November 26, 2017

Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie Review

Now that the tears of nostalgia have finally subsided into a steady drip, I can finally offer up my thoughts on Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie and boy, are those thoughts biased as hell! Just take a look at what I tweeted after watching it for the first time.

You can also check out my article for SYFY WIRE about how ’90s kids and social media revived Hey Arnold! at Nickelodeon. It includes a great interview with the show’s creator, Craig Bartlett as well the voices of Helga and Phoebe, Francesca Marie Smith and Anndi McAfee. As you can imagine, that was quite a dream come true for me.
With that shameless self-promotion out of the way, on to the review!

REVIEW:

I’m as big a Potterhead as they come, but it took me a year to re-watch Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them after seeing it in the theater. I’m a major Star Wars nut who recently bought a Porg mug, but I haven’t seen The Force Awakens since the movie first came out in 2015. For Hey Arnold!, however, I watched The Jungle Movie two times in the same night and three times in a 24-hour period. I loved it more and more with each viewing where another movie might bore me after a single watching.

Why is that? What makes a cartoon from the late 1990s and early 2000s so special? If you don’t know the answer, then you clearly didn’t come of age in the ’90s, raised on a steady diet of Rugrats, Invader Zim, The Wild Thornberrys, and Hey Arnold! from Nickelodeon’s OG programming block. For me, Hey Arnold! is an example of evergreen classic of American television for two reasons.

The first is that the series was wholesomely entertaining while imparting important life lessons about growing up, falling in love, the importance of family, and standing up for one’s beliefs. Arnold! was the rare cartoon that made you think and stuck with you long after the half-hour had ended. Names like Helga Pataki, Stoop Kid, Grandpa Phil, Monkey Man, Dino Spumoni, Chocolate Boy, and Principal Wartz remain fresh and dear in our memories as if they are old friends. Moreover, who could forget Brainy’s heavy breathing, Arnold’s wickedly cool room, Jim Lang’s instantly recognizable theme song, the Tomato Incident, Yahoo Soda, Arnold and Gerald’s wobbly thumb handshake, how Lila only “likes” Arnold, but doesn’t “like, like him,” Helga’s closet shrine to Arnold, Eugene’s terrible luck, Harold trying to flee the responsibility of his Bar Mitzvah, or the time you cried like baby as Mr. Hyunh reunited with his long lost daughter on Christmas? All of the above is just from memory, proving that it wasn’t just another kid’s show. It’s special and to this day with my own parents still bringing up moments from the series.

The second reason is that something about the show goes beyond its content and enters that ethereal region we know as nostalgia. Like your mother’s home cooking or a beloved stuffed animal, a property like Hey Arnold! has the rare ability to make me feel like a kid again, sitting in the den of my childhood home with its brown carpeting, watching Rocket Power, and Doug. Parents may deplore the disadvantages of spending too much time in front of the “idiot box,” but these shows helped create my memories of growing up, of spending time with friends and family, of learning the hard truths of life through a cartoon. Over the years, these things have become more of an indescribable feeling of comfort than actual shows as if I a dog being conditioned to salivate at the ring of a bell. The more my life changes, the more I cling to these abstract emotions that are triggered by shows like Hey Arnold!

That’s why, aside from a new animation style and updated fashions for the characters, Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie is the closest thing to a time machine I’ve ever seen. For me, it’s a step back to an era of the Nickelodeon original movies like As Told by Ginger: Summer of Camp Caprice, The Wild Thornberrys: The Origin of Donnie, Rocket Power: Race Across New Zealand, and The Fairly OddParents: Abra-Catastrophe!. Not only did these special events use a nicer quality of animation not seen in regular episodes, they also told well-rounded and emotionally-resonant stories that dared to be bigger than what we usually saw week-to-week. You’d laugh, you’d cry, and you’d come away with some kind of moral or appreciation for life. It sounds like I’m making these things to be more romantic than they are, but that’s the entire point of nostalgia, isn’t it? To romanticize?

The Jungle Movie feels like one of those original movies, which means Nickelodeon, while changing and cancelling a lot of its old shows in the time since I was a young kid, has still go it. Following the events of 2002’s “The Journal” (which I remember watching live), The Jungle Movie revolves around Arnold uncovering the mystery of his parents who went missing in the Central American country of San Lorenzo on a mission to cure the enigmatic Green-Eyes of a virulent sleeping sickness. This left Arnold, as a toddler, to be raised by his grandparents. Thirteen years we’ve waited for an answer and now we’ve finally got one; it was well worth the wait and everything we could have possibly hoped for in the closure we so desperately wanted from the series. Not just about Arnold’s parents, but about his relationship with Helga, and his last name, which was never spoken aloud during the show, at least not overtly. Turns out, Grandpa Phil’s nickname of “Short Man” for our hero was a syllabic pronouncement of their actual surname of “Shortman” as Phil is Arnold’s paternal grandfather.

All the complex feelings come rushing back during the first few minutes opening. Tears will well up in your eyes during the opening dream sequence where Arnold’s parents leave for “one last mission” and then a big grin will split across your face as Granda Phil (Dan Castellanata) comes out of the bathroom with his trademark saying of “Don’t go in there for a while.”

