Things I learned from “Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius”

For a kid’s movie, I’ve always liked “Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius”. How can you not?

EDIT: Apparently this is my second most popular article for some reason? I think it might be because of the pictures. I don’t know, but I DO know that you should check out some of my other articles, there’s so much more than this! Look to the right and read my “Classics”, then read my new stuff, then read everything else!

The plot takes every kid’s greatest fantasy of not having parental supervision, and crushes it by telling the kids that they’re helpless without their parents and should stop being unappreciative little brats. And if that’s not enough, just watch the awesome scene where Jimmy and his friends build a fleet of ships out of amusement park rides, then blast off into space while that cover of “Kids in America” plays. Seriously, that scene was just friggin’ rad.

That said, this movie has some very glaring flaws that spit in the face of reality and left me saying “Um, WTF?”.

1. The Air Force is horribly inconsistent.

In the beginning of the movie, NORAD is able to track Jimmy and Carl flying around in their hoopty of a homemade rocket, and sends up four fighter jets to investigate. Yet, NORAD can’t detect a fleet of gigantic alien spaceships, nor can they detect an entire amusement park taking off into space? Alright, I suppose one could argue that if the aliens are capable of interstellar travel, they’re most certainly capable of evading our radar systems. But you’re trying to tell me that not a single person eye-witnessed this massive armada of house-sized chicken-shaped spaceships? Give me a break:

“NORAD maintains that it did not witness or detect any large unidentified flying objects in or around Retroville on that night. Upon further analysis, NORAD has concluded that the pictured objects are of lenticular clouds mixed with swamp gas and possibly a weather balloon.”

There’s like, what, 30 of them? How could that NOT set off any alarms anywhere?

Okay, maybe Retroville is in the middle of nowhere, and the only people who were able to see and possibly report the giant ships to the military (whose radars couldn’t pick them up because of radar-evading technology) were the adults who were abducted. Fair enough, it makes little to no sense, but I guess can swallow that horse pill and attempt to accept that. But how were the kids able to successfully launch an entire amusement park into space with not even a single fighter being sent up to investigate? NORAD was able to detect Jimmy’s tiny homemade rocket, so why weren’t they able to detect the amusement park?

Hilariously enough, Jimmy’s computer system was able to detect the alien fleet before they even entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Seriously?

It’s obvious what happened here. This whole abduction was an inside job. Dick Cheney ordered NORAD to stand down, and told them that the whole thing was part of a training exercise. A cover story about a bunch of eggs was concocted and spoon-fed to the gullible public in order to justify an assault on the Yolkian planet and further erode our civil liberties, while the REAL masterminds continued to remain in the shadows. Alex Jones will be running a special on his radio show next week, called “The Retroville Abductions: Cracking the Shell of the Yolkian Lie”. Stay informed, Infowarriors!

2. You can breathe in space.

As it turns out, you don’t need an oxygen supply while flying through space. Jimmy and his friends were not only able to cruise openly through interstellar space, but camp out on an asteroid:

Remember in first grade when your science teacher said that fire needs oxygen to sustain itself? Your science teacher was a goddamn liar.

Helmets are for wimps, and so is oxygen. As it turns out, NASA has been wasting countless billions of dollars on life support systems that we didn’t need. Now that Jimmy Neutron has shown us the way, we may begin the colonization of space.

 

3. Kids are stupid.

After the aliens kidnap all of the parents, they leave these elaborately forged notes for the children:

The children think nothing of a typed ambiguous letter, until almost two days later when Jimmy says “Hey, wait a minute…” and decides to run it through a handwriting analysis machine, which determines that it’s a forgery after comparing it with other notes from his parents.

Seriously? Even for a bunch of 9 year old kids that’s pretty damn stupid. Designing a fleet of ships capable of interstellar travel out of amusement park rides in a span of two days? Piece of cake. Recognizing an obviously fake letter? Way too fucking hard.

