‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force’

‘If you don’t like it, go away,’ say Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro of their TV cartoon-turned-‘movie film.’

By: Elise Nakhnikian
   You know how Meatwad and Shake can get on Frylock’s last nerve? No? Then you probably want to give Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters a pass.
   The trailer is a hoot, using a stentorian voiceover and old-school event-movie-ish titles to list a string of theatrical clichés that won’t be in this one, including "an ancient wizard, a child with a secret, a woman with a past, a galaxy torn asunder, a cop on the edge, a tomb, (and) a mythical kingdom."
   That — plus the pitch-perfect spoof of old-school snack bar promos that starts the movie and its faux-grandiose title — might lead you to think ATHF creators Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro had some fun with this new format, spoofing Hollywood’s absurdities and excesses when they turned their TV cartoon about a trio of fast food items into a movie.
   And you’d be wrong. The "movie film" of Aqua Teen Hunger Force is basically just a longer version of the post-coherent stoner TV ‘toon, stringing together the same kinds of nonsensical non sequiturs that make up the quarter-hour-or-so segments of ATHF on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming.
   ATHF is part of the trend most famously described by the creators of Seinfeld, that smartass "show about nothing" that was cooked up in deliberate opposition to the conventions ruling TV sitcoms. But because ATHF is R-rated and animated, it can bend conventions far more than a live-action, prime-time network show ever could.
   Pitched to appeal to the inner adolescent clamoring to break out of so many of us Americans, ATHF is heavily salted with jokes about sex, digs at the detritus of popular culture, and eyeball-rolling at the many ways we mistreat our bodies — from porking out to pumping iron to getting a tan-in-a-can.
   But that’s all just background color for an endless loop of boyishe behavior as our heroes — Frylock, a relatively stern and cerebral cardboard box of French fries; Meatwad, a sweet-natured but dimwitted meatball; and Master Shake, a milkshake with attitude — trade insults, play games, get into absurd adventures, surf the net, and, as their page on the Adult Swim site puts it: "you know… hang out."
   Like South Park, ATHF is aggressively primitive in its execution, using flat renderings of characters that look as if they were drawn by a child and keeping the backgrounds simple and static, but it makes the most of its medium in other ways. Frylock, Meatwad and Shake shape-shift, time travel, shoot death rays at their enemies, and otherwise defy the laws of nature. There’s also a fair amount of blood and gore — all played for laughs, Itchy and Scratchy-style. As in South Park, principal characters often die — all three are killed or badly mauled in the movie — but they never stay injured or dead for long.
   There are actually traces of a plot here and there in the movie, which is loosely built around the trio’s attempt to stop a runaway exercise machine from destroying the world. It also includes a classic quest by the three to discover their roots, which plays out past the point of absurdity, adding twist upon twist upon twist. As Dr. Weird, the mad scientist from the Jersey Shore, tells them, "you have all been created for a very ridiculous reason."
   But like the TV show, the movie is mainly an excuse to spend time with the regulars. These include Dr. Weird; Carl, the fast-food trio’s neighbor; the Plutonians, jagged-edged creatures that look like extremely rough sketches brought to life; and the Mooninites, which look and move like pieces from a primitive video game. There are also cameos by rap master P Pants and Space Ghost, the intergalactic interviewer whose cheerily surrealistic show was the training ground for Willis, Maiellaro and a lot of the rest of the ATHF crew.
   You don’t have to know and love these characters to like the movie, but I’m sure it helps. I don’t follow the TV show, and though I liked the movie’s nonsensical, anti-sentimental tone enough to find it a pleasant way to pass a rainy afternoon, I laughed less than I do at an average episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.
   In an ign.com video clip housed on Rotten Tomatoes, the interviewer asks Willis and Maiellaro what they’d like to say to non-fans to entice them to the theater. "If you don’t like it, go away — that’s what we want to tell them," says Willis.
   You heard the man.
Rated R for crude and sexual humor, violent images and language.