Hey Arnold: The Movie (PG, 2002)

HEY ARNOLD!: THE MOVIE finds its football-headed hero with a heart of gold in a save-the-neighborhood situation. A big bad wolf industrialist named Scheck (voiced by Paul Sorvino) wants to turn Arnold's happy suburb into a "mall-plex." Most of the adults reluctantly sell their homes, but Arnold arranges benefits and does research on how to save the town, undiscouraged by Scheck's constant attempts to crush him and the pessimism of everyone else. He eventually finds out about a Boston Tea Party-esque event that occurred in his town during the revolutionary war and works to get the town saved as a historical landmark.

Hey Arnold! The Movie is as unimaginative as its title and far too long at 74 minutes. Hard core fans of the television series will enjoy seeing the characters on the big screen, but most everyone else will be bored with the characters, the animation, and the utterly predictable chain of events.

There's nothing remotely new or exiting about the plot, and nearly all of the situations are annoyingly dumb. Kids may enjoy seeing Arnold save the day, but adults will snooze through it, due to a storyline everyone's seen before, animation that is below the Fat Albert level, and characters that range from uninteresting to unappealing. There are some amusing voice cameos from Jennifer Jason Leigh and Christopher Lloyd, as well as timely references to Men in Black II and The Hulk. And if anyone these days comes close to being Mel Blanc, it's Dan Castellaneta (The Simpsons), who gives wildly different characters such genuine personality that one would never guess that they come from the same guy. If only those voices had a better script.