Andrew Earles

…this application is being very cranky. Please stay with me.

….the continuing existence of Southern Culture on the Skids or The Reverend Horton Heat is the hard truth that there might be an audience for Kickin It Old Skool. At this point in the game, the only demographic that could possibly find this movie entertaining would be….what? I don’t even know. A frat boy after an eight-month, freon-induced coma? As the preview played on the tube (just now), I was hit with a sadly familiar ”why?”…..the same ”why?” that Coffee and Cigarettes, the Starsky and Hutch movie, and The Naked Trucker and T-Bone Show spurred. Creative Bankruptcy indeed.

1978 Pontiac Lemans (first car, 15,000 orig. miles, subtle and wonderful, bent the frame and front axle screwing around, totalled out)

1987 Buick Century (second car, the running dog, 2.8 L V-6, fast, loud A/C Delco stereo, I destroyed this car before it was ultimately taken away due to a DUI/other offenses)

1982 Honda Accord (four door automatic, classic blue, third car after long period without wheels, loved this one, too, paid $400 for it, never quit on me, self-installed Sparkomatic stereo and speakers, drunk woman totalled it from behind on a Sunday afternoon, in hospital overnight)

1985 Honda Civic (five speed, hatchback, drove all over the South to see good and bad bands, amazing stereo, eventually died from an odd engine moisture problem)

1988 Honda Accord (four door, gold, this was my father’s car, inherited after he passed, I totalled it making a u-turn)

1991 Ford Escort (Hatchback, high miles, emergency cheap-o after totalling the Accord, installed nice stereo, timing belt popped in the middle of traffic)

1991 Nissan Pick-Up Truck (lots of problems, bad memories)

1993 Ford Ranger (good memories, strong, great stereo, crazy family of assholes ran stop sign and briefly changed life for the worse)

TO BE CONTINUED…..

No complaints, really. Like the Strangers With Candy movie, which sadly disappeared from party discussion about three days after release, the ATHF feature is as good as…..a good episode of the show. Not a great episode; a good episode. Maybe I’m being a little harsh. Maybe it’s just a little better than that. I was never scared of its failure. There was really no logical way that it would all-out suck. The only aspect that scared me was the idea of being in a theater full of Aqua Teen Hunger Force fanatics. 

This Slate review is as ignorant as the writer professes the subject to be. The film stands on its own without a front-to-back knowledge of the show (though it might help). I’ve missed big chunks of the past two seasons. Before that, I kept up, and even unsuccessfully auditioned for a peripheral character V.O. via phone. That was August of 2003. Before that (I think), I interviewed the creators for Chunklet Magazine. In February of 2005, during a particularly fucked-up period of my life, I blew town and went to Atlanta as a guest at the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Appreciation Party. The guy that voices Master Shake looks exactly like you’d expect, though series DVD owners/renters already know this. My point is, as a lapsed fan that almost entered an outer fold of sorts, I used to know the show. Through no fault of its creators or content, it appears to have attracted a Burning Man/Complete Dumbass/Stoner audience (what percentage of the full audience this accounts for, I don’t know), though it’s still smarter than (and a totally different animal from) the vastly-improved South Park. It takes quite a wit and gift for dialogue construction to write ATHF.  Belly laughs? A couple. I laughed especially hearty at the “Will you answer that fucking phone?!?!” line. Look for it when you go see the film. That brings me to another thought. It was a little jarring, then really funny, to hear the characters unleash a torrent of fucks, fuck-you’s, and fucking’s. And in a rare instance of pop-cultural name-dropping (a crutch that the show has always brilliantly managed to avoid), director Bob Clark gets a shout-out (eerily, he died in a car accident on April 4th).  So yes, I liked it.