Like The Phantom 2040, when Hearst Entertainment decided to animate the popular comic strip Flash Gordon, they had to update it.  They had to make it hip and cool for the new generation.  But instead of enhancing the classic story, Hearst just managed to suck all of the fun and excitement from this great character.
 
Sometime in the not too distant future, teenager Alex Gordon spends all of his time either at the arcade or riding his skateboard.  But when a mysterious black hole appears in space threatening the Earth, Gordon and Dale Arden, both children of high ranking astronauts are flown to safety.  Unfortunately the pilot of the ship is knocked out, and the two teenagers have to fly the plane, and manage to crash land it near the secret lab of Dr. Zarkov.  Thinking that these teens are carrying an important piece of equipment (though never bothering to ask them about it) Zarkov takes them onto his rocket ship as he launches it into the black hole.

The black hole turns out to be a wormhole to another part of the galaxy, which was opened up by the alien Ming the Merciless, from the planet Mongo.  Ming has conquered all of the planets in his area of space, and has now set his sights on Earth.

When Gordon, who Dale nicknames "Flash" because he uses the word frequently in casual conversation, finds out about Ming's scheme, he closed the black hole.  This saves the Earth, but traps the three heros light years away from Earth.  Since they can't return home, they decide to revive the resistance and fight Ming.

This is a really lame show.  It isn't really bad, it just doesn't have anything to recommend it and a lot that's wrong with the show.  They have change the original characters so much that they are now bland and almost undistinguishable from one another.  Flash always has a snappy line of dialog or two in every battle, but none of them are funny.  Dale and Flash no longer have any sexual tension between them, instead then trade juvinile insults, and Dr. Zarkov is a whiney pain who constantly complains that he wants to go back to Earth.

To avoid alienating the Asian market, the creators turned Ming the Merciless into a giant lizard.  I have nothing against that, but  his daughter, Princess Aura, looks like a green human for reasons that are never explained.  Like the comic strip and serial, Aura play an important role.  But in those stories she Aura helped Flash because she admired his fighting skills and was romantically interested in him.  But in this show, she helps him, deus ex machina style, for no real reason at all.  It just doesn't make sense.

There is a lot that doesn't make sense with this show.  For Flash and Dale flying any alien made spaceship is trivial because they are really good at video games.  Another idiotic plot device is the fact that the main method of transportation on Mongo seems to be flying skateboards.  Luckily the two kids are experts at riding skateboards (you didn't see that coming did you?) and manage to use the boards to escape from every conceivable hazard.  This is a gimmick that was done to death in Back to the Future 2 and 3 and this show doesn't do anything new with the idea.
 
The show doesn't look that good either.  The limited animation gives the characters jerky movements and the animators give them strange poses and gestures.  The action scenes just aren't very exciting or dynamic.

This 75 minute movie feels like it was edited together from some of the TV shows, but they didn't do a good job of it.  It feels like they cut a good bit from some of the stories, making some episodes only last 10 or 15 minutes.  I would have thought that it would be hard to create a dull Flash Gordon cartoon, but these people have.

Audio:

This show has a two channel soundtrack that is adequate.  It's nothing to get excited about, but the audio is clean and there are not any major defects.  I was hoping that the show would have been a little more dynamic, but it sounds good for a cartoon.  There are no subtitles.

Video:

The video quality was also acceptable.  The image was a little soft, but not to a distracting degree, and the colors were fine.  There weren't any digital defects worth noting.  An average looking disc.

Extras:

There are no extras on this disc.

Final Thoughts:

This was a good attempt, but it just didn't work.  In trying to make Flash Gordon more identifiable to a younger audience, they removed a lot of the elements that made the story so interesting.  If you are really interesting in the show, its best to Rent It.