Will Rugrats Rule?

By RICHARD CORLISS

A bucolic scene straight out of classic Disney: birdies flutter, bunnies nuzzle, a Bambi-esque deer gracefully grazes. And then--VROOOM!--the idyll is disrupted as a Reptar wagon rumbles through with some screaming toddlers aboard. Danger: Rugrats at work.

That might be an appropriate warning to all the other movies contending for children's movie money in this kid-glutted holiday season: with a brand loyalty earned every day for years on Nickelodeon, The Rugrats Movie has a chance to torpedo the competition. Will Disney-Pixar's entomological epic A Bug's Life run for cover under the nearest anthill? Will Babe: Pig in the City, the squeal--sorry, sequel--to the 1995 surprise hit, turn out to be so much baloney? In December, will The Prince of Egypt prove to be a hit of less than biblical proportions, and Mighty Joe Young less than all-righty?

The Rugrats creators pretend to be sanguine about the cluttered calendar. Says Gabor Csupo, the Lugosi-accented Hungarian who with ex-wife Arlene Klasky launched the show in 1991: "The biggest problem is most of the time for children there is nothing of quality their whole family can enjoy. I love competition. It's healthy--it makes everybody work harder and do better work. The strong will survive. If you have a kid, they at least want to go every second weekend to the movies. So there are plenty of weekends from now until the Christmas season for every quality film to do well."

Whatever the quality, the quantity is certainly up this year. Disney virtually created, and for a decade has owned, the kidophilic Thanksgiving period with its animated films (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin) and live-action retreads (101 Dalmatians, Flubber). But this year turkey time looks like a family free-for-all, and The Rugrats Movie could grab the golden drumstick.

If it doesn't, it won't be for want of conniving. The Rugrats Movie, in which Tommy Pickles finally gets a little brother (Dylan--"Dil"--Pickles) and goes on an arduous adventure with his pals Chuckie, Lil and Phil, has been focus-grouped and marketed to contain hooks for consumers of all ages; you need only be old enough to shout, "Mommy, I gotta see it!" and young enough to work your walker.

In addition to the usual Burger King tie-in, Lincoln Mercury is running commercials that promote both the film and a new minivan. The movie's sound track includes a spectrum of old and new hipsters: Busta Rhymes and Iggy Pop, Lisa Loeb and Lou Rawls, Beck and DEVO (whose co-begetter, Mark Mothersbaugh, wrote the film's score). There is also The Rugrats Movie itself, a knowing festival of pop-cultural citations, evocations and plain old rip-offs. Says Albie Hecht of Nickelodeon, which conducted "parent-focused research" to broaden the project's salability: "We worked hard to make sure the themes appealed to adults as well as children." Adds Klasky: "A lot of adults would fall asleep if there were no 'second level.'" Translation: This ain't just kid stuff.

Well, it's stuff for modern kids: the ones who are primal enough to giggle at a peepee rainbow (created by infants in a nursery) and the "pooped in his pantsie" jokes, yet canny enough to finish the film's sentence "Born under Venus, look for a..." In the catchy newborn nursery anthem This World Is Something New to Me, kids may understand the line "This world is such a gas!" followed by an impolite noise, and the baleful "I can barely hear myself suck!" but not the pouty "I miss my old womb," and maybe not the exchange between a female voice ("Man, they cut my cord!") and a male ("Awww, consider yourself lucky"). Side benefit of taking your kids to the movie: it was probably time to explain the miracle of circumcision to them anyway.

There are adults who, through choice or parental servitude, have learned to love the TV show. It seems to understand the baby imperatives (either suck on a bottle or break out of the playpen and scope out the great wide world) while treating the grownup figures with the same genial ribbing the kids get. Tommy the explorer and Chuckie, his friend with the orange shock top and a chronically fretful nature, are attractive opposites; three-year-old Angelica is a finely drawn priss. The animation is distinctive and supple, suggesting Max Fleischer and the Modernist Zagreb school. Who thought to give the kids' heads the shape and apparent consistency of grapefruit? Who unleashed the hyperkinetic floor-level kidcam? Someone with a smart sense of design and fun.

Each Rugrats half hour contains two 10-to-12-min. episodes. How to up the ante to 80 minutes without letting the stretch marks show? By creating an epic event. "The only thing we were very much set on," says Csupo, "was to introduce a new Rugrat, a baby brother or sister." And there you have it--a buddy movie where the ages of the sibling rivals don't quite add up to two.

Along the way there are intermittent pleasures: a nice updating of David Seville's Witch Doctor into a wild Tiki Room monkey jamboree; a sweet scene of Tommy and Dil learning to share a blanket. But the charm of the TV show has been coarsened and franticized. The film's writers (David N. Weiss and J. David Stem) and directors (Norton Virgien and Igor Kovalyov) have taken the Spielberg scenario as their template--children separated from their parents, then found--but this one has the harried air of The Goonies. And the film may have overestimated its hold on a few core constituencies. At a screening last week, a child sobbed as the monkeys stole Dil; a mother checked her watch a few times.

So let the holiday scramble begin. And beware. While tweens might go for A Bug's Life, and pious adults line up for The Prince of Egypt, neither film will have the urgency of a small voice saying, over and over, "Take me to Rugrats!" In the Pickles family, as in nearly every other TV brood, the kids run things. The next few box-office weeks will determine whether the same applies to reel life.

--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles