I guess there are two ways to look at Rugrats. Here is one of them:
I've been fond of Rugrats the series since before my daughter was born. It not only provides a charming look into childhood, but also lets us laugh at the parenting mistakes of ourselves and others as Tommy's parents act all of them out.
When my daughter turned 3 a year ago, she was also charmed by the series, and we would watch it together, she laughing at the kid jokes and me laughing at the adult jokes.
So, how well does the series translate to the big screen? That's the wrong question, actually. It's not a matter of translation, but of implementation. The possibilities of moving Rugrats to the big screen are obvious -- better animation, bigger budget, clever use of multichannel sound. The opening underscores this by showing us the classic opening on a tiny screen in mono sound, and then suddenly opening to the big screen and full theater sound in the last few moments. Reminiscent of the Enhanced Star Wars trailer. But the implementation.... Ah, there's the rub. It isn't very good.
In fact, it's pretty bad. There's only about a half hour of plot in the 80 minute running time. The rest is stretched out with unneeded (and unfunny) scenes, and -this is the bad part- some of the worst songs to assult our ears since Quest for Camelot. The plot is... embarrassing. Not clever or illuminating as the series has been, but just downright dull and painful to watch.
There are a few clever moments, but we've already seen about half of them in the trailer. There doesn't appear to be any reason for this movie to exist, except to make us pay seven bucks a seat to see characters we used to see for free. And let's not forget the full length commercial, excuse me, cartoon Catdog. Or was that Dogcat? I forget. And I wish I could forget that cartoon. It reminded me somewhat of Micky's Brain, in that I kept hoping that this was the last scene... no, maybe this was... nope, maybe this one.
Anyway, on a 0 to 4 scale I'd have to rate the experience a 1. Even at discount prices, I didn't get my money's worth.
As I said at the beginning, there are two ways to look at this movie. Here is the other one:
Kool, Duud! Klasky/Czupo are geniuses. With Rugrats they have raised the bar for big screen parody, and have done it in such a subtle fashion that almost no one will get it! In the series, the Rugrats scriptwriters routinely lampoon cutesy smarmy kiddie movies, and they brilliantly continue the motif on the big screen. Tommy, Chuckie and the bunch want to see Reptar (an obvious reference to Godzilla and other action movies) and couldn't care less about watching an achingly saccarine movie about a bunch of babies. So while the adults are trying to figure out why Rugrats the movie is so bad, the kids are sneaking out to watch Enemy of the State. Oh, the humanity! Check it out -- all the morons who are assulting Rugrats because of poor plot, awful music, bad dialog, are just too dense to understand that it's SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT! It's SUPPOSED to be bad. That's the POINT! What Genius! I'm going to see it again and again!
Ahem. Anyway, whether you look at it as a rather flat kiddie movie or a profound inside joke on the audience, one thing Rugrats the movie certainly does not have is the charm and wit of the series. If you've never seen the series but were dragged into the movie, you owe it to yourself to catch a couple episodes to see how it's supposed to be.
Ron
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