Posted: 12/27/2001

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

(2001)

by Hank Yuloff

Last night, my wife, a buddy and his two kids and I ventured to the local multi-plex to see the new Nickelodeon Movies flick, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. If you have kids still in the single digits, you might want to do the same. It is a cute full-length animated movie, but I got to tell you: it only runs an hour and a half but I had less trouble sitting through the three hour Lord of the Rings two nights before.

Jimmy Neutron is, as the title states, a pretty bright kid. I’m rather amazed he’s still in the public school system and not Princeton, but that is a whole other story. Our story begins when Jimmy is launching a communications satellite to better communicate with what he thinks is an intelligent life force beyond our galaxy. Little does he realize that this little step will bring down an armada of aliens bent on making human adults a … well, a human sacrifice to their big chicken god. How Jimmy and his friends rescue their parents and make everything all right is the balance of the movie.

As plots go, that’s not a bad one. We’ve all seen movies with less (see The American Astronaut, et al). What is good about the movie is that they saved some of the yucks for the adults. Especially funny is the relationship between Jimmy and his best friend, Carl Wheezer. When discussing girls, Carl asks innocently, “Jimmy, we don’t like girls yet, do we?” Jimmy answers, “Of course not, but that in the near future, raging hormones may take over their bodies and force them to like the opposite sex.” Having avoided the latency period altogether, I found this to be a poignant moment. But I digress.

I asked the kids what their favorite parts were. Ashlyn, five years old, said she liked Jimmy’s mechanical dog, Goddard. Brandon said it was when the neighborhood kid was peeing in the shower and bragging about it. Evidently that behavior is frowned upon in his household. It was cute to see my friend sit cuddled up with one kid on either side of him. My wife’s favorite part? “The end. I was having a hard time staying awake.”

I have to agree here. While not bad enough to make my bottom list for the year, I can only recommend this if you are bringing the little ones with you. Jimmy is a good kid. Bright, smart, and willing to help his fellow humans which I think is a great lesson to impart on our kids. He is one of the smaller kids in his grade which causes him some consternation but he gets past that with aplomb.

As a final comment, I need to get something off my chest. In what seems another lifetime ago, my better half worked for a production company based on comic book characters. It was from that experience that I learned among other things, that the toys based on animated features are called Action Figures, not dolls. Sure wish I had known that when I was playing with G.I. Joe in the front yard as a kid. The same folk also taught me it was OK for them to dress up in Bunny outfits for Halloween and Holiday Card drawings. And finally, I learned that it was OK to get very close to another writer’s work without crossing the line into downright copying. After seeing Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, I would address all those freaks who actually know what ComiCon is to pull a copy of Barry Ween, Boy Genius by Judd Winick off the shelf and take a look. I’m not saying that Jimmy Neutron was a rip-off, but if you gave Barry a positive attitude instead of being a nasty little shit, then Jimmy N is not so far off.

Hank Yuloff owns an advertising company in Los Angeles and has much better things to do with his Friday nights than swill Diet Coke and eat popcorn. He just can’t remember what they are.

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