Movie Review: Rugrats Go Wild

Around 2003, Klasky Csupo were slowly losing popularity with their Nicktoons. While All Grown Up still had decent ratings and reviews, The Wild Thornberrys ended its run a year prior and their magnum opus Rugrats was losing steam and people were getting burned out on watching it. The addition of the newer characters, the other newer Nicktoons such as SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Oddparents, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, and more, and the somewhat stale nature of the newer episodes were the main causes of people losing interest in the show. Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo decided to do a TV special simply titled Rugrats meet The Wild Thornberrys to bring up their TV ratings, but the Nickelodeon executives decided to scrap that idea and make the concept into a movie. This would be the first time that two different Nickelodeon shows would come together so it was hyped up to a big hit like Klasky Csupo's previous movies. On June 3, 2003, Rugrats Go Wild was debuted in theaters. In honor of the event, the theater even included scratch and sniff cards to see alongside the movie in homage to Smell-O-Vision back in the 1960s and John Waters' 1981 movie Polyester. The smells included from bananas to smelly feet. This would be the second time that the Nickelodeon executives released a TV special theatrically. Would this time be successful? Let's find out. Here is Rugrats Go Wild!



The movie starts off with Tommy watching Nigel Thornberry on TV discussing about animals. When seeing it, Tommy wishes that he wants to be just like him. Angelica doubts this, but Tommy is still determined. Meanwhile, we see the adults getting ready to go on a big cruise that they've been really excited for. While they dream of getting pampered and relaxing in the sun, Stu surprises them with a tiny little ramshackle boat to travel to the South China Seas for their vacation. The adults, hugely disappointed, decided to go anyway. Things don't go very well when a huge storm hits and the boat gets completely destroyed with a giant tidal wave. Luckily, everyone escapes out of a life boat.



The next day, they arrive at a deserted island and Stu tries to make things better for everyone. Unfortunately, the adults blame Stu for getting themselves into this and decide to make him watch over the babies and appoint Betty as their leader. While the adults go off into getting supplies and food, Stu tries to prove himself to the adults and leaves Angelica in charge of watching them. She tells the babies that they're stuck on the island, but Tommy believes that Nigel Thornberry is at the island. They decide to venture out into the jungle to look around looking for Nigel. Angelica and Spike find out that the babies are missing so they looked around separately. Along the way, Angelica meets up with Debbie Thornberry at the comvee saying that she was a tribal princess and having the best scene in the movie by singing the song "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash, Eliza and Darwin meet up with Spike and talks for the first time (voiced by Bruce Willis), and Chuckie inadvertently meets up and swaps with Donnie.

 

The next song involves with Spike and meeting the movie's villain in a form of a leopard named Siri. Another song involving with dogs being better than cats called "Big Bad Cat" is sung and in the end, Spike is able to defeat Siri. Meanwhile, Nigel and Marianne are looking around for a clouded leopard for their nature show when Nigel gets lost, falls down, and gets his head hit by a coconut giving him amnesia. The babies found Nigel and he starts acting like a baby around him. Tommy becomes very disappointed that Nigel is not the person he seems to be on TV. Back to Angelica and Debbie, Debbie finds out that Angelica was lying about being a tribal princess and accidentally crashes and sinks the comvee. Nigel and the babies get themselves into the Thornberry submarine. He accidentally bangs his head again and regains his memory. Everything seems to go fine until the sub runs out of gas and oxygen. What happens is one of the saddest moments in Nickelodeon history when Nigel tries to calm down the babies and tells them a story as their inevitable moment of death is coming upon them. But then later on, Marianne meets up with Stu, Drew, Didi, Betty, Howard, Chaz, Kira, Drew, and Charlotte and together with Stu's invention, they free the comvee and bring the submarine up. The movie concludes with all the Rugrats characters and The Wild Thornberrys characters making it on the cruise and having a fun time.



