Billy and Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure (NR)

Gruesome, goofy cartoon movie better for tweens+.

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Movie details

Studio: Cartoon Network
Cast: Richard Steven Horvitz, Grey DeLisle, Greg Eagles
Running Time: 160 minutes
Release Date: 03/30/2007
Video/DVD Release Date: 04/03/2007
Genre: Family and Kids
MPAA Rating: NR

Parents need to know

Parents need to know that this gory but somehow witty cartoon is aimed at older tweens and teens and is not meant for the younger set. A surly girl and her idiotic brother follow their best friend, the Grim Reaper, on a harrowing adventure filled with fart jokes, insults, and an undeniably funny cast of characters. You may laugh as you watch it with your kids, then cringe to hear them repeating lines afterwards. Mercifully, the movie runs only 75 minutes, not 160 as the disc and packaging indicate.

Families can talk about whether they find the cartoon funny or annoying. Do you think, as the Boogey Man believes, that kids today see so much violence on TV that they are harder to scare than in prior generations? Does a cartoon like this help or hurt that argument?

Message
Violence
Sex
Language

Message

Social Behavior:

Almost buried under the snide dialogue, cartoon violence, and potty humor is a message that friends stick together -- even if one of the friends is the personification of Death.

Consumerism:

Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco:

Violence

Copious and graphic in an old-school way, meaning that there are no lingering effects on the characters (except for the pirate who jumps into a fire lake filled with sharks, and spends the rest of the cartoon as a skeleton with hanging flesh chunks). With the Grim Reaper as a primary character, you're not in Disneyland anymore.

Sex

Irwin plants a long kiss on unconscious Mandy, to her horror.

Language

No cursing but plenty of rudeness and vulgarity.

Common Sense says

What's the story?

Reviewed by Nancy Davis Kho

BILLY AND MANDY'S BIG BOOGEY ADVENTURE starts with a glimpse of a post-apocalyptic future in Mandy (voiced by Grey DeLisle) and Billy (Richard Horvitz)'s hometown of Anytown, USA, with Billy and his friend Irwin (Vanessa Marshall) trying to travel two weeks back to the past to head off the destruction. That's when Grim Reaper (Greg Eagles) was tried before a kangaroo court by his lifelong nemesis, the Boogey Man (Fred Willard) for dereliction of his responsibilities as the Bringer of Death. The court scene sets up a race through Cannibal Run between Grim and his three human friends and the Boogey Man's ghoulish crew. They're trying to get to Horror's Hand, the ultimate totem for striking fear.

Is it any good?

Based on the TV series The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Billy And Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure provides surly Mandy and her goofily stupid brother Billy a feature-length vehicle in which to indulge their wacky friendship with the Grim Reaper. Undeniably gross and just as undeniably funny, the movie is a guilty pleasure for kids mature enough to handle the action.

This is certainly not a film for kids younger than 8. Though it will have an audience in fans of potty humor and the comically macabre, consider whether your child is mature enough to process it. As the Boogey Man observes, some of today's kids are so inured to violence and vulgarity in films that it may desensitize them to real fear.