Early Aqua Teen movie reviews

(UPDATE: Apparently, I WON'T be seeing Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres when it comes out April 13th, since it isn't coming to Canada. If that's the case, I'll let you know what the general attitude is towards the flick over the Interweb and let you decide.)

(Source: www.latimes.com)

When a movie is considered controversial, people say, "It'll be loved; it'll be hated." When it comes to the (take a deep breath) Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres, it seems the dividing line is driven deeper than most. For some, ATHF is this generation's Monty Python's Flying Circus or Jean-Luc Godard, but others just think it's garbage.

In a piece on the film, Gina Piccalo over at the Los Angeles Times is suitably guarded about her comments but a sharp-eyed reader can discern her opinion of the movie.

"It takes a certain sensibility to enjoy a show about a floating box of French fries; a giant, self-important milkshake; and a talking wad of meat who share a beat-up house in New Jersey and routinely suffer deaths of fantastic gore," Piccalo writes as her opening line.

She calls the movie, "a virtually plotless, often gory and hallucinatory experience that pokes as much fun at the overwrought Hollywood blockbuster as it does at the Aqua Teen fans themselves. Those would be the more than 1 million viewers, most of them 18-to-34-year-old men, who take this absurdist show far more seriously than the creators intended."

She continues by saying, "fans will get 75 minutes of material so unhinged it makes the TV show look like the MacNeil-Lehrer Report . . . To an outsider, this is either self-indulgent bad writing or fodder for bong hits and acid trips."

Jerry Beck over at Cartoon Brew doesn't mince his words. "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres is, without question, the worst animated film of the year. It may be the worst film (of any type) I’ve ever seen. A text book example of an unfunny comedy, with poor production values; no craft, no art, no laughs, period."

As a respected animated historian, Beck seems like the old guard, caught in the inevitable generation gap. He even admits that he has only seen one episode of ATHF and is "clearly not the intended audience" for the movie.

However, the reviews over at Ain't It Cool News aren't any more sympathetic. 'Chris,' a member on the site, says the flick, "was Sizzler salad bar bad. The chili I ate at the foodcourt beforehand was the highlight of the experience.

"This movie was flat joke after flat joke complete with lame wire-esque fight scenes," Chris writes. "It wasn't so much that a lot of the jokes failed as it was that there didn't seem to actually BE a lot of jokes."

Okay, can we chalk this up to three old fuddie-duddies who just don't "get it?"

Not necessarily. Also at AICN was 'D' who actually appears to be in ATHF's demographic. He isn't any more complimentary towards the flick.

"Awful," 'D' sums up his experience. "There are some fun ideas, but the execution of them is lousy. I wasn't following the show before the screening, but I watched about ten episodes online before heading in, and it definitely doesn't stand up to the show . . . the silence of the crowd was painful, especially in the last 30 minutes. My friend is obsessed with the show, and (he) fell asleep during the movie."

Even the friendlier reviewers aren't having that great a time with it.

"Its language of image and sound rejects everything, so completely and violently divorced from any normal concept of narrative thinking it becomes Dadaesque," writes Ed Gonzales at Slant Magazine. "The musical number that prefaces the movie proper, in which a band of badass concession-stand items play a metal song about movie-theater etiquette, is unquestionably the ****. Alas, the rest of the film is not so easy to defend, given its almost total lack of coherence . . . A second viewing with a joint in hand awaits to determine if its fierce comic bombardment means it's either the worst movie ever made or an act of movie-film revolution."

Josh Tyler at Cinema Blend seems to agree with the stoner aesthetic of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres.

"To get the most out of it," he writes in his review, "you need to be really really high. I wasn’t high when I showed up to see Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For The Theaters (sic) this afternoon, but I laughed at it anyway. It’s random, weird, and completely bizarre. It’s also funny in spots, assuming you don’t care to figure out what the hell is going on."

Overall? Be afraid, be very afraid. I've only seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force a couple of times on TV and I definitely didn't laugh all that much. Whether that makes me an old fart, or somebody with good taste, I'll leave you to judge.

When Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres hits the silver screen on April 13th, you can be sure I'll be there with pen and paper in hand, letting you know what I think.

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