Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001)
September 25, 2018 12:17 PM - Subscribe
An eight year-old boy genius and his friends must rescue their parents after the adults are abducted by aliens.
Roger Ebert:
Roger Ebert:
Their space travel is conceived by the filmmakers in a way that is not only charming but kind of lovely. Jimmy converts some of the rides in an amusement park into spaceships, and we see a Ferris wheel, an octopus ride and a merry-go-round journeying across the field of stars. In another inspired conceit, they stop for the night on an asteroid, build a campfire, and frighten one another with campfire ghost stories.Trailer
"Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" is a Nickelodeon production, frankly aimed at grade-schoolers. It doesn't have the little in-jokes that make "Shrek" and "Monsters, Inc." fun for grown-ups. But adults who appreciate the art of animation may enjoy the look of the picture, which is a kind downsized "Toy Story," with a lot of originality in the visual ideas.
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Jimmy Neutron pushed the boundaries for how low-rent a CGI feature from a major studio could look. It's telling how quickly the movie rolled into a TV series that looks virtually indistinguishable. It also approached the Uncanny Valley problem a lot of early CGI had by leaning hard into making everything look plastic and cartoony. This approach was then copied by a lot of other studios, including ones that really ought to have known better, to the detriment of good animation everywhere.
So like I said, I have no particular hatred of Jimmy Neutron, but I knew it for what it was at the time and the time since has not been kind to it.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:35 PM on September 25, 2018