When the movie first came out, it didn't very well on the box office and had mixed reactions with critics and fans. Not only that, but the movie came out around the same time as Finding Nemo which hugely overshadowed it. Overall, this movie is awful! It was a rehashed version of The Rugrats Movie with the babies getting lost in the jungle instead of the forest. Also, it had another forgettable animal villain in the form of Siri, which is hugely disappointing after we got a memorable villain in the form of Coco LaBouche. Also, the addition of the Wild Thornberrys characters were inconsistent with their appearances. Debbie was the only one who was an interesting addition to the movie while everyone else was on the side. The possibility of mixing in these two shows together was a lost opportunity with the Rugrats characters getting more screen time. But that would be fixed one year later with The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour one year later.



Also making Spike talk was so annoying! He had absolutely no purpose in talking other than making bad jokes and witty remarks, which is absolutely nothing like Spike's character in the show. Finally, the movie has way more gross factors than the previous two movies, in fact, this is the only Rugrats movie that was rated PG. You know how I feel about the grossness in the Rugrats movies, so I'm not going to go into too much details. However, it seemed very unneeded and gross for the sake of being gross. It would have been the norm back in the 90's, but since this movie came out in 2003, the humor of things being gross was already done at that point. When I had mentioned that All Grown Up kind of ruined Rugrats for me, Rugrats Go Wild killed the franchise as this was the last movie that Klasky Csupo did for Rugrats and their reputation had dwindled away with the cancellation of Rugrats a year later. I don't recommend checking it out!

That's all for now! Tune in next time as we look at the final cartoon series that originated from Oh Yeah! Cartoons in the form of My Life as a Teenage Robot.



Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon. Thanks for reading!

-Patricia

Movie Review: The Wild Thornberrys Movie

Klasky Csupo was doing extremely well in Nickelodeon around the 2000's. They had 4 successful TV shows with Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys, As Told by Ginger, and Rocket Power and they released two financially successful movies that made over $150 million dollars. Their name meant quality, creativity, and classic animation back then and it seemed that they couldn't do any wrong. Their next announcement was their next movie based on another of their cartoons. On December 20, 2002, The Wild Thornberrys Movie debuted in theaters.



As I mentioned in my The Wild Thornberrys review, I don't like the show saying that it was boring, overrated, and has mostly annoying characters. So I didn't see the movie when it came out in theaters. But when we decided to do the tribute, I had no choice but to see the movie. Does this movie make me change my mind of the series or does it confirm my dislike for it? This is The Wild Thornberrys Movie.

The movie begins in East Africa where the introduction is a more different take on the intro from the TV series. Then we cut to the Thornberry family leaving to shoot footage of the elephants for their nature show while Eliza, Debbie, Donnie, and Darwin stay near the Comvee. Nigel's mother Cordelia from England is visiting the family taking in on the African safari. Eliza and Darwin leave the Comvee to hang out with a cheetah mother and her cheetah cubs. While they were playing, a helicopter appears out of nowhere and kidnaps one of the cheetah cubs named Tally. Eliza rushes and tries to capture the cub while hovering over the helicopter grabbing the net, but with no luck. The kidnapper pushed Eliza out of the copter. Eliza is saved due to Nigel and Marianne catch her with the Comvee. With Eliza being scolded by her parents for the reckless thing she did, Cordelia suggests that she would be sent to an all girls' boarding school in England to straighten her out. Eliza refuses, but her parents agree to do so. Nigel and Eliza have a father/daughter discussion that ends with him giving her a necklace. Darwin was disappointed when he learned about it, but Eliza had no choice but to go.



The next morning, Eliza leaves for the airport and arrives in England. While trying to adjust to her new surroundings, she meets up with her roommate Sarah Wellington. Sarah is a very snobbish girl who wishes for Eliza to keep away from her space and stuff. While adjusting, we see Darwin get out of Eliza's suitcase and disguises himself as a schoolgirl with Sarah's clothes. When their serving dinner, Darwin heads downstairs, but Eliza recognizes him right away and tries to hide him from the other girls. But Darwin make a huge mess and starts a food fight. With it, Sarah gets extremely messy and filled with food.



Then the other girls ask questions about Eliza and hears stories about her travels around the world. Sarah grows jealous with Eliza getting a huge amount of popularity among all the other girls. That night, Eliza dreams about the witch doctor who gave her her powers Shaman Nnyambo that she has to save Tally because she's in serious danger. Eliza wakes up and begs Sarah to pay for her trip back to Nairobi. She accepts and the next morning, they arrive in Nairobi. While taking the train, they see a hippo severely injured and captured with a net. They left the train and find out that the hippo was almost captured by poachers. Eliza and Darwin walk near the train tracks to get back to East Africa.



