Movie Name Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
Released April 13, 2007
Genre Animated
Runtime 87 mins
Rating R
Director(s) Matt Maiellaro, Dave Willis
Producer(s) Matt Maiellaro, Dave Willis, Jay Wade Edwards, Williams Street
Writer(s) Matt Maiellaro, Dave Willis
Distribution First Look Pictures, Warner Bros. (DVD release)
Budget $750,000
U.S. Box Office $5,520,368
Country United States
Language English
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters Plot
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (aka Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters for DVD for the DVD release, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters Television for the April Fools Day television premire, and abbreviated as ATHFCMFFT or ATHF: MFFT) is an animated film based on the Adult Swim animated series Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The film is written and directed by the show's creators, Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis, and was released on April 13, 2007 by First Look Pictures, and has been rated R by the MPAA for "continuous crude and sexual humor, violent images and language". The film's poster was illustrated by Julie Bell and Boris Vallejo, and parodies the "King of the Mountain" design.
The movie begins with a song by The Soda Dog Refreshment Squad, in a parody of "Let's All Go to the Lobby", only to be interrupted by heavy metal band Mastodon, animated as various concession stand products, who warn the audience that bad movie etiquette will result in severe bodily harm or death to the viewer.
The movie proper begins in Egypt, where Master Shake, Frylock and Meatwad are attacked by an oversized poodle, who kills Frylock before being destroyed by Shake. Shake and Meatwad drive off with Frylock's corpse, and meet Time Lincoln, who plans to revive Frylock; however, when government agents break into his house, the Aqua Teens flee in his wooden rocketship, and Time Lincoln is shot, changing the timeline and effectively resulting in white people being enslaved by black people. This, however, is all revealed to be an elaborate story concocted by Shake to explain their origin to Meatwad by Frylock.
Shake heads off to work out on his new exercise machine, the Insane-O-Flex. Upon discovering that the machine is not assembled correctly (and the instructions are nowhere to be found), Frylock finds the instructions online, where they read that the machine is actually an immortal device which will bring about mass destruction if assembled. Despite this, Frylock assembles it anyway.
The film cuts to outer space. On the Plutonians' ship, Emory and Oglethorpe discover the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future onboard with them. The Cybernetic Ghost begins explaining to the two aliens the story of the Insane-O-Flex: the machine, when assembled, will exercise a man into a super-being, who will destroy all of the other men. To prevent this, the Ghost has traveled into the past and stolen a single screw. The Plutonians point out to him that to get it assembled, someone could just buy another screw or shove a pencil in the screw hole. Back on Earth, Frylock finishes building the machine, having just shoved a pencil in the screw hole. Before Shake can work out, they discover a missing M-shaped circuit board on the back panel. The trio visit Carl Brutananadilewski, whom Shake had stolen the machine from, to see if he has the missing piece. He informs them that he bought the machine from Dr. Weird. Meanwhile, a triangular slice of watermelon is flying about in a ship made from a hollowed-out watermelon, observing the events unfolding according to his plan - the slice is joined in the ship by Neil Peart from Rush, sitting at his drums.
Dr. Weird and his assistant Steve, whose abandoned insane asylum has been bought and is being turned into condominiums around them, are visited by Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad. After the Aqua Teens argue with Steve, they retrieve the missing piece and head home. Frylock installs the missing circuit board, but Carl insists that as the rightful owner he should be the first to test out the machine. The machine straps him in and elaborately transforms into a huge one-eyed robot. The robot plays dance/techno music and begins stomping around, crushing houses and heading toward downtown, all while Carl's strapped-in form is forced to exercise. Eventually, the robot begins laying large metallic eggs, which hatch into smaller versions of the machine. The Aqua Teens, aided by an instructional workout video, find a way to destroy the machine. Shake plays his original song "Nude Love" on acoustic guitar, forcing the machine to destroy itself. Carl (now bulging with muscles) finds an equally muscular woman, and they head back to her condo while the Aqua Teens try to figure out a way to stop the newly-hatched smaller robots from destroying the city.
