Out of Jimmy's Head

Yes, just look at that hair.

Following the success of Cartoon Network's two-hour live-action/animation original Made for TV Movie Re-Animated comes Out of Jimmy's Head. The story continues directly from the film with Jimmy Roberts, who's received a brain transplant after a train collision at the famous Gollyworld theme park (and somehow is not only fully functional, but has grown back his long, shaggy hair almost immediately thereafter). Jimmy ends up receiving the frozen brain of famous cartoonist Walt Disney Milt Appleday, which leads to Jimmy being able to see all of Milt's cartoon characters in the real world - Mickey Mouse Golly Gopher, his girlfriend Minnie Mouse Dolly Gopher, Goofy Crocco, Donald Duck Tux the Penguin and Tom and Jerry Pickles and Prickles. Milt's son and dastardly evil resident villain, Sonny Appleday, wants his father's brain so he can create cartoons like his father.

Jimmy's family have allowed Sonny to take up residence under the impression that he's a college student, so now he plots effortlessly to nab Jimmy's brain with a bunch of "evil" schemes. The family itself consists of a middle school principal for a dad, an astronaut for a mother, and an alien sister. Jimmy is best friends with Craig, who effortlessly tries to be part of the cool crowd, and crushes on his best friend's sister Robin, an obedient overachiever.

The series itself has lasted for only two seasons and people believe it was due to The Writer's Strike of 2007 but all of the episodes were finished by then. Also, they only wanted to make twenty episodes of the series in the first place. Ratings and critical reception of the show were mediocre, partly due to viewers being skeptical of having live action shows on an animation channel, among other things. Despite this, the show may have influenced Cartoon Network to gain more live-action shows like Level Up.

---

The movie, Re-Animated, contains examples of:

• Adult Child: Jimmy's father, carries over into the TV series
• Art Major Biology - Jimmy retains all his personality traits because the doctors were able to save his "personality gland".
  • But that doesn't explain how he retains his old memories or how he doesn't have any of Milt's memories.
• Brain In a Jar - Lucky they had one lying around right when the kid needed a brain transplant.
• Broken Aesop - In the movie, Jimmy is portrayed as being selfish and unfaithful to his friends when he spends more time with his cartooning career than with Craig. All well and good, but nobody seemed to care that Craig was pretty much treating Jimmy like dirt throughout the story, and constantly using him as a lackey so he could get in with the popular kids.
• Extreme Doormat: Jimmy at the start, the purpose of the movie was to show him breaking out of this.
• Hair Reboot - Despite having brain surgery, Jimmy's hair is perfectly intact.
• Inspired By - The whole "brain hidden in the theme park" thing was based on an almost forgotten rumor which involved Walt Disney's brain being taken out after he died and hidden in the Matterhorn at Disney World.
• Syncro-Vox - Used briefly.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics - Lampshaded. Jimmy at first mistakes Dolly for a second Golly before he notices her bow.
• You Fail Biology Forever - Let's just say that a brain transplant is not only possible but can also be performed by a not-top-of-the-line doctor. After his entire brain has been removed from his noggin and replaced with a completely different brain, Jimmy retains his memories, his personality, his motor skills, and his sanity (well, most of it). For this to be even remotely possible, this donor would have to be exactly like Jimmy in every way except for hallucinating cartoon characters.
  • Hand Waved in intentionally implausible fashion by claiming they managed to save his memory and personality glands.
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief - A kid gets a brain transplant and ends up seeing cartoons in his head, and he apparently doesn't at least get some serious psychiatric treatment?

The show contains examples of:

• Art Shift - A few episodes had Jimmy completely going into the cartoon world briefly to solve a problem.
• Black Best Friend - See Race Lift below.
• Cloudcuckoolander - Jimmy's parents.
• Companion Cube - Mittens, the bag of cash.
• Detractor Nickname - Out of Jimmy's Ass.
• Early-Bird Cameo - Golly first briefly appeared in a Space Jam-inspired poster in the TV movie Good Wilt Hunting
• Eighties Aughties Hair (theatre) - Jimmy. Justified since kids actually have hair like that.
• Elephant in the Living Room - The fact that Yancey is an alien is rarely brought up by anyone other than herself.
• Everything's Better with Penguins - Tux.
• Freaky Friday Flip - One of many Sonny's insane plots. As a result, he gets to switch with Jimmy's body, Robin is switched with her piano teacher, and Jimmy's dad trades places with a parakeet.
• Incredibly Lame Pun - Tux's speciality.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: CN pretty much erased all trances of this show. If you want to see it nowadays, you'd have to dig around the Internet.
• Laugh Track
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo - All the characters Jimmy sees are parodies of the classic Disney characters. Golly and Dolly Gopher are Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Crocco the Alligator is Goofy, Tux is perhaps supposed to be Donald Duck, and Prickles and Pickles are... Tom and Jerry, maybe?
  • Which is bizarre because Cartoon Network owns the last two. It was probably done for consistency(there's also the fact that T&J are MGM).
• Mad Scientist - Sonny Appleday, Milt Appleday's evil son.
• Mr. Alt Disney - Milt Appleday, Sonny's father.
• Non-Indicative Name - Crocco is actually an alligator.
• Only Sane Man - Yancey
• Our Werewolves Are Different - Yancey dates one who isn't that aggressive (or frightening) as werewolf lore states.
• Race Lift - Craig and Robin were changed from Asian to African-American.
  • Specifically, from Japanese-played-by-Chinese.
• Roger Rabbit Effect
• Rubber Forehead Aliens - Yancey, who is green and has antennae.
• Shout-Out - It lasted long enough in Canada to have an episode that has Golly briefly appearing with his own Lagann unit.
• Small Annoying Creature - Golly and, to a lesser extent, the other toons.
• Tomboyish Name - Yancey, an Always Male name. Also she's a space alien.
  • It was probably a (poor) attempt at making an alien version of the name Nancey.
• Too Dumb to Live: Basically everyone except the only sane people Jimmy and Yancy.

Sonny: "Never buy a monitor from a fruit stand."

• Toon Town - The world inside Milt Appleday's childhood drawings, as seen in the Halloween Special.
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief - Even worse than the movie; all that was mentioned for this trope above is still the case, plus the main character has an alien sister. There's also the casual lunar travel.
• X Meets Y: The shows premise can be summed up as Ned's Declassified meets Out of the Inkwell.
  • And the whole "I can see cartoons" schitck seems like Drop Dead Fred meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.