Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) review

I kind of want to say George Lucas raped my childhood with his CGI animated version of The Clone Wars, but he didn’t. He just… disappointed my childhood, like he couldn’t even properly brutalize my good memories of Star Wars. It’s a little like expecting to be molested by your drunken stepfather, but then realizing he likes your brother better. You’re kind of glad you didn’t get what you thought you were going to get, but you still feel a little rejected and confused.

Of course, I’ll probably still watch the TV series, because I’m still hopelessly a Star Wars fan, but the love in my heart for Luke and Leia and Chewie isn’t what it once was.

Preach Robot Preach

My review of Wall-E has been up over at Den of Geek for some time. I suggest ignoring all the comments, as when the review was originally published on July 4th, only the first page of two and a quarter were published, which made people assume wrongly that my review was just some anti-Disney ranting.

It’s not, of course, but there’s not much I can do about the inaccurate comments clinging tenaciously to the review like dog crap on the bottom of a new sneaker. Of course, if it was just an anti-Disney screed, they’d be perfectly reasonable comments. As it stands, they’re not, so you have my warning.

I’ve been seeing a ton of movies lately, haven’t I? Makes me wonder if I should, you know, get something like a life. Nah, this is life enough for me.

Ron’s Big Score

Bender’s back, baby! And I wrote up a review of the DVD/movie! WHOOHOO! Swag for everyone! And by swag, I mean boring old words!

EDIT: Man, Adult Swim really blows without Futurama. I mean, I love Shin Chan and all, but… too much Family Guy.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (2007) Film Review 3/5

AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE COLON MOVIE FILM FOR THEATERS is, well, impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t seen the TV show. If you’ve seen the show and you like the show, you’ll like the movie because they figured out a way to make the weirdest, most random show on television even weirder and more random. If you don’t like the TV show, or have never seen the TV show, this isn’t the place to start.

Basically, the movie sums up the entire series of AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE in one fell swoop. It has moments where you’ll nearly lose control of your bowels because of the hilarity, it has moments where the jokes fall as flat as the 2D Mooninites, and it has moments where it is just plain weird on toast. Sometimes, it can be all three at once.

Your average episode of ATHF, as the kids call it, is basically a bunch or random stuff happening for 11 minutes or so. There’s usually some sort of paper-thin plot, but basically the show is an exercise in Dadaism for the 21st Century. Weird for the sake of weird, it’s a show about three food products (Fryloc, Master Shake, and Meatwad) who have adventures, foil alien plots, and make life miserable for their neighbor Carl, who don’t need no instructions to know how to rock.

I don’t know why I’m explaining the basis of the show; if you’ve read this far, you’re already familiar with it.

Basically, the ATHF movie is an origin story for our heroes, with a chance to bring back everyone’s favorite recurring villains (though villain isn’t the proper term, since these ‘bad guys’ are more obnoxious than malevolent). The Mooninites (Ignignokt and Err, favorite of potheads everywhere) show up; the Plutonians (Emory and Oglethorpe, named after two universities in the Atlanta area) and The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future figure heavily into the plot, and there’s even a Willie Nelson (the character, not the country singer) cameo.

When they’re not trying to figure out who made them and why, the Aqua Teens have to try and stop Carl’s Insanoflex exercise machine/giant killer robot from wrecking downtown (echoing the plot of the pilot episode in a nice throwback to the show’s humble beginnings and the falsified premise that launched Adult Swim’s biggest breadwinner).

And none of that makes any sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the entire run of the show, but whatever!

This is the ultimate in fan service, as much as a reward for long-time viewers as it is an actual movie, making it more like Kevin Smith’s JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK than, say, CLERKS. If you’re not a fan, you won’t even notice this movie’s undoubtedly brief box office run. If you’re a fan, you’ve probably already seen it by now.