In 2001, the Academy Awards made a breakthrough by announcing the first ever Best Animated Feature category, the nominees in that year were two of the biggest hits of the year, Shrek and Monsters Inc. The third and final best animated feature in the category which would be Nickelodeon’s first ever Oscar nominated movie was also their first CG animated feature, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius:
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is a 2001 American computer-animated comic science fiction film based on twelve three-minute animated shorts shown on Nickelodeon between the years 1999 and 2001, and a pilot in 1998. The film was produced by Nickelodeon Movies, O Entertainment, and DNA Productions, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was produced using off-the-shelf software (messiah:studio and LightWave 6) by DNA Productions. The film was released December 21, 2001. It was nominated for the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but lost to Shrek. It was the only animated Nickelodeon film to ever be nominated in that category until Rango was nominated in 2011 and won.
The success of the film led to a spin-off television series, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, which ran from 2002 to 2006. A second spin-off, Planet Sheen, ran from 2010 to 2013.
Jimmy Neutron is a boy genius and way ahead of his friends, but when it comes to being cool, he’s a little behind. All until one day when his parents, and parents all over Earth are kidnapped by aliens, it’s up to him to lead all the children of the world to rescue their parents…and by children of the world.
That synopsis has so many question marks to it but you know what, it’s a Nickelodeon movie, at this point, questioning logic has become a recurring thing with these movies, you’ve gotta just accept that not everything in these movies are going to make a ton of sense just as long as you’re having fun with it.
And for the most part, yes, this is yet another fun Nickelodeon movie.
The movie’s biggest misfire is in the animation, which even for 2001 is incredibly choppy and for a big screen feature film to have animation this mediocre at the peak of computer animation, that’s unbelievable how bad this animation looks. I mean, if the TV series version of this has to have better animation than a feature film released in over 3,000 theaters nationwide, there’s a HUGE problem here like something had to go wrong during the production of this.
But then again, the rest of the movie is overall really good, the characters are great to watch and they have these great character voice actors doing the voices, Patrick Stewart & Martin Short are very fun to watch as the villains of the film, the writing is really good, it’s very clever, very smart, and very well put together, a lot of the jokes in this movie are hilarious to see play out, and the film just works because it knows what it is, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is a movie that knows that it’s made for kids but can also have an edge that adults can find enjoyable as well, it has a unique charm that works even if the animation doesn’t hold up very well. Blast off with this adventure and have the time of your life.
The Reviewing Network 
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