Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (2007)
Directed by: Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis
Premise: A feature version of the cult cartoon program. Mastershake, Frylock, and Meatwad must save the world from being destroyed by an out of control weightlifting system.
What Works: Aqua Teen Hunger Force requires a specific kind of taste to be enjoyed. For fans of the television series, this film will be a lot of fun to watch, as it captures the absurd, nonsensical humor of the show. For the uninitiated, the main characters Mastershake, Frylock, and Meatwad are a milkshake cup, a French fry container, and a meat patty who live together. The supporting cast includes pixilated characters from an early video game system and a watermelon that speaks with a Jamaican accent. This gives a taste of what kind of sensibility Aqua Teen Hunger Force is told from and if viewers are willing to go that far, they will probably go the rest of the way. The film is largely one big in-joke for fans of the show, as characters and scenarios from the television series drop in and out of the story.
What Doesn’t: The trouble with an Aqua Teen Hunger Force feature is that, even at eighty-six minutes, the whole experience is long to sit through. In a half-hour episode on the Cartoon Network, the show is able to maintain its sense of absurd energy, but beyond that, the joke is over extended and the film is not much more than an elongated television episode.
Bottom Line: At its best moments, Aqua Teen Hunger Force is a hilarious piece of absurd Dadaist art. This film has little social value and does not add up to much more than an hour and a half of distraction but for those who get the joke this will be a funny distraction.
Episode: #139 (April 29, 2007)