Meanwhile, Frylock begins to tell the origin story of the Aqua Teens: they were created by Dr. Weird, along with a chicken nugget who had gone by the name of Chicken Bittle. Bittle and the other Aqua Teens were created for one purpose, and one purpose only: to crash a jet into a brick wall. Realizing that it was silly, and it would hurt, Frylock diverted the jet and they eventually made their way to Africa, but while parachuting down to the earth Bittle was eaten by a lion. The remaining three tried to help a small village, but the natives ran off. Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad fled Africa and settled in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, Carl and the muscular woman recline in her room, where she reveals herself to be Dr. Weird in disguise. He cuts off Carl's muscles with a hunting knife and grafts them onto his own body. Frylock and Dr. Weird do battle, and the struggle continues while they argue back and forth about who created whom. Dr. Weird claims that it was Frylock who created him, not the other way around. Dr. Weird then reveals that the blue diamond on Frylock's back hides a VCR, in which a video with false memories of Dr. Weird creating Frylock had been playing in Frylock's head. Frylock uses his eye beams to slice Dr. Weird in half, but they all still argue about who created whom until Shake shoots Meatwad with a shotgun.
The watermelon ship lands, and the slice inside identifies himself as Walter Melon. Neil Peart plays a magic drum solo that brings Meatwad back to life. Melon explains he created the Aqua Teens, The Mooninites, and all the other characters so that they would eventually kill each other, after which Walter would inherit all their real estate in order to create "The Insane-O-Gym". The other characters inform a disappointed Walter that they all rent and do not own any property. The Aqua Teens' mother is revealed as a 9-layer bean burrito. The Soda Dog Refreshment Squad comes onstage once again, and dismisses the audience.
The Cybernetic Ghost is seen humping the television, Frylock is shown with very feminine features, suggesting a sex change and telling him it's time for bed.
Deleted Scenes, the first 22-minute episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, is said to be a collection of deleted scenes from the film. All of the deleted scenes combine to form one normal 11-minute episode, so it is unknown if they are actually deleted scenes, an episode used to promote the film, or a combination of the two. Some of the deleted scenes do follow the plot of the movie, such as the existence of the Insane-O-Flex and its missing piece, though none are actually in it. It should be noted that the animation in the "deleted scenes" is much sharper and certain characters (i.e. Meatwad's dolls Dewey, Vanessa and Boxy Brown) are drawn with much more detail and Carl animates more rather than standing around with his hands on his hips. This suggests a higher budget and is a typical change made to movies based on cartoons. The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future also has a deeper, much more distorted voice matching his voice in the film.
It is confirmed that the scenes will be used for an alternate movie featured in Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters for DVD.
In an interview at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, Dana Snyder and Matt Maiellaro confirmed rumors that there would be a feature-length movie of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. More details were revealed at the 2005 Paley Television Festival, such as a possible cameo by 80s funk group Cameo, and Maiellaro described it as "an action piece that leads into an origin story that unfolds in a very 'Aqua Teen' way."
The creators revealed much more information in an interview with Wizard Entertainment. While they dodged many questions, they confirmed that the movie would run 80 minutes, was filmed on a meager $750,000 budget, and features a plot detail about a "lost Aqua Teen", who is a large chicken nugget named "Chicken Bittle" (voiced by Bruce Campbell). They also confirmed more cameos, with Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, H. Jon Benjamin from Home Movies and Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, filmmaker Jon Glaser, and SNL's Fred Armisen to make appearances. Heavy metal band Mastodon have stated in a recent Decibel article that they are performing the opening music, and that the band would be animated as a bucket of popcorn, a soda, a hot dog, and a candy bar. They were actually animated as a pretzel, nacho, ice caps box, and a gumdrop.
On the matter of the film's rating, which plays a large part in how loyal the film will be to the show, Maiellaro commented that "I think if [the movie is rated] R, it won't get the audience that watches it. But we don't know yet. We're still waiting to find out." Since then, the trailer released has advertised the film as rated R. The movie is mostly uncensored, as "fuck" and "shit" are uttered a few times. The word fuck is partially censored on a few occasions (a "beep" sound is played over the word, but not at a volume high enough to obscure it), but most of the cursing is played as spoken, even fuck, which is not censored every time it is spoken."Fuck" is only entirely bleeped once during a flashback scene where Dr. Weird says "fuck it."
