Oogieloves Review: Terrible Beyond Measure

“Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure” is just outright bad. With its acid-inspired color scheme, mind-numbing script, and repetitive upon coming into existence sing-a-longs, it has quickly garnered a well-deserved reputation for being atrocious. The costumes of the eponymous Oogieloves are the stuff of nightmares, with randomly flapping mouths and cold, glassy eyes. It actually managed to get a theatrical release, despite appearing to have the same quality as the straight-to-DVD movies found in the $5 bins at Wal-mart. This movie quickly set records as the biggest box-office bomb for a movie that opened in more than 2,000 theaters. With a combined production and marketing budget of $60 million, it managed to open the weekend with a mere $445,000. This is absolutely well-earned.

This was quite possibly one of the most bafflingly horrendous movies ever unleashed upon the world.

The plot is as cheap as they come for a kids’ movie. Schluufy, the Oogieloves’ pillow (who sounds like an odd mix of Meatwad from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and Stitch from “Lilo and Stitch”) is having his birthday that day, so the Oogieloves and co. want to throw him a surprise birthday party. Their vacuum cleaner friend named J. Edgar is bringing Schluufy five magical yellow balloons, but gets tripped up and lets them go. So it’s up to Goobie, Zoozie and Toofie to save the day and get the balloons back. And that’s it. There’s no antagonist, no remote semblance of character arcs, and the plot basically consists of being a fetch quest from an old school “Legend of Zelda” game.

This is not a movie for adults, children, or even higher-level animals. Perhaps a rock would be the appropriate audience. Whether it’s the production values that make the “Teletubbies” look like “Industrial Lights and Magic,” the frozen grins of the Oogieloves costumes, or the outright bonkers plot, this movie has been officially deemed as not fit for human consumption.

Not even the presence of the once masterful Christopher Lloyd can bring this out of the barren desert it resides.

There are good children’s movies, there are mediocre children’s movies, and then there’s this cinematic sludge. Between the cacophony of random noises and songs, the cavalcade of saccharine colors, and the absolutely atrocious attempts at lip-synching of the costumes, this movie is a waste of time for someone who wants a good kids’ movie. It is not only an insult to the kids’ intelligence, but it is a slanderous insult to the collective intelligence of the human race. The only audience fit for it would be a herd of lobotomized cows.

Here’s the central issue: This movie talks down to its audience. This is absolutely inexcusable in a children’s movie. A proper children’s movie is supposed to speak to its young audience at an equal level, not denigrate them and dumb them down. A good kids flick is capable of entertaining both kids and adults alike. A decent one is targeted solely at kids. A horrible one simply talks down to its intended audience, alienating them and outright boring the adults. It shows no evidence of where its enormous budget went. The money went into the void.

Unless you are either a masochist or someone who indulges in copious amounts of drugs, this movie can only be recommended in one way: In the same vein as a recommendation for movies such as “The Room” and “Battlefield Earth.” One of those movies that is just so damn bad, that you must see it to believe it. This film makes David Lynch’s filmography resemble Martin Scorsese’s. It is just that bizarre and off-kilter.