Demographically challenged, I nonetheless looked forward to spinning The Rugrats Movie DVD because of the following:

1. Animation looks great on the format
2. I had time to kill
3. The Rugrats Movie made a lot of money at the box office--gotta keep my finger on the pulse of the nation

Stop me if I ever watch a movie for those three reasons in combination again. The DVD of The Rugrats Movie looks beautiful, but the film's animation proper does not; time--life--is too precious; and if box office were any correlative to worth, the movie business would be very different indeed. (Aside: the only review quote stamped on The Rugrats Movie packaging is from the "Film Advisory Board, Inc."--films approved by various inane committees as being suitable for "the entire family" tend to have sinister qualities.)

In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I fell asleep during the climax of The Rugrats Movie, something that hasn't happened to me at home since Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (the flick, not the man). Although The Rugrats Movie soars at a breakneck pace, it's boring as hell. The film is an hour-and-a-half of peepee jokes and fart noises and vomiting--it's like a frat-house documentary!

The central title characters are ugly as sin. They have disgusting, cottage cheese heads and severe scoleosis that pronounces the largesse of their behinds. The lead rugrat, Tommy, wears only a baby tee and a "diapie" throughout the film, yet he can speak fully formed sentences. He's clearly the smartest of this bunch, so why don't they let him wear pants? (His father lectures him about responsibility. How about pointing that wisdom at himself and buying his maturing son a goddamn pair of pants!) What's worse, Tommy has no teeth--they draw his gummy smiles. It's cute when a real baby has no molars, but a cartoon character with flappy, fleshy gums is simply revolting.

To summarize The Rugrats Movie's plot, I quoth thee liner notes:

"With the birth of his new baby brother Dylan, Tommy Pickles knew things were about to change, but he never expected that being a big brother could be such an adventure. While attempting to return little Dil to the 'hopsical,' the Rugrats commandeer the Reptar Wagon and inadvertently get lost in the forest."

Regrettably, these are not the same woods where Fargo's Gaer Grimsrud resides--stuffing these brats into a woodchipper would've been the perfect ending.

The Rugrats Movie is a noisy, classless affair. It caters to the latest generation of Nintendo kids, who can't even sit through a commercial for The Rugrats Movie. The camera is constantly moving, and the multi-plane techniques lend some scenes an astounding depth of field, but all that stylishness is unmotivated--activity for the sake of not losing the attention of future ADD sufferers. (Aside: the Rugrats do not teach real children any valuable lesson in their first big screen outing; if they indeed tried to, it even went over my head.)

A few jokes are futilely thrown an adult's way, and they feel pasted in, synthetic. I am remembering fondly the Muppet films, which were written for grown-ups. Kids enjoyed them, anyway, because green Kermit, orange Fozzie, et al are eye-candy to a grade-schooler. A car chase in The Muppet Movie features the following priceless exchange:

Kermit the Frog: "Bear left."
Fozzie Bear: "What?"
Kermit the Frog: "Bear left."
Fozzie Bear: "Right frog!"

A runaway wagon in The Rugrats Movie sees baby Dyl puking on his sitters. This Rugrats picture is entirely lacking in wit.

The DVD presentation of The Rugrats Movie is stunning, however. Without a doubt, if you must subject yourself to this 81-minute torture, on disc is the way to see it. The RSDL offers non-anamorphic widescreen and standard versions. An AB comparison revealed a significant increase in side information on the letterboxed edition. The consensus among studios is that children prefer full-frame to black bars, but take my word for it: genuine rugrats don't have a preference. The 1.85:1 image impresses with an outstanding level of detail. (Because the film is so short, a generally high bit-rate was employed in the compression.) Contrast and colours are immaculate: even in the underlit (or is that darkly painted?) night sequences, the picture is crisp.

The audio on this disc is good, too. The split surrounds are very active; the film features a number of impressive panning effects (particularly when the Reptar is negotiating its way through the busy street). The terrible songs were recorded well for the most part (I despised that bastardization of Blondie's "One Way or Another," but it was the best-sounding tune), though the monkey's "Oo ee ah ah ah" (or however one spells it) came across very flat. (What are chimps doing in the woods just outside of suburban America, anyway?) The 5.1 mix misses several opportunities for booming bass; only a truck and a rolling ball (in the Indiana Jones prologue) caused the subwoofer to rumble. (Incidentally, said rolling ball hints at what a 5.1 remaster of Raiders of the Lost Ark might be like, which is to say, awesome!)

There are a few extras on this DVD, primarily a mildly amusing short entitled "Cat Dog--Winslow's Documentary," which features an animal that is a cat at one end and a dog on the other. (Location of genitalia unknown.) This "doc" is presented in 2 channel stereo: after watching The Rugrats Movie it's a bit disappointing--you'll need to crank the volume. Additionally, there's the expected trailer for The Rugrats Movie. I was surprised that Nickelodeon didn't pressure Paramount to spruce up the menus: kids love CD-ROM style clickable interfaces, and not animating the access interface is a missed opportunity.-Bill Chambers