Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Magic School Bus Rides Again: Kids in Space’ on Netflix, an Animated Adventure Aboard the International Space Station

The Magic School Bus Rides Again: Kids in Space is a super-sized special episode of Netflix’s Magic School Bus reboot, clocking in at 46 minutes of quality animated EDUTAINMENT. The bus is extra-magic this time, taking the form of a rocket piercing Earth’s atmosphere and zooming to the International Space Station, where there will no doubt be some quality learning experiences, and surely no giant monsters, although I could be wrong..

THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS RIDES AGAIN: KIDS IN SPACE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: BLAST OFF TO ADVENTURE IN THE AMAZING YEAR FOUR HUNDRED BILLION. Ms. Fiona Frizzle (voice of Kate McKinnon), teacher and pilot, docks the bus at the ISS, and her students pile in, spewing facts such as: The station is 400 kilometers above the surface of the Earth, which is 248 miles. It circles the planet 16 times every 24 hours. They’re in microgravity which makes them all floaty You can’t eat things that make crumbs because they fly all over the station and gunk up the equipment. Urine is cleaned and filtered on the station so you can drink it again. Oh, and check out this tardigrade under the microscope — it’s the only living thing that can survive in “the irradiated vacuum of space,” one of the kids chirps. Neat!

That’s the EDU part, and for the TAINMENT, Ms. Frizzle introduces a doohickey known as a porta-shrinker, which can zap things and make them bigger or smaller. This is where the practical-learning thing gets elbowed out of the picture for a minute. What with one thing and another, the porta-shrinker accidentally big-ifies the tardigrade and its eight legs and claws and bloated bearlike body and weird proboscis, freaking out all the kids — and now you know why this special is rated TV-Y for “fear.” It floats around breaking things as Ms. Frizzle naps. Rambunctious Ralphie (Matthew Mintz) is to blame for not taking care of the porta-shrinker, so he becomes Responsible Ralphie and tries to come up with a fix for this problem. Did I mention the tardigrade drools green goo? It also poops.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Alien! It also makes a blatant Wrath of Khan reference.

Performance Worth Watching: McKinnon’s energetic voice-acting gives Ms. Frizzle some enjoyable comic juice.

Memorable Dialogue: Ralphie: “I don’t have the handbook memorized, but I think this is well beyond normal chief maintenance officer duties.” Pause. “Heh heh heh. ‘Duties.'”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Kids in Space is way more tense than I expected, but that isn’t to say it’ll give six-year-olds nightmares or anything. The monster here looks like a beanbag chair, and the proboscis doesn’t even have a tinier, nastier proboscis that shoots out to put a hole in your face. The action is mostly rooted in comedy, except for the part that brought to mind one of the more terrifying scenes from Gravity (or maybe that’s just my neurotic baggage kicking in). Giant crapping tardigrade aside, it aims to give kids a realistic tour of the ISS, and rebuts some of its more fanciful elements by backloading some scientific truths about humans living in the station.

It’s a quick-paced 46 minutes, colorful in character and animation, relatively sophisticated for kid’s fare, upbeat in tone and not too fixated on grossout humor. It also won’t inspire adults to run screaming to the liquor cabinet. The point of this space-station adventure is to depict children using logical problem-solving methods — if their first solution doesn’t save their classmate from the freezing-cold, unforgiving, hellish, endless void of outer space, then they try another one and another one and another one until they deduce the right way to rescue the kid from an airless black eternity. That’s the scientific method in action, yo.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Does Kids in Space make learning fun? DAMN RIGHT IT DOES.

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.

Stream The Magic School Bus Rides Again: Kids in Space on Netflix