The Fairly Oddparents: School's Out! The Musical (2005) review

(4/10)

I've always been a fan of the Fairly Oddparents cartoon, but this tv special was kind of a bad idea on the creator's part.

PLOT:After having another of their 37-year plans thwarted, the dreadful Pixies (Ben Stein) decide to use the newfound, abandoned son of a couple clowns to make their plans of ruling Fairy World and making life boring come true. 37 years later, summer's just getting out in Dimmsdale and all the kids, including our main character, Timmy Turner (Tara Strong), are going crazy and wrecking the town. When the parents don't know where to turn, Flappy Bob of Camp Learn-a-Torium (who's also the son the Pixies found) comes and suggests the idea of putting the kids in an educational summer camp until it's over. Now it's up to Timmy and his fairies, Cosmo (Daran Norris) and Wanda (Susan Blakeslee), to stop the Pixies plan, destroy Camp Learn-a-Torium, change Flappy Bob's heart, and save summer for all kids all accompanied musically. It's a basic Fairly Oddparent plot executed weaker than the previous Oddparent specials.

VOICES:The voices in general verge on the edge of unique and cartoonish, to annoying and earsplitting. Strong's voicing of Timmy I was never fond of, but it's worse in here considering she's SINGING, but I'll get to that later. The same goes for Blakeslee, but not for Norris. I've always liked his voicing for Cosmo. I liked Stein's voicing for the Pixies because it was the perfect voice choice for a couple of dull businessmen. Honorable mentions go only to Rob Paulsen as Chester.



SCORE:Since this is a musical, you can expect there to be singing. The songs sound much like a cat choking on a shovel, by comparison. This was a bad idea from the start to make an entire Fairly Odd-musical. The voices weren't even good. SPONGEBOB could have done better. There were a couple highlight songs, however: "We're Pixies" (rapped creatively by Redman and Method Man) and "Where is the Fun?"

ANIMATION:The animation, without asking questions, is unique and distinctive. I've lived with this cartoon animation for years and years of my childhood.



OTHER CONTENT:This is far from the best Fairly Oddparents movie ever; in fact, I believe it's the weakest. This was a bad idea put together, with screechy songs, a basic plot, and no emotional impact. Even the "Channel Chasers" special had an emotional impact! This was right before the show started going down the drain, though I wasn't a huge fan from the start. Aside from all I've previously mentioned, there were a few good parts. The song lyrics and script were cleverly written at points with some clever rhymes, multi-genred song ideas, and some actually funny visual jokes.

OVERALL,a tv special that's not too bad with a basic plot,annoying and cartoonish voicing, bad score, distinctive animation, and no emotional impact, but it has clever writing, multi-genre music, and funny visual jokes.