Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus is the latest Nickelodeon revival via Netflix, which recently resuscitated Rocko’s Modern Life for a one-off special. Invader Zim was a considerably more “cult” phenomenon, though — it was mildly infamous for its edgy content, and despite critical acclaim, it only ran for two seasons. But as all things must come to an end only to be brought back on another network, this wild, wildly creative cartoon returns in the form of the 71-minute Enter the Florpus, which immediately grabs our imaginations by the yarbles, prompting us to wonder what the living hell a Florpus is.
INVADER ZIM: ENTER THE FLORPUS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Some housekeeping, via an opening sequence animated in the exaggerated style of Japanese anime: the original Invader Zim premise deposited the space-alien title character (voice of Richard Steven Horvitz) on Earth in a vaguely unconvincing Earthling disguise, making it all the easier for him to enslave the human race, an incompetent comic-relief robot, GIR (Rosearik Rikki Simons), in a vaguely unconvincing dog costume by his side. Human boy Dib (Andy Berman) was the only person aware of Zim’s true identity and motive, and forever thwarted his evil plans.
Now that we’re suitably recapped, the premise remains intact for this new movie-length version of Invader Zim, except Enter the Florpus is very much, as they say, NOW more than EVER. It rockets by so quickly, you’ll want to eat motion-sickness pills by the fistful. Zim disappeared into thin air years ago, but Dib remains vigilant to the point of being alarmingly odiferous and covered with dried-up orificial mucus. He sits, wedged in his chair, staring at a bank of monitors, watching for Zim to reappear. “I’m more chair than man now,” he utters. His sister, Gaz (Melissa Fahn), is disgustipated. His dad, genius scientist Professor Membrane (Rodger Bumpass), remains skeptical that things like space aliens exist. Without his moral foil, it’s a tough life for Dib.
Of course, Zim reappears — turns out, he was in a toilet the whole time, hiding and cackling. Here’s where I’ll gloss over several dozen zany plot details and get to the part where Professor Membrane is about to create world peace via a new product — the movie stops short of calling it an iWristband — which provides Zim an opportunity to fulfill his destiny. He soon rockets the whole entire planet through space, into the path of the lasers, missiles and whatnot of an alien fleet. But doing so opens up a Florpus, which is a lot like a black hole, albeit with a much better name. Will Dib finally convince his father that aliens are real? Will Earth be saved? Will any of this make a lick of sense? No spoilers!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: A couple of visual nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien aside, Enter the Florpus is best contextualized within the TV-animation realm of the last 30 years or so. That’s a pretentious way of saying Invader Zim would never have existed without Ren and Stimpy and Dexter’s Laboratory, and a case could be made that it paved the way for the runaway success of Adventure Time and Rick and Morty.
Performance Worth Watching: GIR steals all the scenes because he’s an ignoramus.
Memorable Dialogue: Zim, on his first day of ruling the planet: “People of Earth, of which I am one, because I am human and inferior and disgusting just like you are, happy Peace Day!”
Sex and Skin: None. Kids’ show. Well, sort of mostly a kids’ show, anyway.
Our Take: How many exclamation point keys were destroyed during the writing of the Florpus script? Sixteen? Seventeen? A thousand billion? This special packs in more screaming declarative exhortations per square inch than any teleplay ever to have existed in this or any other reality, and I say that fully aware that it’s absurd hyperbole, but also absolutely in tune with Invader Zim‘s tone. Original episodes ranged from 12 to 24 minutes, and stretching the jam-packed gag-a-millisecond aesthetic to near-feature-length tends to be A Bit Much. Remember how Futurama was way more enjoyable in 22-minute chunks instead of 80-odd-minute movies? Same idea, but way louder, and ultimately a bit less dysfunctional.
Which says nothing of Zim: Florpus‘s restless creativity. Every shot is overstuffed with hypercaffeinated eye candy. You get your money’s worth, and then some. You won’t want to blink for fear of missing a grossout pudding joke or classic sci-fi reference. It inspires one to describe it by putting a pile of prefixes in front of the word “kinetic”: mega, mucho, ultra, hyper, uber, booger. The story leads to a very dramatic, hectic, random, insane, delirious, maniacal, screwball, tumultuous, weird and violent conclusion.
Whether you find this all endearing or all far too intoxicated on its own high fructose corn juices surely depends on whether you watched the show during an impressionable period of your cognitive development. I fall squarely in the appreciate-it-but-don’t-always-necessarily-like-it camp.
Oh, and god help me if Zim’s laugh doesn’t sound exactly like Ren Hoek’s. EXACTLY.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Swap the Visine with superglue, maw, cuz tonight we’re watchin’ Enter the Florpus!
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