All of a sudden, a trailer drives by and two people named Sloan and Bree Blackburn help the hippo out. They are animal conversationalists who cared for the hippo and called an animal resort center to pick it up. Eliza and Darwin then continued on their journey. Meanwhile Debbie was at the Comvee looking over Donnie and sees her grandparents parachuting from a plane to find Eliza to take her back to school. The next day, Eliza makes it to the sahara where Tally was kidnapped to find clues. They meet up with Donnie and they continue to look around. That night, they meet up with Sloan and Bree and they talk about their love for animals. Eliza felt closure to them since it seems that they understood her love of animals.



When Debbie finds out that Donnie is missing, she borrows the family motorbike to search for him. She stumbles upon an African tribe where she asks the tribe members for help. None of them knew English and were willing to help except for a teenage boy. Debbie tries to communicate with him, but with no luck. However his willingness to help convinced Debbie to bring him along for the ride and she starts calling him Boko. Meanwhile, Donnie sneaks into Sloan and Bree's RV and looks around. Eliza and Darwin retrieve Donnie, but find Tally in a cage in the corner. Eliza then finally realizes that Sloan and Bree were the ones who kidnapped Tally and shot the rhino. While trying to get Tally out of her cage, Sloan and Bree find out that Eliza knows their secret of them being poachers. They reveal their plan of building an electric fence to kill all the migrating elephants to steal all their ivory. Sloan threatens to tell Eliza how they knew of their tasks, but Eliza stays silent. They then see Debbie in their cameras and Sloan has a plan. When Debbie asks Sloan if they've seen Donnie, Sloan grabs her and drags her near a cliff. Eliza runs out and tells him her secret of talking to animals. The spell is removed and Eliza loses her powers. Sloan and Bree run away and frees Debbie. The group drift on a log in a river while Debbie tries to put the pieces together of all of Eliza's actions. When she learned of Eliza's sacrifice, she gives her a sisterly embrace. When the log nears a waterfall, they all escape before the log falls.



Boko shows up with Debbie's motorbike and rescues them. That night, the poacher's plan commences with them activating the electric fence. Eliza makes it to one of the elephants and tries to communicate with it, but with no luck. Sloan orders his men to detonate explosives nearby to lead the elephants to its path and they continue to walk to the fence. Eliza then learns about kicking an elephant behind the ears and it responds. Sloan orders his men to detonate another set of explosives and most of them continue down the fence. Eliza then throws her father's necklace at the fence and they start walking away from it.



Sloan grabs Eliza from the copter about to drop her into the river when the shaman grants her powers back. She orders the elephants to attack and they grab the copter before it takes off. The officers then arrest Sloan, Bree, and his henchmen and the movie concludes with everything restoring back to normal.

When the movie first came out, it was a huge success. While it wasn't as financially successful as the first two Rugrats movie, it was critically successful. At the time, it was the highest rated movie that Nickelodeon ever aired with it being 80% according to Rotten Tomatoes. As for me, it was okay. The first half was extremely padded with the pointless plot of Eliza going to the boarding school with her leaving it moments later and underdeveloped moments in which Nigel and Eliza had father/daughter time. But then, things start to get interested in the second half with the inclusion of Sloan and Bree and the nice twist of Eliza losing her powers. You feel sadness when Eliza loses the one thing that made her unique and special, which is a surprise since I felt that she used that power in the wrong way in the TV series. In the movie, while she did make the mistake of not watching the baby cubs long enough, she worked hard in getting one of them back. It's sort of similar to the plot of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, but without the worthless padding in the first half of the movie. To me, it felt like a longer episode of the TV show. Nothing really special to it. If you're a fan of The Wild Thornberrys, I'd say check it out. If you're not, then take it for what it is. It's not too bad.

That's all for now. Tune in next time as we go into the year 2003 with Rugrats' spinoff show All Grown Up!



Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon. Thanks for reading.

