With the hype surrounding Peter Jackson's King Kong it's only natural that some people would want to hop on the bandwagon. This past September an animated series started airing with hopes to bring the nature of Kong to a much younger target audience. The only thing is this isn't the King Kong you and I know about, because, well, he's dead and all.

When King Kong fell from the Empire State Building, Dr. Lorna Jenkins made a clone of him using some DNA from her grandson, Jason. He's still as big and tough as ever though now he also looks like a big fluffy Smurf. For some reason the folks behind the show decided to make him blue, but that's not all. Because Jason's DNA was used in the reconstruction (or is it re-kong-struction?) of the ape the two are linked in a fashion that allows them to merge cybernetically. Oh and did I mention that Jason and Kong are brothers? Loyal King Kong fans raise your hands if you're upset.

Apart from the show that is being broadcast, a straight to video animated feature was put together around this premise and brought Kong back into his kingly duties. You see, there is an eclipse that signals the end of the world and only the big kahuna can stop it. It would seem that Atlantis will rise again and since Kong is the rightful king, it's only natural that the Atlantians track him down. Of course, this is a different and much younger, immature Kong who doesn't know a thing about the past of his counterpart. Needless to say there's a lot of doom and gloom about the end of the world and such.

The story behind Kong: King of Atlantis is pretty bad and not very well thought out or executed. Granted I have only caught a couple of episodes of the show in passing, but even so I had absolutely no clue what was going on here most of the time. The characters are not likable at all. Jason is a whiny leader, Lau is a scantily clad shaman with no personality, Kong's voice sounds like someone saying "roar", and Tan walks around talking like a fat Ninja Turtle. What's worse is that the villains are laughable in their own right. I mean a snake queen named Reptilla? Come on people, get some originality!

To make matters worse. In addition to some poor story telling, concepts and characters, the folks behind this project thought it would be a good idea to include cheesy musical numbers. I found myself in fits of laughter when Lau and Jason broke out into song trying to help Kong make up his mind. Unfortunately that's not the only time this happens and it really comes off like a poorly managed and low-budget Disney film of old. The only thing is the music here is so bad it's borderline headache inducing and in some extreme circumstances could potentially make your ears bleed.

Accompanying these musical skits is some pretty poor animation as well. Character's mouths do not move in sync with the vocals and overall the production quality for the show is very low. Granted the target audience for the feature (under 10) probably won't care, but there are so many better cartoons on the market that are more entertaining and in many cases, educational. Skip this one unless you know of a child who loves big blue monkeys, dinosaurs, guys that say stuff like "Far out dude" and female characters wearing little more than a loin cloth.

Kong: King of Atlantis is presented with a 1.85:1 widescreen presentation, though it's listed as the standard version on the back of the case. The image is clean, colorful and sharp for the most part, though there are some problems that find their way into the picture. Some aliasing and cross coloration are very present though a lot of it seems to be a product of the crappy animation rather than the digital transfer.

Skipping any surround sound treatment, the disc only offers English, French and Spanish 2.0 stereo tracks. The quality of the audio is passable for what it is; it's just the material that fails miserably. The voice acting, music and sound effects are so bad that you'll want to turn your volume down instead of up. As it stands though, it's a fairly unimpressive showing for an equally unimpressive show. There are optional subtitles available as well for English, French and Spanish.

Apart from the bonus of plugging your ears when the musical numbers start there's nothing else here in the way of supplementary features. Even the menus are pretty poor with no animation or flare. This is about as barebones as it gets kiddies.

Kong: King of Atlantis is just about as flagrant as raping a classic character can get. Bringing King Kong back from the dead and to the screen in animated form is an insult by itself, let alone the fact that he's the cloned monkey brother of a cybernetically merging hip teenager with a "cool" haircut. The laughably plot, terrible characters and overall disrespectful concept are embarrassing enough, but to top it all off they added horrible musical numbers to this bunk. I highly recommend that you skip it unless you have the misfortune of having a child who enjoys the show. Even then I'd only weakly suggest a rental.

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