THE REAL ADVENTURES OF JONNY QUEST (SEASON 1, VOL. 1)

If you think the Hardy Boys? father was negligent enough as a parent to warrant intervention by social services, then wait till you meet Dr. Benton C. Quest who takes his 11-year-old son Jonny along with him on all kinds of dangerous whirlwind adventures across the globe . . .

OK, that was in the original 1964 TV show. In this mid-1990s revamp of the ?classic? (i.e. old) Hanna-Barbera cartoon Jonny is now a teenager, but still under-aged. But the all-boys adventuring still continues as Jonny and his pals gallivant all over the world fighting anyone from religious apocalyptarians to treasure robbers who pretend to be the ghosts of long-dead pirates to frighten away bona fide treasure hunters - something which they no doubt saw in an old Scooby-Doo (also Hanna-Barbera) TV episode once!

Despite the Hanna-Barbera tag The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest isn't that bad. Hanna-Barbera toons represent a real nadir for the art form of animation, but these toons aren't any worse ? or any better for that matter ? than most other Saturday morning cartoons of the era. Backgrounds are detailed, but there is still something off-putting about the minimalist character designs. Plotting verges on the nonsensical at times, but hey, an entire adventure has to be fit into less than a half an hour!

THE DISCS: Thirteen episodes from the show are spread over two discs. (The rest of the season will be made available in an upcoming volume.) Only special feature is a short featurette titled Jonny Quest Returns: Modernizing a Classic for a New Generation of Fans in which the team involved with the revamp explains their creative decisions for the show. Image and sound quality is pretty decent, but do not use the Next button on your remote to skip over the rather long opening credit sequence because you'll skip over a bit of the action in the process. Hard to believe that DVD designers still make this sort of annoying mistake after all these years . . .

WORTH IT? Nostalgic baby boomers of a certain age are well-advised to stay clear of this new revamp. Not only is the main character a lot older now, but the show has been updated to make it more palatable to today's "hipper" kids - or make that kids from the 1990s. A lot of new technology particularly in the guise of some clunky CG for virtual reality sequences is also thrown into the mix.

RECOMMENDATION: Short-term nostalgic twentysomethingers who saw the show as kids and refuse to grow up may want to check it out. So would actual eight-year-old boys, the show's intended demographic. Parents will probably find that they have something better to do, even if it is washing the dishes.