Like most of the material found on Adult Swim, it sounds much better on paper, probably rolling papers at that.
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The financial success of the recent "Simpsons" and "Transformers" movies is doubt going to inspire a slew of green-lit feature films based on old television cartoon properties. The majority of these films will be forgettable vehicles designed to make quick cash off the accomplishments of prior films in this "new" genre. The reason why "The Simpsons" succeeded was that it's based on one of the greatest television shows of all time. Instead of completely reinventing itself, the film counterpart mirrored the heart and humor of its boob-tube predecessor; while creating new characters and having familiar ones do things they never did on the show. The explanation for why the stupidly titled "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters" ultimately fails is that it's based on a mediocre basic-cable property that is painfully long in its short fifteen-minute length. Stretching the concept across an eighty-seven minute long canvas without bothering to make it anything less than identical to its television version was a death sentence for the film.
Since nobody reading this review would be unfamiliar with the show, I'll keep my description brief. "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" is a fifteen-minute-long show (including ads) that has run under the Adult Swim banner on the Cartoon Network since the tail end of 2000. While many characters have been introduced over the show's sporadic five-season run, most episodes revolve around a core group. Frylock (a floating container of fries), Master Shake (a giant talking cup), and Meatwad ( a...wad of meat) live together in a house in New Jersey and create problems for their neighbor, Carl. The show is not episodic and rarely deals with the fact that the main characters are anthropomorphic fast-food items. Like most of the shows featured on Adult Swim, "ATHF" uses low-budget animation and unknown voice actors to keep their production costs down.
While the "Aqua Teen" movie starts out promisingly with a brilliant take on the old "Let's all go the lobby" cartoon, little after the initial five minutes is different from what fans have already paid to see on cable TV. While the budget for the film was around 1.5 million, a generous portion of that must have been blown on the "weed budget," because the film looks just as crappy as it did on the cartoon network. In fact, the new title montage is actually worse that the original, both the animation and song having been altered, and not for the better. The basic plot of the film revolves around all of the show´s main characters´ search for the Insaneoflex, a workout machine of mysterious origins containing untold power. But once it's been found and completely assembled, the team has to deal with the consequences of unleashing the true power of the weight set. Like most of the material found on Adult Swim, it sounds much better on paper, probably rolling papers at that.
The Adult Swim lineup is somewhat akin to the reoccurring characters found on "Saturday Night Live." Sure, they're amusing the first few times you see them, but all the writers do is hammer home the same jokes episode after episode. We know all know that the copy guy is annoying, that the church lady sees Satan in everything, Ed Grimley loves Pat Sajak, etc. For the shows on Adult Swim, it's Carl's such a New Jerseyite, the team on Seablab's so dumb, and Harvey Birdman's going to defend some cartoon character from our childhood on some sleazy charge. They are generally not programs that require repeat viewings. If you've seen one, you've seen them all. While this inability of the shows on Adult Swim to grow and change might be fine for a nerdy stoner who hasn't changed his "Han shot first" T-Shirt since "Firefly" left the airwaves, the average viewer needs more substance.
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[release]21891[/release]