FilmBlather.com

If you have young kids, there are far worse ways to spend eighty minutes of your life than watching Rugrats Go Wild. Hell, if you don't have kids at all, there are still worse ways to spend eighty minutes -- the first eighty minutes of Bruce Almighty, for example. This is the third movie in the franchise spawned by the very popular Nickelodeon cartoon series, and it is the best by a considerable margin: breezy, snarky and surprisingly clever. Clever, too, is the way the filmmakers effortlessly merge Rugrats with another Nick-show-cum-film-franchise, The Wild Thornberrys. I approached Rugrats Go Wild with resignation and emerged with a big grin on my face.

The series takes an interesting left turn by deciding to focus on the adult characters at least as much, if not more than on the babies and toddlers. This time, the entire Pickles, Finster and DeVille families decide to go on vacation, arranged by absent-minded scientist Stu Pickles. Everyone thinks that they will be boarding the swank "Dr. Lipschutz" cruise ship, but surprise! -- Stu is planning to stuff them all into his little tugboat and shuttle them around the ocean. Angelica's cell phone-toting mother threatens to jump out and swim to the ocean liner.

Soon enough, they all shipwreck on (what they think is a) deserted island. The adults have to improvise a way to survive and get help, which of course involves that they leave all of the children completely unsupervised. Brave little Tommy Pickles gets the brilliant idea to look for tv nature documentary star Nigel Thornberry, because he always spends his time on islands just like this one... and behold, the entire Thornberry family is mixing business with pleasure in that very place. Bratty, bossy Angelica Pickles runs into the even bossier Eliza Thornberry and convinces her that she is an island princess -- one who just happens to know a lot about CD players and such. Meanwhile, Phil and Lil decide to swear off eating bugs (!) after Lil has a traumatic experience.

This is, I think, a leap forward for Nickelodeon Movies. There are considerably fewer gags based entirely on poo, and not as many baby-word-mangling jokes either (though there are still quite a few of those). Instead, the script is full of memorable, quotable one-liners as well as quirky dialogue between the adults. When one of the parents is castigating for eating the baby food, his response is: "Babies don't need food!" Later, the writers come up with the only funny butt-sniffing joke ever, when a panther challenges Spike the dog (voiced by Bruce Willis when the Rugrats meet the Thornberrys, one of whom can talk to animals) to "see these claws," and he cheerfully responds: "Sniff my butt!"

Even late in the film, when the emphasis shifts to adventure and daring rescue scenes, the script never loses its bite. I've always found the simple, bright animation of the show and the films to be a pleasing alternative to the hyperrealism emphasized by Disney and Pixar, and combined with the somewhat more elaborate but no less colorful style of Thornberrys, the look of the movie is an improvement on that of its predecessors. The less discerning audience of toddlers and pre-teens will be just as delighted as before, and the parents will be less bored than usual.