Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001)

Animated films can be really great, Walt Disney's Fantasia showed the world what only had been seen by hippies on LSD. Nickelodeon, back in the day, was a great network for children's programing. Who can forget seeing Alanis Morrisette getting slimed on "You Can't Do That On Television" or seeing reruns of SCTV.

Nowadays Nickelodeon has become yet another television tyrant, much like MTV, sodomizing America with boardroom-produced pop culture. How many times have we seen a flash-in-the-pan pop singer in front of 20 adolescent kids just to pimp their crappy cd or sweatshop produced merchandise?

The most recent atrocity to the world of animation is Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. The writers took a good long 15 minutes to write this one. Jimmy Neutron is a child inventor who wishes his parents weren't around to make him follow rules. Jimmy's wish comes true when a fleet of aliens kidnap all of the neighborhood parents and take them to their home world to be sacrificed by a giant chicken. Jimmy, his robot dog and a ragtag group of lovable misfits defy the odds to rescue their parents with inventions that Jimmy creates.

The film was done with computer animation, which was cool for the first 6 minutes, then got boring. There were only two celebrity voices, Patrick Stewart was the voice of the not-so-scary despot King Goobot, and Martin Short played his brother, Oobler.

As far as the soundtrack goes, it could have been the only thing the movie had going for it if it was used correctly. Tracks by the Ramones, The Go-Go's and The Backstreet Boys played throughout the film at inopportune moments. It's a good thing Johnny Ramone is dead, because he would have gone into an epileptic seizure if he saw these fruity cartoon characters eat cotton candy and pee in the shower to "Hey Oh Let's Go".

The reason this film got one star is for the animation. This film couldn't have taken a long time to make, therefore the Gorillaz animated film can't be that far away. Hopefully there will be a scene where Murdoc runs Jimmy Neutron over in his Geep. A man can dream, can't he?