The Awesomes: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

The Awesomes: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Mill Creek delivers one of its best Blu-ray releases yet for this awesome little Hulu original.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman June 1, 2018

Superheroes are just a wee bit popular these days, no? With great popularity comes great opportunity for creative workflow and profit, so it's no surprise to see everyone and their dog getting in on the act. That's not limited to big budget studio blockbusters or network TV productions, either. The streaming services want a piece of the pie, too, and while Netflix has gone the route of bringing established characters -- Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage -- to life in gritty worlds, Hulu has chosen a different route, producing Seth Meyers and Mike Shoemaker's The Awesomes, an episodic animated comedy parody series about a ragtag group of reject, underwhelming heroes who team together to keep the world safe from...whatever and whomever. Inspired by more popular superhero counterparts and a number of existing animated and situational comedy properties, The Awesomes earned a well-deserved following and ran for three seasons, gleefully building its brand while tearing down familiar genre tropes in adult-oriented comedy goodness. Imperfect through it may be, it's a quick-paced blast of a good time that blends wit and action in every episode.

Wanna know a secret? We're pretty awesome!

After sixty years of leadership, at the age of 90 (though he doesn’t look it!), Mr. Awesome (voiced by Steve Higgins) is retiring, hanging them up from the crimefighting venture. Super villains, aliens, zombies, evil robots…it’s all becoming too much for him to handle. He’s surrendering leadership of The Awesomes to Perfect Man (voiced by Josh Meyers), the perfect man (duh!) for the job…who turns it down with hardly any consideration. Mr. Awesome has all but disowned his son Prock (voiced by Seth Meyers) who dreams of leading the team and, after considering his options by using his superpower -- the ability to freeze time -- he asserts himself to take on the task.

But he is seen as a weak superhero, barely qualifying by most standards and a joke amongst his peers, superhero and non-superhero alike. He convinces his father to allow him to lead the squad, which results in the entire team disbanding in protest. Only his childhood friend Muscleman (voiced by Ike Barinholtz) remains by his side, eager to see him through the challenge of leading the team -- if it can still be called a team -- into the future. And with that, the government severs all funding, the team’s awesome vehicles are whisked away, and The Awesomes’ secretary, Concierge (voiced by Emily Spivey), reports that none of the world’s qualified superheroes have interest in joining the squad. Prock’s only option is to dig into and through the bottom of the barrel and recruit from the collection of reject superheroes who have all been all but forgotten. All of that internal superhero mayhem is, of course, music to the ears of the world’s top imprisoned criminals who seize the opportunity to free themselves of their shackles and take aim at taking over the world.

Prock, Muscleman, and Concierge get down to business and gradually piece together a team. Their recruits include an eclectic bunch of misfits. Frantic (voiced by Taran Killam) is a “crazy” individual with crazy speed who has been trapped in the traveling circus life. Impresario (voiced by Kenan Thompson) is a powerful hero who has “mother issues.” He’s a conjurer in possession of magic space jewel which allows him to manifest large, tangible objects capable of causing great destruction, usually taking the form of his mother. Tim (voiced by Bobby Lee) is a young boy who transforms into a gigantic Sumo wrestler when he grows angry. Gadget Gal (voiced by Paula Pell) is an aged, original member of The Awesomes who suddenly regains her youthful appearance and abilities and wishes to strut her stuff one more time. Last but not least, Hotwire (voiced by Rashida Jones) can manipulate electricity and is as hot as the bolts that course through her. They find themselves facing off against a team of powerful super villains, led by the nefarious Dr. Giuseppe Malocchio (voiced by Bill Hader).

