I enjoyed both the movie and the series when I was a kid. Then, my sisters were rewatching the series a few months ago and it just seemed dull and childish. However, I just finished watching the movie and I honestly think that it's much, much better!
Here are just a few things that the movie got right that the show messed up:
a) The characters seemed like actual people. For example, on TV, Sheen, Carl, and Hugh are each just constant running gags about Ultralord, llamas, and ducks, respectively. Here, each of them had dimension. Sheen did talk about Ultralord a lot, but not nearly as often. His single, greatest moment in the movie is when he doubts his ability to get the transporter ship and Jimmy simply asks him, "What would Ultralord do?" Carl talks about llamas only once or twice. For the most part, he's just an innocent, fragile boy trying to keep up with his genius friend. Hugh plays with a duck toy once and then quacks while under mind-control. He's just not the brightest guy again trying to keep up with his genius son. These are pretty well-developed characters, so it's odd that the series which had much more time to develop them managed to make them less dimensional.
b) The humour was much wittier in the movie. I burst out laughing several times during that 90 minutes, which was unexpected because I try to maintain a high standard of humour. Jokes like, "What are the research standards for these show-and-tell projects?" "Oh, hello Toast! I greatly admire your ship!" and "So...they didn't really leave the tent?" are much cleverer than a lot of the drivel I saw on the series.
c) Huh...I thought I had another point. Oh, well. That pretty much wraps it up.
reply
share