4. An advanced alien race can be easily thwarted on their own planet by a bunch of kids.

Forget home-field advantage. Forget high-tech weaponry. Forget outnumbering the invaders at least 100 to 1. Forget having a gigantic mutant chicken on your side. Apparently none of that means shit when you’re going up against a bunch of grade school brats and a robotic dog.

The whole final showdown between the kids and the aliens was bullshit, starting with the scene where Jimmy uses Libby’s cellphone to call the dog. He uses her cellphone, a device that relies on pre-programmed satellites, to make a call. On another fucking planet. Here I am with one of the country’s largest providers in the middle of one of the country’s largest cities, and I can barely make a call inside my own house. Then there’s this asshole making calls on other planets. Libby attempts to use common sense, remarking “I don’t think my service plan covers anything outside our solar system.”:

FUCK COMMON SENSE.

 

Jimmy uses her phone to make contact with his robotic dog, who is being dissected by an alien scientist. The dog breaks everyone out of the prison (which is absurdly primitive even by Earth standards), and they all go to stop the aliens from sacrificing their parents to the giant chicken. They beat- no, humiliate, the alien guards by beating them with shit like a Walkman, an inhaler, and a Nerf gun, all to the tune of “We’ve Got the Beat” by The Go-Gos (talk about adding insult to the injury). Finally, they get their parents and escape on a Yolkian spaceship, which Sheen inexplicably knows how to pilot. A huge round of applause for the advanced alien race that was able to figure out the secret of faster-than-light travel but couldn’t stop a bunch of children from staging a prison break. Yolkians are the weakest creatures in the entire universe. Even the highly inept Invader Zim could beat them with no problem. Hell, I have zero doubt that Jar Jar Binks could single-handedly enslave their pathetic joke of a planet, even if you discount the fact that he was a Sith Lord.

 

You know what would have been really awesome? If Predator was in the movie. Holy fucking shit:

 

Forget the Yolkians. Predator would make an omelet out of those worthless and weak losers and eat it with a side of bacon. I could totally see a Jimmy Neutron/Predator crossover happening. Here’s how it would go down.

Jimmy and his friends are returning from the Yolkian planet after saving their parents. Little did they know that they were being watched the entire time by a Predator, whose cloaking device allowed him to silently observe Jimmy’s tactics against the Yolkians. It has deemed Jimmy and his friends worthy prey for a hunt. The Predator follows the stolen Yolkian ship back to Earth in its own cloaked ship. As the Yolkian ship prepares to enter Earth’s atmosphere, Predator shoots out an engine and sends it plummeting into a Central American jungle, ironically the same one from the first movie. Jimmy, Carl, Sheen, Cindy, Libby, and Goddard are the only ones who survive the crash. As they make their trek back to civilization, all of Jimmy’s friends are gruesomely butchered one by one as the Predator claims its trophies. Finally, only Jimmy and Goddard remain. Jimmy uses Goddard’s built-in thermal imaging ability to locate the Predator, who immediately counters with its plasma caster. Goddard is hit and explodes into irreparable pieces. Jimmy attempts to run from the Predator, only to be scooped up by its net trap. Predator then takes his time disemboweling Jimmy and turning his skull into a trophy. The final scene shows Predator in his ship with Jimmy’s skull on a shelf in the background. A computer on the ship shows an image of the Punisher, setting the stage for the most awesome battle to ever take place in the history of the universe.

If anyone over at Dark Horse Comics wants to give me a job, I’ll be more than happy to help write Jimmy Neutron: Predation. It’ll be a masterpiece, unlike Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

By Angry_Jerk

The CEO/Editor-in-chief of AJnet, and the current king of internet ranting. Hailing from the fine village of Northeast Philadelphia, AJ has been creating content on the internet for over 15 years. None of it has really been funny or entertaining, but he keeps trying anyway. When he’s not creating new articles for the site, he can be found hitting the weights, watching anime, or playing retro video games.