Does The Awesomes live up to its name? More or less. The show is quick witted and sure of itself. It doesn't push many boundaries, at least not pushing out to the fringes where the bounds have been shoved over the past few decades, but it does venture into that adult-oriented cartoon landscape that seems made with the thirty- and forty-something demographic in mind, adults who grew up on the cartoons and comics of the 1980s and haven't grown out of the infatuation with either. The show slyly works through tropes, often throwing caution to the wind and unabashedly rolling with generic machinations and mechanics, gleefully embracing genre cliché as a means of both honoring, and ripping, all of the more seriously minded influences that have inspired it. Impresario, for instance, a superhero patterned after The Green Lantern, cannot craft any constructs without his overbearing mother somehow asserting herself in them. Sumo is a Hulk clone who, rather than a middle-aged brain turning into a giant green monster, is a grade-school boy (also with overbearing parents, but overbearing in their own way) who morphs into a super-sized Sumo wrestler. And the show certainly finds creative ways to use the team's powers in ways that highlight absurdity while still getting the job done in the battle against evil. Meyers and Shoemaker get a lot of mileage out of toying with established tropes as the show both forges its own path and parodies and nods to other properties along the way. It can be really quite sharp and vacuous at the same time, a tightrope affair that is generally handled with panache.

The Awesomes: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Awesomes looks pretty rad on Blu-ray. Mill Creek's 1080p, 1.78:1-framed image is clean and colorful, offering well defined textural highlights, clean lines, and consistent clarity throughout the three-season run. The 1080p resolution allows the image to really find its stride, and even as the animation is relatively simple, the ease with which it presents and the stability that's a constant throughout make it a very agreeable presentation. Colors are stout. There's nice little nuanced variation along the way, but it's the large, sweeping colors that really dazzle, particularly as they concern character clothes and appearances. Every shade is well saturated and nearly each scene pops with consistently brilliant tones. Banding is present but rarely a distraction. This is a very enjoyable presentation from Mill Creek.

The Awesomes: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Awesomes' Blu-ray soundtrack doesn't soar, but it's surprisingly capable. Despite its lossy and limited two-channel configuration, there's a good sense of balance and energy evident in every episode. Essential clarity is very strong. Dialogue is well defined and always the focal point, with each voice offering distinct tonal flavors that the track presents with unflinching accuracy. Voices image to the center with very impressive positioning, recreating the feel of a center channel output where none exists. Music and effects present with very commendable clarity and vitality. The track plays larger than its configuration and cleaner than its encode. There are some rich, well realized elements in play throughout, with action scenes and musical cues enjoying a surprisingly robust delivery and never lacking significant clarity. Of course the absent subwoofer channel limits both in terms of depth and authenticity, but there's no mistaking that the track is more than capable of handling the show's sonic needs with an honest day's work within its restrictive encode. Technical flubs are infrequent, but the sound does pop out and pop back in at the 17:17 mark of episode one.

The Awesomes: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Awesomes: The Complete Series contains the following extras across the three Blu-ray discs, most of which are just various trailers and promo spots (at varying resolutions for whatever reason). A Mill Creek digital copy code is included with purchase.

Disc One:

• Series Trailer (1080p, 2:17).
• Original Promo (1080p, 1:12).
• Upfront Promo (1080i, 0:51).
• ComicCon Trailer (1080p, 0:48).

Disc Two:

• Season Two Trailer (480i, 2:21).
• ComicCon Promo - New Cast (720p, 3:17).
• Frantic Caught at SDCC 2014 (480i, 0:10): Frantic zips in an out of a live action video shot.
• Promo - Greatest Names in Comedy (480i, 0:32).
• TV Spot (1080p, 0:31).

Disc Three:

• Season Three Trailer (720p, 1:58).
• Series Recap (480i, 1:49).
• Season Three Teaser (480i, 0:30).
• ComicCon Teaser (480i, 1:37).
• Promo - Fully Evil (720p, 0:30).
• Promo - Female Superheroes (480i, 0:29).
• Promo - Back in the Game (480i, 0:15).

The Awesomes: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Awesomes is a pretty awesome little show. Hulu's animated Superhero ensemble show may borrow ideas but it also bends some rules and finds quite a bit of humor and plenty of complimentary characterization and action along the way. It's a well-rounded and highly enjoyable show that's well designed and animated and features a plethora of stars voicing key characters. The Awesomes: The Complete Series' Blu-ray release, courtesy of Mill Creek, is pretty solid. A few little extras dot all three discs. Video and audio qualities more than satisfy. Highly recommended.