As we discussed in the
Rugrats review, Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo
did not like the direction where the show was going. Paul Germain's ideas of
having the babies acting like adults, the "controversial" episodes like "Tommy
Goes Naked", and the inclusion of Angelica were not part of Klasky and Csupo's
original ideas of how they wanted the present
Rugrats to the public.
So, the show went on a three year hiatus and most of the writers left, including
Paul Germain. When the show came back in 1997, there seemed to be a huge glaring
difference between what
Rugrats would eventually be and the first three
seasons. The animation was brighter, the situations they would get into were
simpler, Angelica was less meaner, and the babies' intelligence were dumbed down
a bit to appear as babies. Nonetheless, the kids watching it welcomed back
Rugrats with open arms becoming not only one of the most watched shows
on Nickelodeon, but the longest lasting Nicktoon at the time.
In the episode "The Family Tree", Didi and Stu go off on a cruise to
celebrate their anniversary and Didi ends up getting seasick. In the end of the
episode, it was revealed that Didi was not seasick, but pregnant with their
second child. With that said, Klasky and Csupo had decided to reveal the baby in
their first feature film
The Rugrats Movie.
Does this movie's addition of the new baby give us joy or does it stink worse
than a dirty diaper? This is
The Rugrats Movie.
The movie starts off with a parody of
Raiders of the Ark in which
Tommy is Okie Dokie Jones and Phil, Lil, and Chuckie are his companions. Chuckie
narrates through the opening scene introducing the characters.
Then it turns out that the scene was just them using their imagination...big
surprise...and we get to the main story of the movie. Didi is celebrating a baby
shower in honor of their new baby girl and everyone around is having a good
time. Meanwhile, Stu and Drew are in the basement arguing as usual. Drew is
trying to convince Stu to get a job because of the new inclusion of the baby
while Stu says that his new invention is going to make him a lot of money. That
invention is the Reptar wagon.
Tommy is excited about having a new baby sister, but then Angelica comes and
tells Tommy that when the new baby comes, he'll be forgotten by his parents
because they'll be focusing their attention on the baby. Tommy doubts this
saying that even with the inclusion of the new baby, his parents will still love
him the same.
Next we cut to Susie singing a song about how babies are special. Angelica
cuts in and ruins the
song.
Angelica's screaming causes Didi to have sharp pains meaning that the baby is
getting ready to be born. They all rush to the hospital immediately. While Didi
goes to give birth, Tommy doesn't understand what's going on fearing that the
baby got lost along the way. They decide to look around the hospital hoping to
find a new baby. They enter the delivery room and see all the newborn babies.
The babies consisting of the voices by Dawn Robinson, Lisa Loeb, B Real, Patti
Smith, Lou Rawls, Laurie Anderson, Gordon Gano, Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson,
Cindy Wilson, Phife Dawg, Lenny Kravitz, Beck, Jakob Dylan, and Iggy Pop sing
the song "This
World is Something New to Me".
Then finally Didi gives birth to, not a baby girl, a baby boy that they named
after Didi's cousin Dylan Prescott Pickles or Dil for short. Tommy sees his baby
brother for the first time and it doesn't go very well.
One month later, Dil is constantly crying and preventing the babies from
having fun. Things don't seem the same anymore with the inclusion of Dil around
the house. Angelica is trying to watch her favorite show, but can't concentrate.
She sees a commercial about a Russian monkey circus coming to town. She wants to
go, but Grandpa Lou says no. Meanwhile, we cut to a train consisting of the
ringleader of the Russian monkey circus and his assistant making a pit stop.
While they drink their coffee, the monkeys escape their cages and control the
train. It ends up crashing into the forest.
Back with the main plot, Didi is reading a bedtime story to Tommy about a
wizard granting a wish for a little boy. But then Stu comes in with Dil crying
and trying to get him back to sleep. They end up trying to rock Dil to sleep
while singing a lullaby. They do successfully, Dil gets to sleep, and Tommy is
completely ignored wishing that he had his parents to himself again.
The next day, Stu awaits for the packaging people to come take the Reptar
wagon away for a contest and Tommy and Dil start fighting with each other. Stu
takes Tommy away giving him a pocketwatch saying that now he's a big brother
with responsibility. The babies see the Reptar wagon and have the idea of taking
Dil back to the hospital. When Tommy returns back to his friends, he finds out
what they're doing and thinks it's a bad idea. Angelica comes out to quiet the
babies since she's watching her favorite program. Dil snatches away her doll
Cynthia and Angelica tries to get it back from him. Then her show comes back on
TV saying that she'll be back on the next commercial. The Reptar wagon starts to
move due to Angelica kicking it and the babies have their biggest adventure
they've ever had.
Angelica finds out that the babies have Cynthia so she takes Spike, the
Pickles' dog, along to track the babies.
When the adults find out that the babies are missing, the news reporters and
police come in to investigate on the situation. The babies drive everywhere
around the neighborhood ending up in a mattress truck. The truck crashes and it
ends up in the forest. The babies are officially lost, not knowing what to do,
and want to get home.
Tommy becomes the leader of the group using his pocketwatch as a compass to
find their way home. They climb a big hill seeing smoke from a distance
indicating a nearby home. Tommy thinks that a wizard's there and convinces them
to go there to make a wish to go home. While walking towards there, Tommy trips
on a hole. But it turns out that it's not a hole, but a wolf's footprint. They
keep their lookout on the wolf as they ride away on the Reptar wagon eventually
landing on the river.
The adults eventually find out that the babies are lost somewhere in the
forest. Stu, Grandpa Lou, and Chaz go back to the house to retrieve a flying
pterradactyl named Dactar to use to search for the babies in the air while the
rest of the adults go to the ranger station to ask for help. The babies land on
another section of the forest and meet up with the monkeys from the Russian
circus. They start having fun until Dil starts crying saying that he's hungry.
