The Wild Thornberry's Movie

The Wild Thornberrys was a show on Nickelodeon that lasted from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Next to the Rugrats, Spongebob Squarepants, and Hey Arnold!, this was one of the shows from Nickelodeon that received its personal theatrical film, next to it's crossover with the Rugrats. If you guys are wondering on what my thoughts of the franchise are, well, I wouldn't call myself a straight-up fan of the show. I mean, there have been other media that have the concept of a girl talking to animals, like Littlest Pet Shop and All Dogs Go to Heaven, but when we look into this franchise, it makes a bit of a difference since it was both a show and a movie. Anyway, I don't want to babble on here so, let's just get to the review. Will The Wild Thornberrys Movie makes have a new appreciation for one of Nick's famous shows? Or will it show why having the power to talk to animals is something we are thankful to not have? Let's find out.

The Story: The way that it presents itself here is actually pretty great for an animated show turned into a 90 minute feature theater film. It raises some of the stakes quite higher than expected with something like The Wild Thornberrys. It features Eliza THornberry on her biggest adventure yet, which is to save a lost Cheetah cub named Telly from a gang of poachers all while struggling to keep her ability to speak to animals a secret from her family. This would result in her and Darwin to brave many challenges to find the lost cub, like getting through Boarding School; a place recomended by her grandmother, having to disobey her parents, and so much more dangerous stuff. However, even though Eliza is the main focus, the rest of the characters would go through a plot of their own, like Debbie trying to find Eliza with help from a native boy named Boko, Eliza's parents joining forces with Nigel's parents to find Eliza, and Darwin's friendship with Eliza being tested and each shows some development onto the characters. There is a downside to that though, most of these sub-plots feel like filler just to hit that 90-minute mark. That and the fact that what stems Eliza's adventure is a cub being taken, which is a bit of a cliche. However, in a show like The Wild Thornberrys, it actually seems to make the progress work, so I will give it a pass. To sum it all up, even though the story has many mildly unnecesarry gap fill-ins and the main plotline is kind of troped, it does present on what the movie can work with since it is pretty believable for this to be put in The Wild Thornberrys.

The Animation: To say that the animation has changed at all would be a bit of an understatement. Here's what I mean; in the show, the animation looks a bit retro, which is actually believable since the series came out in the 90s which had that type of animation. Here in the movie, it does look a bit more smoother and keeps the down-to-earth nature that the show is known for and this was probably due to the film being released in 2003, a year where animation was having an upgrade. For the background animation, we've pretty much seen countless jungles in the show so the one at the film's start isn't really all that surprising. However, there is the exception with the new surroundings that we see like the Boarding School in London, the amount of land Eliza and Darwin cover after escaping said school, and that giant oasis at the ending climax of the film which adds in some horrific tension and, just to say, that is a heck of a way to raise the stakes. As for the character animation, well again, other than the fact that athe characters now move in a smooth way more so than in the show, I wouldn't really call it a sight-to-see. The animation may not have a lot to offer, but in the hands of the people behind The Wild Thornberrys, they work with what they're given.

The Characters: Let me just tell you guys that since I'm not a Wild Thornberrys fanatic, I propaby won't give the best analyzation of the chaarcters, but I'll do what I can. Since the Wild Thornberrys have hit the big screen, it makes you wonder how they will be executed in the longrun. Starting with Eliza, she's the adventurous pre-teen girl who wants to do what's right, even if it means disobeying the rules. She tries desperately to with-hold knowlegment about her ability to speak-to-animals, but and spoilers, she eventually confesses it to save her sister and is now put in a predicament where she has to save a herd of elephants without her power. I will admit that is some great development on her, but my issue is that she feels like a trope where she's a person who learns that you don't need an extrordinary power to save the day. There's Dawin, the Thornberrys pet Chimpanzee and Eliza's best friend who is sort of the comic relief due his cowardly nature and the fact that he speaks in a Frasier Crane-like british accent. Like Eliza and as I said before, the one development that is known about him is that his relationship with Eliza is put to the test during her mission to save Tally, given the fact that he complains a lot. As for Eliza's family, there's Nigel the absent-minded father and host of a nature show who has more funnier moments that Darwin, Mary-Anne is the camera-lady and mother who is more serious, Debbie is the sarcastic, stereotypical teen girl that has the some development when she has to put aside her snobbiness to save her sister, and Donnie, who I find very annoying given the fact that he's a miniature Tarzan that speaks in gibberish. As for the new characters of the film, there are only three that stand-out. There's Tally, the cheetah cub kidnapped by poachers who is just the dasel-in-distress and does not appear as much, and the Blackburns, Sloan and Bree, who are the main antagonists and the poachers hwo kidnapped Tally. tehy're okay as villains since they have quite an ingenious plan to murder a 200-yard long herd of elephants with a huge electric fence, but there's one thing that kind of bothers me about them they don't reveal that they're evil until near the climax and we only see them in two scenes before they're true is revealed. However, seeing that a surprise bad guy ws rare in the early 2000s, I could give it a pass. The characters here may not have so uch development or interesting aspects, but I'll go along with it since the characters played a part in raising th stkes for the movie.

Well Nickelodeon, it seems you did the best you can do with material given from one of your shows. The Wild Thornberry's Movie may be a bt underrated and somewhat forgetttable, but it is nonetheless an enjoyable film that the family can enjoy. I wouldn't call this film a rental, but if you would like to see it, I recommend that you do. With some development on the characters and an original story, this movie is something that the fans of the show would like to see. It's pretty decent and gives a whole new feeling of the word 'wild', but I digress.

Story: 7/10

Animation: 7/10

Characters: 7/10

Score: 7/10