Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon The Movie Film For Theaters

Released by: Turner Home Entertainment
Released on: 8/14/2007
Director: Dave Willis, Matt Maiellaro
Cast: Dana Snyder, Carey Means, Dave Willis, Andy Merrill, Mike Schatz
Year: 2007
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The Movie:

What do an order of french fries, a milk shake and a ball of rancid meat have in common? Besides consisting of a McDonald's meal that turns into liquid pain, they make up The Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a cheaply animated (but very funny) cartoon on The Cartoon Network, as part of their “Adult Swim” line-up. For those not familiar with the show, Frylock, Master Shake, and Meatwad are a crime stopping team that never really do anything involving stopping bad guys. Instead they inhabit their run-down rented house and do horrible things to their loser next-door neighbor, Carl, and interact with a slew of low-IQ aliens, monsters, robots, and madmen.

The movie starts out with a spoof on a “Let's go to the snack bar” jingle with singing food, only to be interrupted by another singing food group, performed by the metal band Mastodon, in one the highlights of the movie. Every single flick played for the rest of time should have this played before it. I'm serious.

So then on to the plot which is not too tough to follow. The Hunger Force assemble a piece of exercise equipment, “The Insanoflex”, which is destined to destroy the world, as told by the Cybernetic Ghost Of Christmas Past From The Future robot. As a result they need to stop the machine-turned-robot from destroying everything, and in the meantime learn more about where they, The Aqua Teens, came from.

Also interested in “The Insanoflex” are the Plutonians, a pair of spiked aliens, and the mad scientist Dr. Weird. Add to the foolishness the Mooninites, a couple of aliens who look like old video game graphics and like nothing more than to cause trouble for whatever stupid reason they choose. But, there is yet another party playing a role in all this: an alien who looks like a slice of watermelon, flies a watermelon shaped spaceship, and has Rush drummer Neil Peart with him on his ship…and the hilarity ensues.

There are some great moments in the movie, especially for fans of the show. Aside from the aforementioned singing snack bar items, the time-traveling Abe Lincoln's battle with the FBI is a standout scene. Where its rated “R”, adult language flies around a bit and I can not explain why, but it's funny to hear Carl the neighbor or Dr. Evil drop the F-bomb. The highlight though for me was The Plutonians. They steal pretty much any scene they're in, whether they're marveling over a tiny caterpillar (“Destroy it!”), making out to avoid being caught doing something else (“…you a good kissah…”), or discussing their part in the word's destruction (“Is there like a giant pot that destroys the world that I might have glazed?”). Maybe it's his stereotypical German accent, but just about anything Oglethorpe (the yellow Plutonian) says cracks me up. Keep an ear peeled for cameo voices, including Bruce Campbell and Tina Fey.

The television show is only an average of around ten minutes per episode, and like most movies based on short subjects (practically ANY Saturday Night Live movie-based-on-a-sketch) filling 90 minutes can be a challenge. After watching a few seasons of the show I watched the movie, and I really didn't find it as funny as I hoped. There's some good stuff here, but overall it fell short in delivering the same effect the show does for me. I love the Plutonians and the Mooninites, and honestly would really like to see them in their own show (actually in Season Four, the intro for each episode was a piece of a failed pilot featuring the quirky aliens called Spacecataz). In the movie the makers underused these hilarious characters, which I feel was the downfall of the movie. The 2-disc set features a “deleted movie” which I liked better (see below under extras).

Video/Audio/Extras:

Presented with an aspect ratio 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. As it's a cartoon, there are no natural colors to see, so there's not much point in talking about how things like flesh tones look. The animation, although simple, is appealing to the eyes: the colors are crisp, the blacks look nice and dark, and the images are clear. I saw no visible artifacts or defects. I didn't even notice a layer switch. It looks great on my setup, and the 1.85:1 is a nice change from the 4:3 ratio of the television show.

The feature film has a 2.0 mono track and a Digital Dolby 5.1 track, with no distortion or issues to report. Aside from the music and the Neil Peart drum solos, the 5.1 track didn't really stand out. I didn't watch it with the 2.0 option, but I am willing to bet I wouldn't have noticed much different. This also has commentary track, discussed in the extras section.

Where the movie didn't excite me all that much, I found the extras to be the real treat with this 2-disc release.
Disc One
- Audio Commentary: Being somewhat of a commentary junky, I really enjoy a good one, usually ones with people involved with making the movie. This one had the guy who does Shake's voice, but other than that it was people who had nothing to do with the movie, and I had a tough time getting through it. I recommend it only for the completists.
- Trailers: Three different ones. Well, actually they're all similar and not much different from one another.
- “The Thing We Shot Wednesday Night”: I really enjoyed watching this extra. At a little over 26 minutes long, we get treated to table readings, a sort of impromptu round table discussion (minus the table), and some behind-the-scenes action. It's neat to see the faces behind the voices. Certainly not one of those fluff pieces where everyone goes around saying how talented so-and-so is or how giving they are as a performer. Just a bunch of regular looking Joes having a good time making a silly movie.
- “Art & Music Gallery: Just over 16 minutes of concept drawings, unfinished artwork, background art, and unfinished animation set to music from the film. Interesting to watch, but I found it a bit dull after a few minutes.
- “Jon Schnepp 3D”: Just shy of three minutes worth of 3-D animation used in the beginning of the movie and on the DVD menus. Set to music from the show.

Disc Two
- “Deleted Movie”: A great feature. A second version of the film (in 4:3 aspect) with unfinished artwork, which includes the mouths on the character not moving, and much of the animation is not fluid. It doesn't matter with a cartoon like this though, because the finished animation looks kind of cheap anyway. It has a running time of just under 80 minutes (compared to the 87 minute running time of the feature), and much of the film is the same as the finished product, but with a few glaring differences. One of which is the omission of the watermelon alien who plays a key part in the plot of the actual movie. Another is the inclusion of more of The Mooninites in scenes totally cut out of the final release. Plus, the ending is totally different. Overall, I enjoyed the “deleted movie” more than I did the theatrical version (except it's missing the singing food intro).
- “Fake Endings”: Ten different endings, apparently made for the heck of it. Some are pretty good, other…meh.
- Deleted Scenes: A lot of these were included in the “Deleted Movie”, but the artwork is finished in these. Most of them are extensions of scenes that were used, but one in particular “Star-Studded Xmas Spectacular” was actually broadcast as two episodes of the television show and included on the Season Five DVD set.
- Music Videos: There are nine different “videos”, a number of which are Behind-The-Scenes footage of people who worked n the music in the film, set to the song they contributed. There is also one of Shake and Meatwad playing guitar with the Mastodon singing food characters, plus a few live performances by various bands.
- “Pete's Promos”: Various promotional items broadcast on television, plus a fake interview with the voice of Shake, Dana Snyder.

The Final Word:

A very satisfying 2-disc set whether you're a true fan of the show or movie, or even just a fan of extras. For me, where the movie didn't really shine, the extras, especially the “deleted movie”, really made up for it. I have no regrets picking this one up, nor do I regret devoting the time I did to watch everything on it.