When Tommy comes and feeds him banana baby food, the monkeys stop playing and
steal the diaper bag. Tommy rushes for it while Phil, Lil, and Chuckie fend off
the monkeys from taking Dil. Eventually, the monkeys took Dil with them.
When Tommy returns with the diaper bag, he finds out that Dil is gone taking
by the monkeys. He asks his friends for help, but they refuse since they don't
like Dil. Tommy, disappointed with his friends' decision, looks for Dil by
himself. Tommy finds Dil with the monkeys and takes him away from them. When
Tommy and Dil find shelter, Dil becomes selfish taking the bottle and the
blanket all for himself. Tommy gets angry as he sees now that Dil is not a good
baby and he doesn't want to be his big brother anymore. Then he searches for the
banana baby food to pour it on Dil for the monkeys to take him away again. But
knowing that it's wrong to do so, Tommy puts the baby food down and takes him
back to the shelter.
Tommy and Dil begin to star loving each other and getting along with one
another. This is actually my favorite scene in the movie. It's so dark, yet so
sweet and captivating seeing the relationship between the two of them.
The next day, the monkeys come back and Phil, Lil, and Chuckie come to their
rescue. Chuckie grabs the last bottle of banana baby food and chases the monkeys
away, Tommy goes to save Chuckie, and Phil, Lil, and Dil go in the Reptar wagon
to find the wizard. Angelica and Chuckie finally meet up with each other and the
monkeys still continue to chase him. Angelica finds Cynthia with another monkey
and she chases after him. Tommy meets up with Spike and together, they find
Chuckie and rescue him. However the monkeys gang up on the babies until Dil
comes in with the Reptar wagon saving them. Angelica sees the Reptar wagon and
rides along with the babies.
They finally stop at a bridge where Angelica flies off the wagon due to a
bump and they stop to rescue her. While doing so, the monkeys come by to pester
them. All of a sudden, they run away. The babies start to cheer, but then find
out that the wolf that has been brought up in the whole movie finally comes out.
Spike fights against the wolf and they both end up falling out of the bridge.
The babies fear that Spike has finally passed on.
Then Stu comes in finding the babies and crashing into the ranger's station
with Dactar as a costume. The babies think that it's the wizard and Tommy makes
a wish for Spike to return. Stu walks on the bridge, crashes below, and Spike
appears just fine. Then the adults come in, hug their babies, and giving them
lots of love and attention. The Russian ringmaster and his assistant come and
greet their monkeys and in the end, everyone is happy. The movie concludes with
the
Raiders of the Lost Ark spoof with Chuckie narrating again saying
that things have now changed for the better since the inclusion of baby Dil.
When the movie first came out, it was a huge hit both critically and
financially. It was #1 at the box office, the ratings were good, and the movie
made more than $140,000,000 overall. It was not only the biggest amount of money
that Nickelodeon Movies made at the time, but it was their first critically
acclaimed movie, and it was the first non-Disney animated movie to have hit the
$100,000,000 mark.
However, to fans of the show, there were some mix reactions. Many people
consider the inclusion of baby Dil as the "jumping the shark" moment for
Rugrats. They hated Dil thinking he was annoying and an unnecessary
character to include. The inclusion of Dil is the reason why some people hate
this movie and think that it was the beginning of the lowing point for
Rugrats.
As for my opinion, I think that the lowing point began when Paul Germain and
the majority of the writers left
Rugrats in 1994. The newer episodes
around 1997 weren't as captivating or as interesting as the first three seasons
of the show. Some of the most iconic moments for me came from those three
seasons: the introduction of the characters, Reptar, the clever pop culture
jokes, the intellectual moments with the babies, Reptar on Ice, and so much
more. When the show came back in '97 without Germain and the writers, it didn't
feel the same to me. The animation looked a bit off, the babies were a lot
dumber, and the episodes don't feel as much inspired. This isn't something that
I noticed when working on this tribute: I felt the same way when seeing it when
I was a kid. At the time, I didn't know why it didn't feel the same: now I
do.
When I first saw
Rugrats in Paris in theaters when I was 12, I felt
the same way as everyone else: I had loved it! But looking back on it now, it's
a cluttered, confusing mess. There are so many story arcs going on at once: you
have the babies, Angelica, the adults, the monkeys, the ringmaster and his
assistant, the park rangers, and the news reporter Rex Pester. Also, it seems
that there are way more pee, poop, and butt jokes on this movie than any of the
Rugrats episode that they had shown at that point. Also, the soundtrack
is a mixed bag. While there are some original songs like "A Gift from a Bob",
"This World is Something New to Me", and the lullaby are nice and catchy, songs
like "Take Me There", the altered versions of "Witch Doctor", "One Way or
Another", "Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Yum" are just meh. The remaining songs are
also forgettable.
Also, just like the majority of the people, I did not like the inclusion of
baby Dil. I found him to be annoying and selfish. Sorry, Tara Strong, I love you
and all, but I don't like Dil.
If you're not a fan of the show or if you have never seen it, it will confuse
the hell out of you to know what's going on. This movie was catered to the fans
and it does not do well to help newcomers explain the plot on what's going on.
However, there are some good things to it: the relationship between Tommy and
Dil turn out nice at the end, the voice actors and animators all did a good job
putting the movie together, and it's faithful to the show. But there are just
too many flaws for me to recommend seeing
Rugrats the Movie. If you
like it, that's fine. But, it's not my favorite.
That's all for now. Tune in next time as we go into the year 1999 with
The Brothers Flub.
Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon. Thanks for reading.
-Patricia