldn't you know it, they can't - in fact, they're a little concerned about her "money sense". Two pigs in business suits have checked their records, and a chart shows that Martha goes through more money than Mikey and Reggie combined.

Say, do you think these pigs keep their money in human banks? Y'know, 'cause we keep our money in PIGGY banks? Please laugh. I'm trying so hard...

Notice that the girl pig appears to have lips, unlike every other pig we've seen so far.
It doesn't look like she's wearing lipstick, though... you know what they say about putting
lipstick on a pig.

Mikey brings up that he was raised out in the country, where people... or pigs, it would seem... know the value of money, because they WORK FOR IT. Martha is all "WORK?! Oh, horror of horrors!", but her parents seem to be on board with the idea of Martha learning the value of money by going to work. "I think it's time you got a job," her father says, much to her dismay.

I guess you could say that Martha will be bringing home the bacon. Ba-dum-ksssh. Actually, that would be cannibalism, wouldn't it?

"Footballs are made of WHAT now?!"

After Mikey and Reggie crack jokes about how Martha will probably wind up cooking fries at a fast food joint, Martha reveals that she's already gotten a job at Pi-Gee, the most pretentious perfume store in the mall. She's going to be their Point of Purchase Marketing Coordinator of In-Store Merchandise. Once she leaves, Reggie suggests that Martha is a lying liar from Liarsburg. "Only one way to find out," Mikey says, narrowing his eyes.

I still think Mikey looks more like an aardvark.

Actually, Martha is telling the truth - her job is to set up the merchandise on the shelves, and she alphabetized the displays by country of origin and placed them according to their land mass from least to most. She's also allowed to mock the customers.

I wonder what kind of scents they have there... "Eau De Mud Puddle", perhaps?

After her boss, the ever-so-creatively-named Mr. Swine, heads out to have lunch, Mikey and Reggie show up and through their stupidity wind up destroying a display. They help her fix it, but when Mr. Swine returns, he's horrified to see that a red bottle is in the blue bottle area. You have to keep them separated or else I imagine THIS happens...

I know he was referring to PERFUME bottles, but this is what I imagined...

"This is what I get for leaving an amateur in charge!" Mr. Swine declares. "You're FIRED! AWAY with you! LEAVE this place! Martha, DESTROYER of Perfume!" As she glumly leaves, Mikey tells Reggie that they have to get Martha her job back. Reggie's idea for how to do that: go to a music store and buy a Pig Floyd album. Metal has all the answers, you see.

"Pig Floyd"? They couldn't think of anything funnier than THAT? I mean, it's
at least slightly funnier than the pig puns I'VE been making in this review, but still...

"If we could find something that a perfume store would want," Mikey suggests, "We could deal for Martha's job." What they need is a Nose. Not the kind on one's face, which they already have two of, but a guy who makes perfume. And they know a pig named E. Brian (Michael Yarmush) who has a big nose...

...his nose doesn't look any bigger than Mikey or Reggie's does to me, but okay, let's see where they're going with this. E. Brian whips up a perfume recipe that is so potent it turns whoever wears it into a girl magnet. Mikey and Reggie then find Martha in the food court and drag her back to Pi-Gee's, where they give Mr. Swine the powerful piggy perfume. When Reggie tries some, they discover that it smells like taco chips, sour cream, and a football locker room. Apparently those are scents that drive girl pigs crazy - or boy pigs, it would seem, as there are several in the doorway sniffing the air.

"I WANT it! Who is the Nose! I must speak to the Nose!" Mr. Swine pleads. Mikey claims that HE is the Nose, and that they'll give him the perfume if he gives Martha her job back. Mr. Swine agrees... just before Reggie suddenly gains hives. Fortunately, all they have to do to get rid of the hives is douse Reggie with water. And his hair looks healthier and shinier than before, too. Very strange...

After that, Mikey and Reggie walk by the movie theater, where The Hogfather is playing. That's actually a pretty good pun... which is promptly followed by "Joe Piggy" and "Robert De Porco". Oy. Ignoring how bad those puns are, Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro weren't even in The Godfather (they WERE in The Godfather Part II, though). What, could they just not think of good pig puns for the names of people who actually WERE in the first Godfather? Al Porcino and... actually, I can't think of anything other than that either.

"Y'know, the third one of these films sucked."

