The key to Aqua Teen's funniness as a series was its don't give a shit attitude. This doesn’t translate as well to the medium of film. We still see objects explode lazily with the same cheap-ass "the Cardassian ship has been destroyed captain" graphic. I cheered when I saw it on the big screen (of my small computer monitor) for the first time. But the marginally improved "film for theatres" graphics and sound imply a little too much giving a shit to please an Aqua Teen fan's palette. Thankfully the souped up 3d graphic segments are vastly outnumbered by the pixellated jerky crap that is our comfort zone. Also, the movie shares the series’ devotion to well-played bad music, badly played good music, and tastelessness in general.
I should say something about the plot, because I'm trying to be a reviewer, and when I read reviews, I want to know what happens, and what it's about, and whether it's any good, not necessarily in that order. Sigh. Okay. Well, it begins in “New York”, where Master Shake (a pistachio-flavoured milkshake), Frylock (a floating box of fries), and Meatwad (a ball of meat), emerge from a tomb to battle a robot dog. Frylock is killed in the course of the battle, but the other two escape with the aid of Time Lincoln (a time-travelling lincoln) and his space-rocket. These events turn out to have occurred solely in the mind of real-life Shake, who is trying to regale his housemates, real-life Frylock and Meatwad, with wild tales. The real beginning begins with Meatwad giving the opening concert of his rock tour, "Girl Quest 07" on the lawn of his house. He’s advertised the event with flyers, all of which cover Carl (their neighbor)'s house... Okay, then we revisit “New York”, where a watermelon spaceship is being co-piloted by a guy drumming on a Neil Pert sized kit. The man’s name is Neil. The pilot of the watermelon spaceship, a slice of watermelon, says something, and then it's back to Shake and Frylock who are... Ah, fuck it.
That was a synopsis, wasn't it? And synopsis... synopsis’s? synopssisses... synopsis'issessachhoooo! Sorry. Synopses, aren't appropriate for reviews, are they? No, people want a capsule, or whatever you call it, and no spoilers. But I’ll tell you one thing, my friend: as with the series, the movie does achieve a certain goodness that I would not even presume to call “delirious”, even though I feel there should be an adjective. Really, it's all about the voice acting and sound design. The way the guy who plays Master Shake inflects to Meatwad: "Congratulations. You have just been laid." (No, I don't know the name of the guy who plays Shake and I don't want to look anything up, imdb.com takes too long to load, and I'm tired from trying to describe the plot). And the way you hear plastic squeaky sounds when Shake is flexing while bragging about how many reps he does. And how the robot from the future that always talks with spring reverb emits erotic sounds that might resemble a CHUD orgy under a sewer grate. A certain goodness, yes.
That being said... most of it's not good. It's like a pretty good episode of the series, inflated to 3x its size. Therefore it’s not mostly good, but 0.3 repeater good. So if any of my readersss...ship is still man enough to take the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres challenge: a word of advice, colin: It helps to watch this movie film for theatres online, in little snippets between other activities. If you try to watch it all in one sitting, you probably won't.
Sorry about not looking up the name of the guy who plays Shake, by the way. It's stupid of me to want to be a reviewer with an audience, but be too lazy to look up basic information. And even stupider to write all these words about it instead of just looking it up, which would be faster. But then I’d have a review filled with trivia, and somehow, that doesn’t feel right. But the credits rolled as I was writing this last paragraph, so it's Dana Snyder.
In conclusion:
0.3 repeater good.
No comments:
Post a Comment