Pretty Fun Slasher Movie about Our Favourite Puppet Characters from the 60's being Damaged Killer Robots .
Not Bad Special Effects or Basic Story Line , Sadly some Really Terrible Acting makes it seem Much Worse than it actually is .
Entertaining enough for a few watches.
Good to see they got the Splits looking Bang On Perfect . Would have been Unforgivable had they got them looking Wrong .
Updating children’s favourites The Banana Splits from their late 1960s television show, into rampaging robotic killers, could have gone either way. As it is, I had a great 86 minutes with this, although the omission of the ‘Banana Vac’ character from the original (a truly creepy moose-head that hangs over the doorway with light-bulbs either side of his head) is a missed opportunity. He was the most frightening one of all!
The idea of making Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky into robots is a development I was in two minds about. Seeing them move in stilted ‘robotic’ ways looks awkward and unconvincing (I can’t believe I’m reprimanding a Banana Split for being unconvincing – and that’s the beauty of this; it’s almost critique-proof, so bizarre is the premise), but seeing them in half shadow, with half their faces ripped off, revealing a bright red robotic eye is the stuff true childhood nightmares are made of.
The balance is rather good. Lines like, “Tear those fuzzy b******s apart,” and “We’re about to go on-air, and I’m a Split short,” are laugh-out-loud funny, and some of the adult human characters are exaggerated to ridiculous lengths so their flaws and stupidity is more cartoon-like than the Splits themselves, but – and this surely can’t be a spoiler – kills occur, and when they do, they are played straight and treated seriously. And gruesomely. But because the characters are so extreme (some less pleasantly than others), you don’t feel too guilty about cheering when they are dispatched. The juveniles are appealing, which doesn’t always happen. Some of the grown-ups are intentionally irritating – but not for long.
The pacing sometimes flags, but when the characters are on screen – especially when they are committing atrocities in front of a live studio audience of screaming children – it’s difficult to look away. Great fun. 8 out of 10.