Mikey gets another idea - Joe Piggy and Robert De Porco are scheduled to sign autographs at the mall. If only they could get them to go to Pi-Gee and ask Mr. Swine to give Martha her job back, but chances are they'll be too busy to do Mikey and Reggie that favor. So what do they do?

Okay, I get that they're supposed to be disguised as Joe Piggy and Robert De Porco, but they don't look like Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro at all. But it's enough to fool Mr. Swine, particularly when Mikey says, "Are you servin' ME? Are you... SERVIN' me? I don't see anyone else around, so you must be servin' ME." That's not even from The Godfather, it's from Taxi Driver, but whatever, if you parody Robert DeNiro in anything you HAVE to do the "you talkin' to me" shtick. Because that's what we all think of when we think of Robert De Niro. Kind of like how all Al Pacino parodies have to go "Say hello to my little [SOMETHING]!" at some point.

"I heard dat Martha DeBoar works here. And truth to dat rumor?!" Reggie barks. "Cause we'd sure like to buy some of dis expensive toilet water here!" When Mr. Swine says that Martha does NOT work there, Mikey demands, "Are you callin' my friend a liar? 'Cuz, he HEARD things... and I gotta be honest... I heard things." So the moral of today's story is: if a relative of yours gets fired, impersonate a celebrity and threaten their boss so they'll get their job back!

But guess who walks into the store? If you guessed "Robert De Porco and Joe Piggy", you're right! Mikey and Reggie's plan has been foiled. Oh, and Robert De Porco ALSO does the "Are you servin' ME?" thing.

"Listen to me very carefully. There are three ways of doing things around here: the right
way, the wrong way, and the way I do it."

(Also, the guy who did his voice sounds nothing like Robert De Niro)

When Mikey and Reggie get home, Martha is waiting there to chew them out. Mikey assures her that they have another plan to get her job back. Martha says that they'd better or else she will remove their ability to eat solid foods. And until then, they are on her "list", and you do not want to be on her "list". "I'm on so many lists, you'd think I lived in a grocery store," Reggie pipes up.

Mikey's new plan: they took a bunch of comment cards from Pi-Gee and they're going to write nice things about Martha on them, so that when Mr. Swine reads them, he'll give Martha her job back. Oh, and ever since Reggie has been sprayed with the perfume, he's been acting strangely feminine. When Mikey calls up E. Brian to ask about it, he says that he must have put too much estrogen in the formula, so it's now a feminizing spray.

The next day, not only is Reggie upset that Mikey didn't notice his new Van Wailin' t-shirt, but as they're putting the comment cards in the box, Mikey gets perfume in his eye again and winds up making a mess. Mr. Swine shows up and catches them red-handed... er, red-trottered. He's all "I'm not hiring Martha back!", to which Mikey declares that it's time to "kick it up a notch". I was going to make a reference to Emeril Lagasse, but then the show did it for me - specifically, they have Reggie say, "Bam!".

So, what do you think the name of the Emeril parody in this show is? "HAMril Lagasse",
perhaps?

Mikey and Reggie start boycotting Pi-Gee's and singing a protest song. Soon all the pigs in the mall are hyped up and boycotting the store too. "Perfume sucks!" one member of the crowd shouts... not sure how they got away with that in a kids' show.

"I can't ignore an angry mob parked outside my store!" Mr. Swine laments. "This pig knows when his bacon is cooked." He agrees to give Martha her job back, to which Martha says that she doesn't want her job back. Apparently her father solved her problem with the credit card companies, making all of Mikey and Reggie's efforts a colossal waste of time. Also, E. Brian shows up and sprays Reggie with an antidote so he'll stop being so feminine. The end.

What's the Verdict?

Pig City is another cartoon I'm putting in the "okay" category. There's nothing remarkable about it, but it's not awful. Not much is done with the whole "they're pigs" part of the premise, most of the pig puns weren't funny, and the characters aren't interesting at all. Ned's Newt is probably worse, but at least its bizarreness and obnoxious talking newt gave me stuff to talk about. This is just... something that existed. Unless you really like pigs, I wouldn't recommend giving it a watch. Still, there are far worse cartoons out there.

Frankly, I'm shocked that I made it through the entire review without making any jokes about Miss Piggy or Porky Pig. I was fully expecting to make at least ONE. I didn't even make any references to the other cartoon show about pigs I reviewed, Piggsburg Pigs!. Weird, huh?