Official Synopsis
Mordecai and Rigby who, after accidentally creating a Timenado, have to go back in time and battle an evil volleyball coach in order to save the universe… and their friendship.
This show is an oddball show. It has always been an oddball show. Heavy on the 80s themes and never afraid to take chances, Regular Show usually comes through with entertainment value ten out of ten times. Of course, all this entertainment lasts in regular cartoon show lengths. So the question begs to be asked, how did it do in a full-length feature format?
Answer – just fine.
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Bringing the oddity of the show into play, it’s no surprise that the main story for Regular Show: The Movie revolves around the potential destruction of the future thanks to some bad decisions our favorite duo, Mordecai and Rigby, make and how it affects the outcome of an evil volleyball coach from their high school days named Mr. Ross. Only this show can make something so goofy, but at the same time make it suspenseful and teeming with life.
Let’s get right to it.
The first act opens up with Mordecai and Rigby fighting each other in the future. Mordecai has sided with the evil Mr. Ross due to some injustice Rigby dialed up on him high school, while Rigby is fighting alongside Pops, Skips and the rest of the park crew to help save the universe. At one point, Rigby understands that the only way to stop the destruction of the universe, as well as to right the wrong he did to Mordecai, is to go back in time to stop the injustice from happening. Before he can do that and set the rest of the movie in motion, he is shot by Mordecai…but he does deliver his message to the duo in the past before…you know.
The hook to this show, and to this film, is how the story just goes in an entirely weird direction and doesn’t show its hand on the why. I mean, seriously, how do you make a volleyball teacher into an antagonist in a story? It’s nuts, but it makes you want to keep watching to see how the story leads to the beginning of the film. It’s dumb fun and it works for a first act. It sinks its teeth into the viewers and leads them into act two.
Act two begins with the boys going back in time to find out exactly where things went wrong. What they uncover from the past is a sad tale of Rigby on the cusp of not getting into the easiest university in town. On top of this, and to make up for this (in a very Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure way), Rigby has to put together a science project for Mr. Ross before the end of the day, otherwise he’ll fail out of high school and not get into the university, thus resulting in not hanging out with Mordecai anymore. In true Regular Show style, the duo finds themselves in a pickle, but end up finding smaller solutions that lead up to bigger ones…which leads up to almost solving their future problems. Almost. The hiccup in act two is that Mr. Ross from the future is onto their past selves solution, which tumbles it all into act three.
If you have seen Back to the Future, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and anything dealing with time in the 80s, you’re in for a wonderful mix of a treat with the second act. As stretched out as it gets in the middle, act two keeps it together. It finds sensible solutions to the movie’s main plot point problem and spirals in true Regular Show style towards an insane conclusion in act three. I’m particularly impressed with the way director and writer J.G. Quintel keeps it all together and doesn’t copout with the story. Since the show is so incredibly oddball, he could have made a silly solution to solve the problem he created, but he didn’t. And that works just fine for this story.
I won’t tell you about act three, but I will say that it ends unpredictably well.
Now, what I will say about the overall package of Regular Show: The Movie is that it takes chances, creates a complicated web of plot points and manages to bring the entire story back together, sensibly, by the end. In short, this movie works and it proves that the show could survive quite well in a feature-length format. Maybe we might see this in the theater some day. Maybe. Possibly. Please.
On the special features side of things, here’s what you’re looking at:
– Deleted Animatics
– Movie Animatics
– Original Board Pitches
– Movie Trailer
– Concept & Movie Art Galleries
– Commentary
Not bad for a small release on DVD.