-Patricia

Old School Lane's Nickelodeon Tribute: You're On/The Wild Thornberrys

Before we get to our main review, let's quickly discuss about the last Nickelodeon game show that debuted in the 90's. That was You're On! that debuted on August 1, 1998.

The show was about a group of two kids working together to get people passing by around Nickelodeon Studios to do silly stunts that focus on a theme. They have 10 minutes to do these three tasks would win a prize like camping gear or sporting equipment or a Nintendo 64. If they don't complete the three tasks in 10 minutes, then they win a gift certificate. In the second half of the show, they would be two games played called "Runaround" in which they would call two groups of six people. In the first game, it would consist of six kids divided into two teams. In the second game, it would be three kids and three adults who were related to the kids. In the first Runaround, the two groups guess on how many stunts that the two kids complete. The one who guesses correctly wins a prize.

In the second Runaround, the kids and adults would do the same as the first Runaround. At the end of each episode, the Runaround adult losers and the kid would be called on the stage and the host and the kid would do something some gross things.

The show was hosted by Phil Moore, the host of Nick Arcade. He brings his extremely goofy personality in You're On! when it came to the interaction of the kids. At least he's dressed less goofy without the over-the- top shirts that he used to wear on Nick Arcade. 



The show lasted for one season ending its run in 1999. Overall, being the last Nickelodeon game show in the 90's, You're On! was the weakest game show in the bunch. It was a borefest seeing kids just trying to get adults to do these silly stunts as well as seeing the kids in the audience guessing on how many they would do. Nothing exciting happens in this game show. Even though that this game show was basically suppose to be Candid Camera for kids, it was beyond forgettable. I don't recommend checking it out.

Now we get to our main review. In the late 90's, there was one channel that people were beginning to tune in like crazy: Animal Planet. The planet that gave viewers animal documentaries 24 hours a day, every day debuted on television on October 1, 1996. While they showed their documentaries featuring the living environment and behavior of animals, one show brought millions of audiences to their TVs, The Crocodile Hunter hosted by Steve Irwin.

This crazy Australian wildlife expert's TV show was a huge success. Over 500 million viewers from over 130 countries tuned in to watch Steve tackle large crocodiles in the wild.

Also around June 1998, Eddie Murphy starred in the family comedy based on the 1967 comedy Doctor Doolittle. Despite having mixed reviews, it was financially successful and had gotten kids wanting to talk to animals.




If The Crocodile Hunter and Dr. Doolittle had a baby, you would have The Wild Thornberrys which debuted on September 1, 1998.

The show was about a family called the Thornberrys who travel around the world doing a nature show looking for rare animals to film. The family consisted of the following:

Nigel Thornberry (voiced by Tim Curry) was the host of the nature show. He's a optimistic, yet clueless man who loves kippers, animals, and being with his family.

Marianne Thornberry (voiced by Jodi Carlisle) is Nigel's wife and the cameraperson/editor of the nature show. She's more down to earth than Nigel trying to keep her family at bay while trying to get their work done in time to send it to the network producers.

Debbie Thornberry (voiced by Danielle Harris) is Nigel and Marianne's oldest daughter. She's a typical 16-year-old girl who loves fashion and music. She longs for a normal suburban life for her family instead of traveling around the world surrounded by animals.

Eliza Thornberry (voiced by Lacey Chabert) is Nigel and Marianne's youngest daughter. She's a 12-year-old girl who loves traveling around the world with her family and exploring the wilderness alongside her best friend Darwin, a chimpanzee, and a little wild boy named Donnie.

Darwin (voiced by Tom Kane) is a chimpanzee originally from the Congo. He's a bit of timid coward when it comes to traveling around the wild with Eliza all by themselves. However, he sticks close to Eliza side by side, never thinking about abandoning her when things get tough.

Donnie (voiced by Flea from The Red Hot Chili Peppers) is a 5-year-old boy that the Thornberrys found wandering around when they were filming about the orangutans in Borneo. He speaks in a really fast gibberish that no one can understand. He loves eating bugs.



