Top Cat And The Bevery Hills Cats

[zoombie]

Anyone see this 1988 tv movie or direct to video movie which was part of the Superstar 10 series that Hanna Barbera made in the late 80's?

Obviously not as good as the series, and not much originallity since they just ripped off a TC episode "The Missing Heir", but I will let that slide.

Despite all of those flars, it is one of the better Superstar 10 movies. I just love Top Cat, maybe I am bias.

But I have one big complaint, I thought the writers completely screwed up with Officer Dibble. They completely got his character wrong. In this movie, he is mean and gruffy. He is more of an outright antagonist, than he was in the series. Dibble is suppose to be nice and very likeable character despite being a foil for Top Cat, he actully had a heart. In TCATBHC, he is so heartless and uncaring.

Of all the Superstars 10 movies, I never saw a complete disreguard for a character's personality like Officer Dibble. They generally get the characters right.

[Kolbar]

"Beverly Hills Cats" is for sure the funniest of all the Superstars 10 and one of my favorites. Despite being a rip-off of "The Missing Heir," like you said, it's actually very well written and really gives us a chance to see Top Cat and the gang given well-deserved treatment with better animation than the show.

It's been awhile since I've seen this movie, but I know I taped it off of Boomerang once. Warner Bros. needs to release this on DVD now along with the other Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10.

[zoombie]

The plot was overal a remake of "The Missing Heir", they also had elements of other episodes. Like "Farewell Mr. Dibble", with Dibble's retirement for example. As well as the ending when Amy was an honorary member of the gang, was a little like "TC Minds The Baby".

I am sure they thrown in other references form other episodes into the movie. It is a 90 + minute movie after all, "The Missing Heir" is just a 22 - 25 minute episode.

[Still HowardFein]

Haven't seen it in a long time, but I remember the movie being surprisingly faithful to the original TOP CAT series despite the obvious stretch marks. It probably helped that Barry E. Blitzer, who write numerous episodes (unfortunately, it's not possible to determine who wrote each specific episode) wrote the movie as well. So he was certainly familiar with the characters.

Fortunately, most of the voice cast was still alive and able to reprise their roles. Arnold Stang, who had also voiced T.C. in the recent YOGI'S TREASURE HUNT, sounded less suave and a bit more high-pitched a la Herman the Mouse. Leo DeLyon nailed the Brain, but seemed to have a lot of trouble with Spook. Marvin Kaplan and John Stephenson did decent jobs on, respectively, Choo-Choo and Fancy.

With Maurice Gosfield having passed away years earlier, Avery Schreiber replaced him as Benny, giving him an almost completely different voice- complete with a lisp that the original never had. Allen Jenkins was also long deceased, so none other than durable cop/boss/soldier/generic authority voice John Stephenson took over as Dibble. This may be one reason why another poster found him disproportianally cranky; Jenkins' Dibble often exhibited unexpected warmth and intelligence beneath his exasperation with T.C. and the gang.

Of course, the overseas animation and heavily synthesized Sven Lieback music score (Hoyt Curtin pretty much retired the previous year) were rather off-putting. Thankfully the classic H-B SFX, which had started to be used less and less by the studio, were in full force.

[Rick Jones]

I always liked this one. In retrospect, all of the rapping didn't age too well. Benny's voice here was different but I thought it worked, whereas his replacement voice in Yogi's Ark Lark was pretty irritating to me.