These kids get sucked into a video tape, yet end up in television. Television that only has terrible movies and Kool Aid commercials. Bad writing, acting, action and jokes are held together by terrible green screen work. The most amazing thing about this movie is that the girl's hi top Chuck Taylor comes untied and falls off. Something that could never happen in real life. I was shocked that I only recognized one of the old movies, Chopping Mall, which was actually new at the time. Never see this.
Add a Review
-
13Funbags25 June 2019
-
psiko25 July 1999Admittedly I used to like this film.... Kill me. I was 9 though. I just found in my collection of old videos and tried to rekindle that something. Rekindle what? It's cheap and not cheerful. The whole things blows and makes the idea of wallowing in your faeces a good idea. Please don't watch this, for I fear of insanity.
ps.: anyone want to buy a copy? -
cameronbutlerski28 August 2005In movie history we have many different styles of movies. Action, adventure, mystery, suspense, and of course children's films. Sadly, Andy and the Airwave Rangers is neither of these. What genre is Andy and the Airwave Rangers? The genre is known simply as "horrible".
This has to be the worst movie I've ever seen. First of all, the story is about a kid who watches a magic HVS tape and then sets off on an adventure to something called the "colordome" to save someone, or something. Then all hell breaks loose and he's forced to team up with people from different movies and ages, like warriors and princesses and whatnot.
The funny thing about this movie, though, is the weird cinematography and sets. In one scene, we see a high quality set, Andy is hiding out on a starship. The film quality is good and we can see the characters, except for Andy's actual face. It's always darkened by shadows and whatnot. Then when we cut to close-ups of Andy's face, we are in a big, extremely fake looking set with a whole different video quality, with Andy sitting behind one metallic prop, with an orange light in the background to make it seem "starshipp-y". It's almost as if the original Andy didn't want to be in the film, and many close-up scenes were re-shot with another person playing Andy.
Besides that, there's not much to this movie. Don't show it to your children, lest they kill themselves. AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID. -
crazyrtrain18 February 2003Something bothered me about this film, it's all pieced together from other Corman movies. I guess you could call it a new movie... but I wouldn't. Using the "amazing" Blue Screen technology, Corman takes you through a pointless adventure with a Soap Opera budget. This IS the worst movie ever. I usually enjoy bad movies, but this goes far beyond that- NOT at all enjoyable. There's a villain that lives in a magic videotape that is trying to steal every shade of color. He has a castle that looks like spinning umbrella. This is so stupid... believe me. Even a 2 year old should not see this movie, it would be child abuse. I tried to burn the videotape after watching it, but it rejected fire. Save yourself the effort and just rent Battle Beyond the Stars. That way, you'll see all of the "good" footage that was used in this movie.
-
TOMNEL24 January 2013If anyone knows how to cut corners in a film, it's Roger Corman. He reuses musical scores, special effects and establishing shots all in the sake of saving money. If one were to watch a movie of his with reused elements, unless they knew the other film elements being sampled, the recycling wouldn't be noticeable. Here is a movie that blatantly reuses scenes from older Roger Corman produced films, and is very noticeably almost completely made out of older (and sadly better) movies. When making a very low budget film, oftentimes creativity blossoms if not to just figure out how to cut corners and still make something believable. There is no creativity here. This movie is lazy, boring, poorly acted and written, and the special effects look like something you could make in Microsoft paint. Even for a Roger Corman produced film, this is extremely lazy.
Andy Colby, has to babysit his younger sister, Bonnie. Things go wrong when Andy rents a videotape that sucks his sister into the TV, where she is kidnapped by Lord Chroma and taken to his spinning animated Umbrella castle. Andy meanwhile is stuck jumping from movie to movie, and meets "The Glitch" along the way, a giant furry monster thing that hangs out in the TV static, and in turn, has no point to anything that happens. It's up to Andy to eventually find out which channel his sister is stuck in and go save her.
The film starts off fine enough, with Andy being told to go to the video store, and then riding his bike off. The bicycle riding scene and music is clearly inspired by Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. The music is very similar to Danny Elfman's score from a few years back, and even the title of the film sounds like it was formulated to somehow capitalize on the completely unrelated Pee-Wee. The opening ten minutes is the best part of the film, in that it's the only part that feels like a real movie. It's poorly written and acted, but at least it feels like a movie.
Once Andy gets stuck in the TV, everything goes horribly wrong. A good 60% of the material here is old footage from movies, with nothing new in it. Occasional reaction shots of Andy on an obvious green screen are thrown in every minute or so, so we don't forget what it is we're watching. The scenes from the movies aren't bad, per se, but the fact that so much of the movie is just aimless scenes from movies makes this movie utterly pointless. Andy gets put in the TV, then the film meanders for 50 minutes before Andy heads to fight Lord Chroma and get back his sister.
The only thing worse than the old footage here are the special effects. I can't think of less convincing effects in any movie. Instead of using practical sets for the villain's lair, they create a wonderland of poorly rendered 2-D computer graphics on top of green screens. Using a four-year old's finger painting as a set would look more believable and visually appealing. Shooting in the director's basement would have looked less cheap and more interesting than the green screen that we get.
It's actually very strange how this movie devolves as it goes. It starts off looking like a real movie, then slowly turns into awful made for video schlock, and then the amateur looking end credits roll, which look like something made by a high school student. It's a movie that tries to trick the viewer. All the effort is put in the first few minutes, as a way to trick the viewer into thinking this is just another mediocre kiddie picture before showing it's true awful face. At least James Horner's recycled score here might lull you into a numb state before being shaken back into the reality that you are wasting your precious, precious time.
My rating: BOMB out of ****. 75 mins. PG for recycled violence from older films. -
hyfen829 December 1999My son LOVES this film. I've also given it to nephews and the children of friends. It's geared to kids in the age range of 4-8 and not adults - although I thought it was cute the first time I watched. However, my son watches it over and over and knows all the words by heart so it's great for hours of video "babysitting." The idea of going inside his TV and having an adventure particularly seems to appeal to him. There's also a nice moral at the end about little brothers and sisters.
-
Movie Nuttball7 February 2005Andy Colby's Incredible Adventure or Andy and the Airwave Rangers is a very unusual film. The acting by all of the actors is very good especially by Bo Svenson and Chuck Kovacic. The action and stuff is good. The movie is filmed very good but yet very unusual.The music is good. The film is very interesting and it is exciting. This is a good and different film. In My opinion I UI think that this film doesn't deserve the bad comments and the low rating. Why? This is a very unique 80s film and I think of this film as a rare gem of the era and not a bad flick at all. If you like Bo Svenson and the rest of the cast in the film, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and interesting films from the 1980s then I recommend this one!
-
lor_5 May 2023My review was written in January 1990 after watching the movie on RCA/Columbia video cassette.
Title is an unfortunate excuse to recycle stock footage from earlier Roger Corman films, using inadequate special effects to integrate new characters and scenes.
Randy Josselyn plays the title character, who picks up a dangerous video at his local store to while away the time babysitting for young sister Jessica Puscas.
An evil Lord Chroma (played by Chuck Kovacic) magically kidnaps Sis though the tv set to steal her "color" for his world. Josselyn pursues and through ultimatte effects is integrated into scenes from Corman's 1983 Vince Edwards-starrer "Space Raiders" (which itself was a recycling of stock footage from "Battle Beyond the Stars").
Bo Svenson makes a pointless guest appearance as Kor the Conqueror. Other characters are a waste of time and include a furry Glitch (Don Sparks who leads Josselyn through an unattractive landscape of static. Stretched-out end credits attempt to pad the program to feature length.