3 / 5 Stars
I decided to rent The Banana Splits Movie from amazon for $2.99. It's barely 90 minutes in length, so if you don't intend to purchase the DVD, then renting is recommended.
It's scheduled to air on the Syfy Channel on October 12, if you are unwilling to rent.
The film was shot in Capetown, South Africa, which gives it a strange sort of familiar-but-foreign visual sense.
The plot isn't overly complicated: little Harley Williams loves The Banana Splits, and is thrilled when his Mom and prick Stepdad Mitch announce that his gift will be attending a taping of the show.
But even as Harley shrieks with delight along with the others in the studio audience, backstage, unfolding developments will jeopardize the lives of everyone in the building.
Because the Splits are not happy..........and when the Splits are not happy, they like to kill people...........
The Banana Splits Movie does some things right. The seedy, rundown studio lot where the show is taped, and the visibly decayed costumes of the Splits, create a suitably creepy 'retro' vibe that tells the audience that the show is a misbegotten leftover from the early 70s.
The script provides plenty of opportunities for satire, as well as a cast of odious characters whose deaths at the hands of the manic Splits will evoke cheers and laughter.
These deaths, by the way, are quite gory - this is not a movie for kids.
Inevitably, given its low budget, the movie starts to drag by its midpoint (all of the action takes place within the same studio in the same day) and I watched it more out of a sense of duty (and to see just how many more people the Splits would gruesomely dispatch) than fervid enjoyment.
Summing up, if you're a Baby Boomer who would appreciate a mocking, postmodern sendup of a long-ago kids' TV show then The Banana Splits Movie may be worth watching. But if you're under 30, then much of the irony and facetiousness likely will come across as underwhelming.
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