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
No comments:
Post a Comment