30 Second Bottom Line: A K-6 boy genius shifts from being the local geek to using his smarts to save all the parents in town who have been kidnapped by aliens.
Story Line: Jimmy is the genius son of Mr. & Mrs. Neutron. They are open-minded parents who encourage his experimentation, yet understand that just because he's super smart, that he can or should be able to do everything he wants to do. Jimmy is introduced to us with a variety of things he has invented such as machines to make up his bed, comb his hair, and even catch a ride to school in a bubble gum ball transporter vehicle when he misses his school bus.
Alongside Jimmy is his robot dog Goddard who can really does become man's best friend. There is some bodily humor sounds and sights in the film and best of it comes from Goddard which brought great laughs to the audience.
The major new invention that Jimmy is working on is a radio to make contact with beings in outer space, ala Contact. When contact is made, Jimmy does not realize it right away. The aliens are not of the friendly sort and they use the signal to guide them to earth and then kidnap all of the parents and take them to their planet where they will be treated like the robots in A.I: Artificial Intelligence.
At first the kids are delighted to be able to do literally everything they want to do and then they begin to understand the value of their parents and miss them. When Jimmy determines how to find the location of the aliens and their parents, he becomes the leader of the kids to rescue the adults.
Tell Me More About It: Martin Lawrence could take a lesson from how diversity can be depicted in a positive way. Libby, a hip African American girl certainty has her ethnicity showing in her speech and hairstyle, but she comes across as just another kid. Carl as the overweight kid that others accept for who he is and even Nick, the stuck on himself good looking guy, finally comes to realize there is more to being a real person than outward looks. The story is quite mature yet understandable and the animation special effect are very creative.
I took three of my grandchildren to see a promotional preview and they enjoyed it. Their ages are 5, 9 and 13. Retroland is the name of the amusement park that the kids in the film love going to. In this movie, it was so enchanting, that there might even be hope for adults to go back to feeling like a child, if only for a little while.
Unlike Monsters, Inc. and Shrek, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius uses low-tech special effects and animation much along the lines of Spy Kids. I'm now convinced that there is room for both. While Shrek had a message regarding beauty, Jimmy Neutron speaks to the disciplinary relationship between kids and parents. Kids think it's OK to sneak and do things behind their parents backs. The children tend to dismiss the direction they receive from their parents and don't value them until they miss the importance of the support they get be it making dinner, reading a story or tucking them into bed. When the kids go to Retroland and uses the genius of Jimmy to pursue the aliens that have captured their parents (ala Spy Kids), these grade school kids show the real meaning of family values.
