Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Prequel to the Nickelodeon CGI series The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, this 2001 movie was originally going to be simply a pilot episode for the series. Instead, the Nickelodeon executives were so impressed they gave it funding for cinematic release.
Ten-year-old boy genius Jimmy Neutron has an IQ of 210. He invents rockets in his spare time, for launching satellites to communicate with alien races. (Of course.) Jimmy also has a robotic dog called Goddard that can do pretty much anything, a disproportionately large head and a strange hairdo - a fact constantly brought to the surface by his rival, Cindy Vortex. He's just living his ordinary life (get up, get his robot to do his hair for him, travel to school via gum that turns into a transportation bubble, show off his shrink ray in Show And Tell, etc.) when the communication satellite he launched at the beginning of the movie is intercepted by some egg-shaped aliens named 'The Yolkians'. (The King is voiced by Patrick Stewart, and his brother/comic sidekick Ooblar is voiced by Martin Short.)
- Adorkable: Jimmy
- Adults Are Useless: Taken to its literal extreme, There Are No Adults, in the movie, when the entire grown-up population of Retroville is kidnapped by aliens.
- Aliens Speaking English: The Yolkians.
- All CGI Cartoon: Notable for being the first film and series animated entirely with over-the-counter programs.
- An Aesop: Your parents love you and they always want what's best for you.
- Anime Hair: Jimmy's. This is lampshaded pretty regularly.
- Area 51: Appeared in the movie.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Played straight in the movie, Lampshaded in the series.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Jimmy and Cindy.
- Black Best Friend: Libby to Cindy.
- Bumbling Dad: Hugh.
- Catch Phrase: Jimmy - "Gotta Blast"
- Comic Trio: Jimmy, Sheen, and Carl.
- Do-Anything Robot: Goddard.
- Dueling Movies: With Recess: School's Out (Though they didn't compete with each other- School's Out had already been released on video)
- Early Installment Weirdness: Cindy's hair; pigtails in the movie, ponytail in the series that came after.
- All the kids had different character designs. Jimmy wore shorts and loafers instead of sneakers and jeans, Carl wore suspenders, and Sheen had collars on the end of his sleeves.
- Five-Man Band:
- The Hero: Jimmy
- The Lancer: Cindy
- The Smart Guy: Libby (played with; both Jimmy and Cindy are smarter than her, but her personality is intellectual)
- The Big Guy: Sheen
- The Chick: Carl
- Team Pet: Goddard
- Inferred Holocaust: No infants were present at the film's climax, which means they were left all alone in the town.... Some might have had older siblings, but can we expect all the kids to account for all the helpless babies?
- Girls Have Cooties: Jimmy, Sheen, and Carl all exhibit this sentiment from time to time. Especially Jimmy, who engineers a man-eating plant to target girls with pigtails.
- Large Ham: Both King Goobot and Ooblar have their moments. "HELLO, TOAST!"
- Meaningful Echo: "Now, you gotta admit, that is pretty cool."
- Meaningful Name: James 'Jimmy' Isaac Neutron is not surprisingly, interested in science.
- Sheen Estevez; a Shout-Out to Charlie Sheen and Martin/Emilio Estevez.
- Missing Mom: Sheen.
- Word of God says his mother died when he was young - they don't say her cause of death, however.
- But she's visible in the movie at the end! She's right behind Sheen's dad!
- Word of God says his mother died when he was young - they don't say her cause of death, however.
- Missing Trailer Scene: Pretty much everything in the teaser. Justified, as a lot of it is very early test footage. Most of the scenes got recycled for smaller shorts that premiered during commercial breaks on Nickelodeon around the time the film came out.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jimmy sending the aliens information about Earth against his parents' orders is a very bad idea.
- Pet the Dog: Rather than being condescending, as fictional and same real geniuses are wont to do, Jimmy is very nice to the rather dopey Carl and Sheen, not being a wet blanket when Carl shows him a picture of a frog or talks about wishing on a star. Carl in fact wishes to be like Jimmy as shown in his dreams.
- Punny Name: Ms. Fowl has a few bird-like attributes.
- Retro Universe: Retroville.
- Robot Buddy: Goddard, whose a robotic dog.
- Sassy Black Woman: Libby.
- Schmuck Bait
- Science Hero: Jimmy, who solves the problems his inventions create.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: Goddard has one, though he can reassemble himself.
- Sequel Hook: Odd version used in one of the audio tracks. Leave it Up to Me includes half a verse about it, complete with the rather blatant lyrics:
Aaron Carter: "Big people listen up, relax now, we're equal; and if the money's right then we might make a sequel."
- Shout-Out: Nick describes The Blair Witch Project to the rest of the kids at the camp on the asteroid.
- The first thing Jimmy does in his alien transmission is the Vulcan salute.
- The second trailer's opening is a huge one to Top Gun, down to using "Danger Zone".
- Space Does Not Work That Way
- Special Edition Theme Song: The Bowling For Soup theme used in The Movie.
- Tsundere: Cindy.
- In the original movie she explains that she only became one to Jimmy, because she was jealous of his better grades and hated his tendency to show off his intelligence on every given occasion.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Averted, Retroville is in Texas.