'AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE' WON'T FEED YOUR MIND.

Byline: Bob Strauss

Film Critic

I've always suspected that the Cartoon Network's designated Adult Swim programming was really, at best, barely adolescent stuff, maturity wise.

"Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters," a big-screen version of Swim's most popular series, confirms that I was right.

A mostly free-associative collection of doodles and riffs writer-directors Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis seemed to have found lying around the animation studio, "Colon" (heh heh, get it, Beavis?) charts the misadventures of three sentient fast-food products who, when they're not worried about whether they might be gay, try to figure out how to hook up with whatever the opposite sex of sentient fast-food products may be.

Other activities include running away from a bewildering array of alien invaders, amok robot monsters, mad scientists and world-conquering exercise machines. When none of the above is happening, Master Shake, the milkshake; Frylock, the goateed, flying french fry container; and Meatwad, the stale, well, wad of meat, insult one another and fall back on that staple of uninspired cartoon shows, pop-culture references.

It's all as neurotically juvenile as "South Park" (though not nearly as sharply written and even less well-animated, such a thing apparently being possible). But "South Park" is about little kids.

The Aqua Teens are, presumably, at least teenage victuals, and therefore should behave in a more mature manner. Which, I suppose, is to let someone eat them, but of course you wouldn't have much of a show left after its stars are consumed. Not that there's much of one here in the first place....

Willis and Maiellaro seem to pride themselves on "ATHF's" surreal incoherence, and I've been told that a substantial portion of their audience enjoys marijuana. Guess I could make a joke about those viewers just having the munchies, but that would be almost as lame as most of the movie's gags. Not quite, but almost.

Anyway, the whole intentional incoherence argument doesn't stick because, by the end of "Colon," a coherent theme emerges. The whole thing is a satire of superhero tales, especially origin stories. Not a very good one, of course, but it's definitely trying to make a point about how silly such things tend to be in the silliest manner possible.

So the real dynamic going on here is incompetence, intentional or not.

Historical footnote: Those blinking things that got Boston all freaked out a few months ago weren't terrorist bombs but promotional doo-dads featuring one of the "ATHF" aliens. Needless to say, there's nothing about this movie that's worth panicking anybody, let alone a whole city, over.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE COLON MOVIE FILM FOR THEATERS - One star

(R: sex, violence, language, nudity)

Starring: Voices of Dana Snyder, Dave Willis, Carey Means, Matt Maiellaro.

Directors: Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis.

Running time: 1 hr. 19 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Guess there's an audience for this free-associative, arrested adolescent, poorly animated cartoon about talking fast-food products. But this critic isn't part of it.

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Photo:

Master Shake (yep, he's a milkshake) and his fellow fast-food offerings live to insult one another in the "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" movie.