The show mostly focuses on Eliza. When she was 10, she helped saved a warthog from a trap. That warthog turned out to be an African shaman named Lopsugne Sjoungboun Qeisha. For saving him from the trap, Lopsugne gave Eliza a gift: the ability to speak to animals. The only condition is that she must never tell anyone that she has this ability or else she loses it. Whenever Nigel and Marianne go out to find animals for them to film, Eliza sneaks out with Darwin and Donnie and explore their surroundings. They usually meet up with an animal that would either have a problem or the group would end up getting themselves in trouble. 



The show was created by Arlene Klasky, Gabor Csupo, and Steve Pepoon. Klasky-Csupo, their company, were already becoming a staple in the 90's with their top quality animated shows such as Rugrats, Aaahh! Real Monsters, and Duckman. Around the late 90's, they were in a slow state with Duckman being cancelled and Santo Bugito only lasting one season despite having being ahead of their time with a show about a world consisting of talking bugs. They picked themselves right up and did the animation for Stressed Eric and created The Wild Thornberrys. 



The inspiration for Nigel was based off of David Attenborough, a British broadcaster and the narrator for BBC animal miniseries such as the Life series, Planet Earth, Blue Planet, and Frozen Planet. Eliza was based on the looks and characteristics of Pippi Longstocking. She has the same red hair, pig tails, freckles, and a primate companion. Instead of it being a monkey named Mr. Nielsen, it's a chimpanzee named Darwin. Donnie is sort of like a younger, wilder version of Tarzan from being raised by orangutans instead of gorillas and having leopard shorts instead of a loincloth.

The show lasted for 5 seasons ending its run on March 11, 2004. When the show first aired, it was praised for including lessons about taking care of nature and appreciating the animals. It was gust of fresh air to see a family traveling around in a high-tech RV instead of a typical suburban home that other cartoons were doing at the time. It's also interesting to note that The Wild Thornberrys was the first Nicktoon to run 22 minute episodes as oppose to all the others that were 2 mini episodes running at 11 minutes. Also, it was nice to see the parents interacting with the kids. Other shows at the time had the parents either not being around the kids or scolding them for something stupid. Once again, the minds of Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo had created a show that was unlike anything else on TV. They had created another hit.



However, looking back years later, I find the show to be a tad bit overrated and underwhelming. First of all, some of the behaviors of the main characters can be a bit annoying. Whether it's Nigel's clueless personality, Darwin's timid personality, Donnie's yelling gibberish, or Debbie's mean personality towards her family. But the biggest problem with me is Eliza. She thinks that just because she can talk to animals, she thinks that she's more intelligent than they are. She tries to help with their problems, but sometimes it ends up worse than what it was. In one episode, a bird is struggling to get grubworms from a tree using a cactus needle. Eliza helps the bird out by giving him a threading needle. It works great. Now the other birds want threading needles to get grubworms. It ends up ruining the whole food chain with now the other animals going hungry.

Rule #1 when it comes to seeing animals in a crisis: don't interact with them. In every documentary, the film crew and the host do not get in the way of assisting an animal when they're in trouble. It's part of life. Animals do need to get eaten in order for the circle of life to continue. They teach us this in every documentary we see on TV and Eliza still does this despite the fact that her parents are doing a nature show. This is a huge flaw and this important rule is completely ignored throughout the rest of the series.



But when they're not rescuing animals and they end up exploring their surroundings, it tends to get a little bit boring. Nothing really interesting happens until a wild animal appears and they start interacting with it. The lessons that Eliza learns from her animal interactions is never brought up and it seems that in the next episode, she forgets it completely. The lessons are extremely vague at times and seeing an episode is a bit forgettable at times. I can't tell you where they were or who they met up with because it was a bit of a blur to me. The episodes get a bit repetitive: they go to a new location, Nigel and Marianne go out to look for an animal to shoot, Eliza wanders away from her home, Debbie sits around complaining about everything, they meet with an animal, a problem occurs, they solve the problem, and that's it.

If you're a huge fan of animal documentaries and nature shows, I'd say check it out. If you're not, then skip it. In my opinion, The Wild Thornberrys is Klasky-Csupo's second weakest Nicktoon. As for their first, we'll talk about that another time.



That's all for now. Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon. Thanks for reading.

-Patricia