Review: Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters

This jambalaya of pop clutter, more perplexing than humorous in its insane brinkmanship, never stops boggling the mind.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
Photo: First Look International

A publicity campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force recently caused panic in Bean Town. Now the movie Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters threatens to destroy us all with its abstract comic assault. One sober viewing of the movie, which is premised on the need to explain how Meatwad, Frylock, and Master Shake first met, is impossible to tell if its one for the ages (like, say, Pootie Tang), but it’s tempting to give this motha the benefit of the doubt for its denunciation of the prevailing standards of cartoon art. Unlike Family Guy’s vocabulary of random acts of violence, absurd anecdotes, and pop-culture references, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie is never predictable. Its language of image and sound rejects everything, so completely and violently divorced from any normal concept of narrative thinking it becomes Dadaesque. 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 shit. Alas, the rest of the film is not so easy to defend, given its almost total lack of coherence. Against the panic of an Insanoflex exercise machine that wrecks the story’s burb to the tune of a hilarious teen-pop anthem (“I Like Your Body”), Meatwad, Frylock, and Master Shake learn of their origins via a series of strange confrontations with Dr. Weird, his assistant Steve, two-dimensional fucktards Ignignokt and Err, and the homoerotic posse of Oglethorpe, Emory, and the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past. Always commenting on its own hare-brained self, the film gets its shits and giggles from burning chickens, a shirt that reads Girl Quest 2007, exploding kittens, a Phil Collins song in the air tonight, references to head cheese and bull semen, a getaway vehicle that never gets away, and star-shaped transitional wipes (with breathy audio accompaniment) during a crucial explanatory montage. Like the video cassette system on the back of someone’s head, which a character wows to by saying, “It’s like David Cronenbergian up in here!,” this jambalaya of pop clutter, more perplexing than humorous in its insane brinkmanship, never stops boggling the mind. 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.

Score: 
 Cast: Dana Snyder, Dave Willis, Carey Means, Andy Merrill, Mike Schatz, Matt Maiellaro, Fred Armisen, Bruce Campbell, C. Martin Croker, George Lowe, Chris Ward, Chris Kattan, Neil Peart, Larry Blackmon, Isaac Hayes III, Schooly-D  Director: Matt Maiellaro, Dave Willis  Screenwriter: Matt Maiellaro, Dave Willis  Distributor: First Look International  Running Time: 87 min  Rating: R  Year: 2007  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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