706. The Rugrats Movie (1998)

Starring: Elizabeth Daily, Christine Cavanaugh, Kath Soucie

Director: Igor Kovalyov, Norton Virgien

Running Time: 79 mins

The Rugrats Movie is an American film, based on the TV series, about the babies’ adventure with Tommy’s new little brother Dil, and their attempts to bond together while they find their way back home.

As with many of the TV-to-film adaptations of this time, much like all of the sequels, this film falls into the same trap of being far too action-packed and having a story on too big a scale, leaving it feeling totally distant from the original TV series, which was always so much more down to earth.

That’s not to say that this film is still not entertaining. It’s another one of these films that I have personal experience of loving when I was young, and that shows that it does work relatively well for its target audience, but I still remember not enjoying nearly as much as the TV show.

The problem is that, seeing as the show was based around the adventures of the babies within their houses, but them making them all a big deal, it was so much more realistic and easy to relate to, which is why so many people loved it, but the fact that the story in this film is actually a properly dangerous adventure is not at all like that, meaning that, especially for some older fans of the show, it’s nowhere near as entertaining.

Despite that, this film is quite important for the show as a whole. It introduces Dil for the first time, and surprisingly does add an extra level of depth and emotion as Tommy struggles to deal with becoming the ‘second most important’ part of his parent’s lives after his younger brother is born, and that was actually quite interesting and, oddly, dramatic.

Overall, then, I’ll give this a 6.6, because it is genuinely entertaining, with an extra level to it all, but the story just doesn’t compare at all to the TV series and because of that I was quite disappointed.