Rent The Rugrats Movie (1998)

The Rugrats Movie review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

As with any TV show that gets a movie during its current runt, Rugrats expanded the cartoon to such an epic degree that is frankly more frightening in its surrealness. It doesn’t help that Rugrats seemed like a fairly docile concept for a kid’s cartoons. The show focused on the inner lives of babies, where the group of Tommy, Chucky, Phil, Lil, Suzie, and Angelica all have conversations and plots when the adults are away. The show focused on common kid problems and silly baby antics, often involving diapers, cookies, and poop. It seemed like pretty tame material for the wee ones. So why does this film seem so dark?

The premise alone is strange for the areas it wants to explore. Tommy Pickles, the lead baby, and only child, has the unthinkable happen: he has a baby brother on the way. Some logistics are questions but not brought up as well. For instance, the Pickles family consists of the father Stu, a freelance toy inventor, the mother Didi, a school teacher, and the grandfather who resides in the house.

As Stu’s concerned older brother brings up in conversation, Stu has no life savings, stable income, decent healthcare, or insurance. So why is he having another kid? And why is this scene in a cartoon for kids, especially since it’s used to introduce Stu’s latest invention of the car the babies will later drive?

Tommy experiences the coming of his new brother Dill (yes, Dill Pickles) in the weirdest way possible. He ventures off to the hospital were newly born babies all cry out and sing in lyrics that only the babies can understand. But, wait, Tommy can’t understand Dill? Do the babies have a certain age at which they can properly communicate? Why am I thinking about this?

There’s also a somberly strange shift in tone to make Tommy’s plight of being ignored extra heartbreaking. Stu and Didi, overworked trying to care for Dill, neglect a tearful Tommy who just wants a story read to him. Tommy, jealous, then takes it upon himself to get rid of Dill. Naturally, Tommy will learn to live with Dill but their adventure into the woods goes so far as to almost have Tommy commit the murder of his brother with thunder raging in the background.

Peter Chung, the original animator of the Rugrats pilot, once referred to the project as restrictive for the babies having such squat figures, meant to look weird in that classic Klasky Csupo style. The ugly look has an even stranger tinge when placed in the more detailed animation of airbrushed shadows and cooler colors. There’s just something so eerie about the more washed-out look of the theatrical animation, almost as if Zack Snyder directed this film.

There are certainly some wild themes in such a film with references to the Bible in its own subtle way of Tommy and Dill almost representing the story of Cain and Able. But there’s also a lot of notable humor that made Rugrats so notable. The babies with their mispronunciations, babblings and vivid imaginations are decently charming. The adult antics of parents being caught in an overblown world with mild satire coursing throughout is one of the more peculiar aspects of both the show and this film.

Rugrats The Movie has its moments but perhaps tries way too hard to live up to be a bigger, bolder, darker, and the detailed movie adaptation of a TV cartoon. It’s perhaps a low bar to cross but it’s also the more pleasing of the Nicktoons that found their way onto the big screen. Rugrats is, if nothing else, ambitious as a film, which is quite the praise for a series that was all about baby antics.