Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters

Adult Swim has some of the funniest shows on television for my money.  I got hooked on Sealab 2021, Robot Chicken and Frisky Dingo just to name a few.  Aqua Teen Hunger Force wasn’t one I got hooked on.  I had picked up one of the season sets and enjoyed watching it, but I didn’t program my DVR or set aside time for it every week.  If it was on, I might watch it, but I might not.  When they announced the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, I greeted the announcement with a resounding, “meh”.  I’ll admit the trailer made me chuckle a little, but I still wasn’t rushing out to see it.

I had a similar reaction when the DVD got released.  I figured someone would have it on sale eventually, or maybe the pawn shops would turn up a copy.  I never saw it on sale and eventually I didn’t see it at all.  I never saw a copy at the pawn shops either… until Sunday.  I stopped at Wills to make a payment on my son’s layaways and started browsing the DVD cases.  They were putting out a bunch of DVDs and in the cabinet I found Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters For DVD, the two disc set.  I don’t normally mention the discs themselves, but the art on these discs made me smile.  Disc One featured a warrior woman astride a motorcycle that looks like it ran into Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell on its way to a Heavy Metal magazine convention.  Disc Two took a page from the Borat DVD’s playbook and looked like a cheap DVD-R burn of the movie.  The writing looks like sharpie and the disc is mostly white or silverish.  If it wasn’t for a very tiny Adult Swim logo on the disc, I would swear it was a burned disc.  The case is also very nice, with the Boris Vallejo/Frank Frazetta homage one sheet front cover and the scribbles in the notebook back cover.

The movie starts with a parody of the old snack bar trailers like Let’s All Go To The Lobby.  The friendly candy and drink and popcorn sings about enjoying the show and not putting your feet on the chair in front of you before they run into another group of singing snacks with a darker message.  A heavy metal snack food band voiced by Mastodon sings their warnings about what will happen if you kick the chair in front of you or attempt to camcord the movie.  This has to be the first song I’ve ever heard that discusses cutting off someone’s nipples with a linoleum knife.  Very funny stuff in my opinion.

The plot jumps all over the place.  The group, which consists of Frylock, Master Shake, and Meatwad, escape an Egyptian tomb only to come face to face with a giant fire-breathing poodle.  Then they find themselves being rescued from another mess by time travelling Abe Lincoln.  When the movie finally starts the plot proper, Master Shake has stolen an exercise machine from next door neighbor Carl that turns into a giant aerobic robot set on pumping Carl up to massive proportions.  Then there is the quest to figure out where the Aqua Teen Hunger Force came from.  Mix in the Moonites, Dr. Weird, and the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past and you’ve got a very strange, but very fun movie. 

Even just being a casual watcher of the show, I was able to follow along with no problems.  Die hard fans probably wet themselves with this movie.  And the DVD is definitely there to make a die-hard ATHF fan’s dream come true.  There’s DVD commentary, an 80 minute deleted movie (basically an early version of the completed film with animatics and rough animation and a slightly different plot), 10 alternate endings (more like 9 different gags that they couldn’t fit into the movie and one alternate ending, but still funny), videos, deleted scenes and a longer version of a Christmas special they did which featured scenes that had been cut from the movie.

The movie is a very warped 3 star fun time.  The DVD is a 5 star product.  This is what a DVD should be.

Family Guy Peter Griffin Vs. The Giant Chicken

I was browsing through FYE back in late January and I ran across what appeared to be a FYE exclusive.  It was a DVD with all three of the Family Guy episodes that featured Peter Griffin fighting the giant chicken.  I have watched Family Guy, but I am not a rabid fan by any stretch.  At the same time, I am not a rabid anti-Family Guy person either.  I think it’s funny, but not as drop dead funny as Robot Chicken or Frisky Dingo.  On average I like South Park better than Family Guy, but there are episodes of Family Guy that I like better than certain episodes of South Park.  That being said, I own all of the Family Guy season sets as well as Blue Harvest and Stewie Griffin. 

Of the three episodes on the chicken trilogy disc, I had only seen one, the middle one.  The first episode on the disc was Da Boom.  Peter is out picking stuff up for a millenium party when he is warned about Y2K and how it would be the end of the world.  Naturally he overreacts and converts his basement into a fallout shelter to protect him and his family from the upcoming apocalypse.  When the clock strikes midnight, all of a sudden Peter is proven right.  Planes fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles launch, the world comes to an end.  Peter and his family now have to deal with the post apocalyptic world and their mutated friends (and eventually family).  The first chicken fight takes place during Peter’s early shopping trip as he explains to a man in a chicken suit why he never accepts coupons from chickens.  Apparently the giant chicken had given Peter an expired coupon and that started their city spanning fight with Peter punching and the chicken pecking until Peter appears triumphant and walks away.  The episode ends with a very special twist ending featuring live action actors from another famous series.

The second episode, Blind Ambition, finds Peter trying to do something that he can be publicly recognized for.  All of his buddies have some sort of award or press accolades, and Peter wants that too.  He ends up deciding to go for a world’s record, but choosing one that causes him to go blind (eating nickels).  This time the chicken ambushes Peter as he is standing on the sidewalk talking to his neighbors.  The fight gets more outlandish, culminating in a Raiders of the Lost Ark spoof with an airplane.

The final episode, No Chris Left Behind, concerns Chris getting kicked out of school in order for the school to improve its standings and receive funds for No Child Left Behind.  Lois talks to her father and he gets Chris accepted at a posh private school for the rich.  Once again the chicken appears out of nowhere and he and Peter are at it again, but this time they end up talking and decide that they don’t really recall why exactly it is that they are fighting.  They shake hands and end up going out to dinner with the wife of the giant chicken at an out-of-the-way restaurant.  The meal goes great, but when it is time to pick up the check, they begin to argue about who gets to pay for the meal.  This leads to another fight and once more Peter walks away the winner.

There aren’t any bonus features as this was done mainly as a promotional item.  All three episodes are enjoyable with Da Boom probably being my favorite.  However if you judge them solely on the chicken fights, No Chris Left Behind probably takes the prize.  Family Guy is a staple of Adult Swim which is about the closest thing we currently have to Night Flight.  So on the Night Flight scale Da Boom gets a 9, Blind Ambition gets an 8 and No Chris Left Behind gets an 8 1/2.  Overall, I would rate the DVD as 3 stars.