The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters Colon the Soundtrack, which features skits and sound bites from the movie as well as original recordings from other artists, was released on April 10, 2007.
On January 31, 2007, police in Boston, Massachusetts received reports of devices resembling bombs in various places around the city. The devices turned out to be electronic signs similar to a Lite-Brite that displayed images of the Mooninites Ignignokt and Err giving the finger, and were designed to promote the Aqua Teen Hunger Force television show as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign authorized by Cartoon Network, the cartoon's parent company. The boards were present in several cities for weeks before the ones in Boston were reported.
The Boston City Government sought a reimbursement for the money spent responding to the incident. The amount quoted was $500,000 initially, and then was increased to $750,000. On February 5 it was announced that Turner Broadcasting and the city of Boston have reached an agreement to pay $2 million to offset the cost of removing the devices: $1 million to cover the cost of the agencies involved and an additional $1 million in goodwill funding to homeland security.
Adult Swim began running ads on March 25, 2007 advertising the television premiere of the movie the following Sunday, April 1. Their only reasoning behind this stunt, as stated in the ad, was, "because we're fucking crazy". While Adult Swim's TV listings on their website stated the movie would be shown, other TV listings reported the same Sunday block. It was an April Fools prank: though the first few minutes of the movie were shown normally, the remainder was shown in a tiny picture in picture box in the bottom left-hand corner, with no sound over the normal programming and occasional giant popups alerting viewers of its presence, as well as advertising the actual premiere. The advertising was shown again on one episode of the Family Guy mararthon on July 6, 2007. Adult Swim has made similar pranks during its run, including placing fart sounds intercut with anime shows and using Engrish VHS fansubs for the first season of Perfect Hair Forever, and airing entire blocks of programming with moustaches drawn on all the major characters of the shows.
In yet another promotional stunt, the "ending" to the movie was posted in various places including YouTube, KingColon.com (in the Worst Game Ever game), and fansite Aqua Teen Central, all of which were completely different.
Eventually, adultswim.com let it be known that none of the the "endings" were real and presented 7 more clips throughout the weeks following the release of the movie (which turned out to also be fake.)
These endings, (now called the "fake.com endings") will be available on the film's DVD. These endings are parodies of other movies. For example, one of the endings spoofs The Terminator, featuring Meatwad as "The Determinator".
The film received a 48% Rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the consensus being, "The non sequitur humor of Aqua Teen Hunger Force will surely appeal to its built-in fan base, but for the uninitiated, the premise wears thin."
Of 28 reviews compiled, Metacritic reported that Movie Film for Theaters has received "mixed or average reviews" with an average rating of 54%.
In response to such reviews, a commercial featuring the Mooninites began airing during the Adult Swim block. The two characters spend the entire commercial insulting a supposedly typical reviewer, "Lionel" of http://www.lionellovesmovies.com (the site merely leads back to the movie page). Other movie commercials recommend people see the movie two or three more times to push the box office numbers up. These commercials, however, aired weeks before the movie came out.
Boxofficemojo.com listed that 877 theaters carried the movie on opening day. The movie made $3 million dollars outside the top 10 at No. 13 on its opening weekend, The movie made $854,198 on its second weekend, $265,716 on its third, and $37,575 on it's fourth. The movie was closed on June 14, 2007, grossing $5,520,368 according to BoxOfficeMojo.com and turning over its budget seven times.
Warner Home Video will release Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters for DVD, a two-disc set, on August 14, 2007.
DVD Features:
Fake.com Endings
Round Table Discussion - Making of the Movie
Promos
Bonus Episode: Deleted Scenes "Star-Studded Christmas Spectacular Starring Ron Gheremi"
Music Video
An entirely new movie made out of the deleted scenes
Behind-the-scenes / Making of the Music Videos for the movie
Limited edition double sided movie poster
Technical Specs:
Rating: R
No. of Discs: 2
CC: Yes
Language: English
Subtitles: English SDH
