I had never heard of Atomic Betty until a review of it popped up last fall. I was fortunate to find a couple of inexpensive DVDs of the series to view it for myself. I watched eight episodes: four from each DVD.

The first thing that I thought was that this was a 1980s or 1990s “cheapie” cartoon. I was very much surprised to see that the cartoons were created in the 2000s and were first shown in 2004. Flash technology has helped create new levels of marginality.

I’ve seen reviews calling this series “zippy and fun”. I have to say that although the characters do seem to keep on the move, there’s not a lot of fun going on. To me, fun should mean that it is either (1) humorous, (2) amazing or (3) has interesting situations. I didn’t find that any of the characters or situations in this series matched my expectations of being fun. Then again, this series is not really for middle-aged guys – it’s really for kids. I wanted a kid’s point-of-view so I lent one of the DVDs to a friend’s daughter (age 11) to see what she thought of it. She thought that it was “okay”, giving it a 2 ½ (or maybe a 3). She didn’t seem that enthused about it, though (she only watched the DVD because I asked her to).

I guess that I can’t recommend that anyone over the age of 10 bother watching this series – there are simply too many other quality cartoon series available on DVD now-a-days to bother with this one.

You know,I was shocked,surprised and flabbergasted by the negativity I had heard on the Internet; I have watched (and taped) this show, and frankly I find it AWESOME! and also this show on "My Top Series" list (if I HAD one that is).

Each episode is top-notch; full of action,adventure and humor too,I have few favorites;though it will be hard to remember which. I love Betty, she is totally COOL, yet very sweet; You know there are now 3 Bettys in my favorite/cartoons :

Betty Boop,
Betty Rubble from The Flintstones, and now...

Atomic Betty, Galactic Gaurdian and Defender of the Cosmos!

Bland, boring and uninspired. Watching Atomic Betty isn’t great fun, but it's not agonizing pain either. I’d watch it only if I had nothing else to do, or, more likely, if I couldn’t be bothered putting on a video or DVD of something superior. With flat repetitive plotlines, broken dialog and weak to the point where they’re anemic jokes, this cartoon really fails to make it on any level with me. And thought this may make the cartoon great children’s fodder, it just doesn’t do for me and even the Fairly Odd Parents has managed to make me chuckle over its equally dismal run. The lack of any degree of tension here just means that often when this show is on I’m find myself reaching for the remote.

Edit: Okay I've seen enough better episodes to grant this an extra half-star; which puts it in the "I'll watch it if nothing else is on" area of my scoring system.

Well, I'm going to surprise you all by being the one to write the short review this time. Basically I can't think of anything very much to add to the two reviews below. 'Atomic Betty' is a rather plain, but slightly askew series which somehow seems to manage to slip between the cracks in terms of what it's supposed to do, or how you're supposed to react to it. It's certainly not a bad show, but really it's uninspired filler. I suppose it's supposed to fill that slot for early afternoon TV for kids, but it gets soundly thrashed by more memorable creations like Australia's 'Tracey McBean', or half a dozen other things I could think of.

File under 'mostly harmless', and leave to be forgotten by history along with 'Fairly Oddparents'.

Betty (an attractively drawn, plain vanilla Ms. Nice) - attends school by day, but by night beams into a spacecraft where she fights evildoers (a selection of unremarkable aliens), aided by a good alien (who tries to be "wacky", but doesn't even end up as "annoying" - he only nails "meh") and a robot (a totally bland, personality free character who was apparently only included to finish off the space opera checklist). Powerpuff Girls has an imaginitive mixture: the tone and humour of a standard American cartoon with the settings and genre conventions of superhero comics and a light smattering of anime's visual style, wrapped up with cute characters. Atomic Betty has a single cute character inhabiting a totally uninspired universe.

The series is kind of a mess; action scenes are turned into incomprehensible messes by widescreen switches and split screening thrown in seemingly just for the heck of it, and humour ranges from unremarkable to stale, with a lot of reliance on overused cartoon stock gags. The cleverest piece of humour is the name of bad guy Maximus' I.Q's servant, Minimus P.U. (Portable Underling). That should tell you something about the show's writing.

Which brings me to the main point: Atomic Betty isn't all that funny. Not because the gags are bad - although that's often the case - but because there's very few of them. Despite the lighthearted tone, actual attempts to be funny between each episode's set-up and punchline are oddly sparse - apparently, Atomic Betty isn't intended to be an all-out comedy. As an action adventure-oriented series it is also let down, not only by the half-hearted action scenes and relatively slow pacing but by the fact that it simply can't be taken seriously. The show just doesn't know what it is.

It's still a fairly entertaining show, in an "alright-to-watch-if-there's-nothing-else-to-do-and-for-whatever-reason-you-can't-do-anything-besideswatch-TV" kind of way. It's rarely boring and it's rarely painful; it's just so enormously bland.

I was thinking about adding this profile, but it looks like somebody beat me to it. Truth be told, the only good thing this show has going for it is that Betty's cute. Of course, she doesn't act like your typical redhead. She just acts like your typical middle schooler. She could've been blonde or brunette, and you'd never know the difference. Well at least thank God she doesn't act like those stereotypes prancing around in that joke of a show, Totally Spies. But Atomic Betty is your typical "kid with a secret identity" show. Humor? What humor? The jokes are all stale and lifeless. I'm not sure what's up with that wimpy sidekick with split personality. But at least he has a personality compared to the "main" villain, who probably couldn't concoct evil if the devil himself dropped his manual right on the villain's doorstep. Yeah. A giant white cat is really terrifying.