Okay so for the past couple of months I decided to go through the entire series of Hey Arnold!. As a kid, I never really got into it outside of seeing a couple of episodes from time to time but I kind of wanted to secretly, and that's when I took the opportunity to finally get into a little after finding it on Netflix. Now during the end of the series, they released a theatrical movie based on the show that I decided to watch before watching the last 5 ish episodes of the show. So here's how it turned out.
Plot: The movie starts off with a man named Scheck, the CEO of a real estate company called Future Tech Industries (FTI), who wants to buy the property of Arnold neighborhood and destroy in order to turn it into a big shopping mall. This leaves Arnold and his best friend Gerald to find a way to stop him while the girl bully, Helga who secretly loves Arnold is torn between helping Arnold and maybe even confessing her love and siding with her father who intends to become rich from making the shopping mall.
GGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! WHAT THE HECK WAS I WATCHING!?!?!?! JUST- GI- RAZZAN-FRAZZIN-SONOVA- wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. *takes a deep breath* Okay, sorry. Let me back up. So here's the thing, I do like the show. I mean it's not a great show, but it was nice with some of the stories, the setting, and it had some good characters. Especially with Helga. Any episode that went a little further into her obsession with Arnold was always fascinating and a lot of fun, making her a particularly enjoyable character. So altogether in a nice show. In fact, much like other kid shows like Ducktales, The Transformers, and Darkwing Duck, I think it's a show that I was better off getting into more now being grown up then I ever really would have as a kid. Anyway, when I planned to see this movie, I had no idea what the ratings for it was, just that supposedly it wasn't that great of a film. And I figured that since most movies based on an animated tv show either good or bad at least had a nice way of going big throughout the films like Reccess: School's Out, The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, and The Simpsons Movie, I hoped that even if I find this movie bad, I'd at least get something around those lines with this movie. Sadly, I was so wrong, it was kind of disturbing. Not only was the movie bad in terms of things like the script being unoriginal and the villain being one-dimensional, but it was very bland, lacked a lot of energy, and worst of all, it was super rushed. In fact, the way they structured this movie, it kind of raises eyebrows over the fact that they actually made this into a theatrical film. I mean at least the other films based on movies would take their time to introduce the main characters and some of the all around world that they live in so it gives people who know the show something they are familiar and comfortable with, and gives people who don't know the show an idea of what the show is so that they may begin to be interested in watching the show as the movie progresses. But from the very beginning of the movie they just showed the credits with pretty much no music and then kind of just gave us the problem Arnold as to face right in front of our faces without really doing anything aside from that. I mean as a whole, this film half acts like a big TV movie special from a show where you don't have to introduce anyone necessarily, but at the same time it's so rushed that even as a TV special from the show it wouldn't make sense. Really no matter what this movie is, it was poorly paced because they just threw the whole story and close to never really slowed down. Another issue is that the film didn't really have any music. They would play a little during some 'big suspenseful' moments in the film but it never really had a soundtrack. Which is especially a problem because I think that's a big factor in giving the film energy with what is happening. The last thing I want to point out is that I hated with that they did for Arnold and Helga. I won't say anything, but personally, I thought what they were doing during the end was great, but they ruined it at the actual end of the movie. Ultimately, I think the right way to generalize what was wrong was this movie was that it seemed to lack conviction in itself as a film, big time. Because again, from my perspective, if you're making a theatrical film or even a tv special that's based on a show and is suppose to be a big deal, you kind of have to go big with kind of everything from story, animation, music and so on. But in the case of Hey Arnold! The Movie, the super quick pacing, lack or originality and music, and just how disappointingly blunt it was, it just seemed like it didn't entirely believe in itself even though the makes expected to make money off of it. (which they hardly did.)
And that's my review for Hey Arnold! The Movie. Maybe some fans liked it anyway just because it was still Arnold and his friends on an adventure and stuff like that, but otherwise to me, while the moment where something big seemed like was going to happen with Helga's feelings for Arnold was probably the best part of the movie, it was easily ruined, leaving us with a movie that had no energy, very rushed, lacked originality, and altogether was not an enjoyable film.
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