Gen¹³

With a little polishing, this could have been a really good film.

At first glance, Gen 13 seems to have all the right ingredients: Quality voice talent from Alicia Witt (Twin Peaks), John de Lancie (Q from "Star Trek: Next Generation"), Mark Hamill (duh!) and even Cloris Leachman. It also has a good plot, taken almost verbatim from the pages of Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell's "Gen 13" comic book mini-series.

Kevin Altieri's past experience with the "Batman" animated series is obvious, mostly keeping the story moving at a good clip.

But this movie views as though the money behind it suddenly lost interest during the final stages. Although there are several good lines, "We're like... the 'Justice League,' man", the voices are not well mixed and, at times, need additional coaching. Background noises mix in and out at random. The "Grunge" character is poorly scripted as the well-meaning dope and Flea fails to give him any personality.

The music weighs everything down. It sounds more like the soundtrack for a Saturday morning cartoon than an 82-minute feature film.

Despite all that, the visuals are really pretty good. Fairchild is still the busty titan and Freefall the good-hearted bad girl. And they are still fun to look at.

Like I said, it seems unfinished.

Gen 13 is not a perfect movie, it feels a lot more like setup for a television series than a movie, but with that said there is enough here to justify a viewing,including some terrific animation directed by Batman: TAS and Mask of the Phantasm director Kevin Altieri. Unfortunately the movie was never officially released in the U.S. due to Jim Lee selling his Wildstorm imprint to Time Warner's DC while the movie was in production. Once Disney found out about the sale the film was shelved out of a desire not to promote a film with commercial ties to a competing company and has only popped up on a handful of PAL releases and broadcasts on foreign television. Even if this movie isn't perfect, it still deserves to be available and hopefully one day one of independent distributors like Shout! or Kino will be able to give this film the home media release it deserves.

This movie does stay very close to the comics. There is one major change involving Fairchild, but under the circumstances it's an understandable one. It's really great when you're watching the movie and thinking, "I remember this scene from the comics!"

The voices are mostly pretty good. Mark Hamil is awesome as Threshold! My only complaints are that Flea makes Grunge sound way to dumb and Bobby only gets a cameo. Oh well, at least Rainmaker got a few lines...

A DC superhero animated movie - made by Disney! Gen¹³ was a comic created by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi in the early 1990s through their WildStorm company - at that time part of Image Comics. Disney expressed interest in developing a Gen¹³ film; however, whilst the film was in production, Lee began talks to sell WildStorm to DC Comics, a Time Warner company. By the time the film was finished, Lee's sale of WildStorm to DC had been completed, meaning that Disney now had a movie based on a property indirectly owned by another studio. As a result Disney shelved it, and it was never released in the US. It was however released on video in Europe and Australia.

It's basically an X-Men kinda tale, with a group of teens who each possess a gene giving potential for superhuman abilities, being guided by an older mentor, to help secure the future of mankind. But (of course) there are those who want to control the youngsters for their own selfish reasons. Voice talent includes Alicia Witt, John de Lancie, Elizabeth Daily, Mark Hamill, Cloris Leachman, and Flea (yes, he of the Red Hot Chili Peppers!), all of whom do a nice job. Animation has a nostalgic 'Saturday morning TV' feel (incidentally, the logo at the beginning of the film is a green-tinted version of the old DC 'Bullet' - nice to see it again). This easily had potential for at least one sequel, although for obvious reasons it never happened. 7.5/10.

This Gen-13 movie is less a feature length movie, and more a hour long cartoon special that would have introduced a Gen-13 cartoon series. However, the language and gore suggests that this series might have aired on HBO or Cinemax. It seems logical. This movie was made at the height of South Park's fame, and other cable channels were scrambling to try and find their own crude kids show.

Gen-13 is only for fans of the defunct comic book. My complaints about this film are the same as past reviews. Grunge's dialog makes Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure sound like Shakespeare. And at times the sound quality dips to below average. However, this movie is only available on bootlegs, so don't expect great quality.

Also, many video outlets push the fact that the uncut version of this film features nude scenes of Catlin. Needless to say, I have seen this movie, and the "nude" scenes are a disappointment. The first scene of nudity is with Catlin and Roxy in the shower. Perhaps the version I saw was not really uncut, because the screen was so covered with white (I guess it was supposed to be steam) you could not see a thing. It would have been a better idea to cut this scene altogether rather than include it in it's white washed condition. The second scene of nudity is when Catlin gets her powers. She grows bigger and taller, and her clothes become ripped. It you are quick with the pause button, you will see the upper parts of Catlin's nipples, which have been turned flesh colored, so they have been censored a little.

The storyline is rather hackneyed, and the animation reminds me a lot of Batman the Animated Series, but it is still good. However, if you are like me, and you only wanted to watch this movie for all the wrong reasons, you will be disappointed.