Above the ultimate adventure and grander scope not seen since Hey Arnold!: The Movie, it’s the familiar characters, their original voice actors, and personalities that carry the movie: Arnold’s wisdom beyond his years, Gerald’s skepticism about his best friend’s decisions, Helga’s defense mechanism of bullying, Mr. Simmons’s ignorant optimism, Harold’s penchant to eat everything, Nadine’s hobby of collecting bugs, Curly’s flair for the dramatic, Phoebe’s quiet genius, Rhonda’s stuck-up attitude, Pookie’s near-demented outlook on the world. All the familiar archetypes of the Hey Arnold! mythos, established for almost ten years between ’96 and ‘004, are on display. But the familiarity and pitch perfect execution makes you feel like no time has passed. I just wonder why we didn’t see more of Arnold’s old classmates like Sheena and Iggy or hear any lines from Mr. Green the butcher, Mrs. Vitello the florist, or Harvey the mailman (although his voice actor, Lou Rawls did pass away in 2006).

It begins as a usual episode with Arnold (Mason Vale Cotton) moping about his missing parents like we saw in “Parents Day” and “The Journal.” Then an opportunity arises to win his class a free trip to San Lorenzo through a group called Helpers for Humanity. All they have to do is make a video about humanitarian work in the neighborhood. After a plan to build a habitat for Monkey Man goes terribly wrong, Helga (Francesca Marie Smith) leads the charge to create a video about all the ways Arnold has helped the city. It plays like a highlight reel of the show’s greatest hits in order to bring fans (and non-fans alike) up to speed while hilariously revealing that Helga, who harbors a secret love for the football head (doy!), has been taping his selfless exploits all these years.

Hey Arnold! got its name because the show was all about how Arnold helped others in need, even when those people had been shunned or written off by society. Arnold has a heart of gold who doesn’t give up on people, both kids, adults or animals, and The Jungle Movie is a great role reversal in that others must guide him in his greatest time of need. Above all, though, he’s been a force for kids to be kids, for them to be happy, and the apotheosis of that spirit is in The Jungle Movie.

Helga’s hard work pays off and the P.S. 118 class gets the trip to San Lorenzo where Arnold hopes to uncover what happened to his missing parents. Once they get there, however, things start to go south in the jungle as they get captured by La Sombra, a nefarious river pirate who was foiled by Arnold’s parents way back in the day. He’s voiced by Alfred Molina and the use of this A-list actor isn’t just for the hell of it. In fact, it’s an example of perfect casting as Molina’s second movie role ever was during the first  scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark one of Jone’s South American guides who betrays him out of greed. Given the fact that The Jungle Movie‘s main MacGuffin is a mystical artifact of the Green-Eyed People known as the Corazon in a booby-trapped jungle, it was a stroke of genius to hire the Indy actor for an Easter Egg most kids won’t even pick up on. La Sombra’s interest in Arnold has to do with a Green-Eyes prophecy that he believes will gain him the treasure he hopes to sell.

Thanks to the advent of cell phones and the Internet, Bartlett expertly tackles the passage of time by bringing the movie into the 21st century. Rhonda is constantly taking selfies (because she’s definitely the basic girl who would) and The Pataki family has relocated to the Big Bob’s Beeper Emporium, now serving as their home. The Jungle Movie keeps all the original show’s sensibilities while updating it for today’s culture and audiences.

Then there’s Jim Lang’s hauntingly beautiful score, which, when paired with the film, particularly Arnold reuniting with his parents, will make you weep for your lost childhood. Just listen to THIS and tell me your eyes aren’t wet. Adventure was always been a core theme of the original series as Arnold was always daydreaming about getting into dangerous situations (thanks to Phil’s tall tales about his parents’ experiences in the jungle), so this all feels like a cathartic culmination of sorts for him and for us. There’s definitely plenty of fan service here, but it never comes off as over-the-top or insincere. I was worried about the animation’s deviation from the style of the original show, but it was completely fine and allowed for more visual grandeur and cleaner edges so-to-speak in the final product, which make it look more cinematic. By the end, you’ll be itching to hit the replay button too. I loved spending time with these characters and that kiss at the end, well, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie is not only more than 13 years in the making, it is a priceless gift to everyone who grew up with this show. I watched this movie three times in such a short period because it was (at least for me) perfect in every way–a beacon of a simpler time, a tight embrace from your mother after you fell off the monkey bars, and a steaming mug of hot chocolate on a blistery cold winter’s day all rolled into one. Watching it made me instantly comfortable and content. Funny, dramatic, sad, heartfelt, suspenseful, and tremendously nostalgic, the feature is one I didn’t want to leave and I honestly wish I could give everyone involved with the production a big hug for fulfilling my wildest dreams and then some. This review nor any other review will ever capture the immensity the love and happiness I have for The Jungle Movie. There’s just too much to express here and maybe, at some later date, I can rally my thoughts a little better than this.

During my phone call with Craig, he mentioned that if the movie does well, Nick would consider a reboot and while The Jungle Movie is a perfect way to close out the series, I honestly wouldn’t mind re-entering this world with new adventures, especially now that Arnold’s finally in middle school!

With that, I begin my binge-watch of the original series on Hulu…

Verdict: 5 stars, 10/10, 2 thumbs way up