Review
'Aqua Teen' movie receives high reviews
April 20, 2007
As I sat down to write my critique of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters," I came to the realization that I had no freakin' clue how to review this movie. For the first time in my nearly nine years of writing movie reviews, I was absolutely stymied. Like the cult TV show it's based off, the "Aqua Teen" movie is a veritable buffet of randomness; 90 minutes in which anything goes, nothing is sacred and you'll either think it's a ginormous waste of time or one of the funniest movies you'll ever see — and me, I'm leaning more toward the latter.
A big-screen version of Cartoon Network's "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," this little slice of insanity focuses on a trio of bickering, super-powered foodstuffs: Master Shake, a perverted milkshake; Meatwad, an idiotic meatball; and Frylock, a super-intelligent order of fries who pretty much rolls his eyes at everything his roommates do. What little plot that manages to creep out of the bizarre script involves the Insanoflex, an exercise machine prophesized to bring about the end of the world as we know it that's also pursued by such characters as Dr. Weird, the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past, and two eight-bit creatures from the moon.
My exposure to "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" having not gone past clips my roommate showed me, I really had no clue what to expect with an hour and a half's worth of the same screwed-up sense of humor. Still, I can pretty safely say that if you think the show is a blast, then this movie will be a dream come true. From a "Let's all go to the lobby" cartoon with a profane twist to its strange knack for setting chickens aflame, "Aqua Teen Hunger Force's" task is to cook up a gag per second and see how much the viewer can take before saying when.
For me, the movie ran a little too thin at times and hit a couple dry patches in scrambling to throw something on the screen. But on the whole, I haven't laughed this hard at a movie since "Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny," another movie where a potty mouth and a tendency to go for the weirdest jokes possible only boosted its hilarity. Just imagine if "Meet the Robinsons" had cranked its funkiness factor up to 11, had a few beers and spent its childhood with Hunter S. Thompson's epileptic brother, Phil.
Comedies are really hard to pin down, since laughter is such a subjective thing. What's funny to one person is about as hilarious as a heart attack to the next, and in the case of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters," I can't quite describe precisely what was so damn funny about it. However, I laughed my ass off, and if the thoughts of an exercise machine spreading destruction, a flying watermelon containing Rush drummer Neil Peart and cult hero Bruce Campbell voicing a giant chicken tender cause you to giggle, then this "Colon's" for you.
A.J. Hakari is a student at UW-River Falls.