Review by Jay Pinkerton View This Trailer The trailer for Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie is, without even breaking a sweat, one of the most profoundly stupid things I have ever seen. I include Angelina Jolie interviews, Jean Claude Van Damme movies and Designing Women in this assessment. I say this as a man with more than a passing knowledge of entertainment meant for children, too. I still watch Bugs Bunny, and have probably seen more Power Rangers episodes in my twenties than I'd care to count. Yet while I shamefully admit my love of children's fare involving guys hitting other guys while they pass gas and ninjas explode, I still found sitting through this trailer akin to sitting in the bathroom following a four-fajita spread at Taco Bell: I didn't enjoy a second of it, at times I felt dizzy, and there wasn't a moment that went by where I wouldn't have rather been somewhere else. (Hmm. I apologize for the graphic nature of that metaphor; especially to those reading this who know me, who I don't doubt will now involuntarily flash on the above paragraph every single time they see me from now on.) What to say about VeggieTales? This proves more difficult than you'd think. Since the entire trailer consists of little more than a monacled British asparagus doing not much of anything for two minutes while a tomato, a radish, and various produce also do nothing, it's difficult to describe anything that, in a strict scientific sense, "happens". There are, I admit, the appearances of things happening. Appearances that, if you happened to be walking past a theater screen and glanced over, would lead you to assume actual events were taking place. The talking asparagus travels to Nineveh and -- for reasons known only to the filmmakers -- Men At Work's "Land Down Under" pipes in. (Ancient Assyria, Australia - do your kids really need to know the difference? Honestly.) The monacled asparagus boards a pirate ship. The monacled asparagus walks around a desert. And while all of these scenes would suggest the existence of dialogue and plot development, I assure you this is completely illusory. The trailer for Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie takes the concept of sluggishness and brings it to an entirely new plane of tepid non-interest, where even the possibility of things eventually happening are mere specks on the horizon. Watch the trailer and see for yourself: Having viewed it, could you describe one concrete occurrence? One scene where you gathered a small bit of information that allowed you to process the premise of the film? I've watched it six or seven times now, and am met with a brick wall every time. In the absence of actual events to describe, I was forced to stray from the trailer entirely, looking up "veggietales" on Yahoo for something, anything, to write about. According to Yahoo, VeggieTales is listed as a Christian-produced film. (I assume it wasn't produced by all Christians; merely whatever small segment of Christianity feels the need to blast their religion in your face at all times like a foghorn.) Curious, I went and looked up "Jonah" and "Nineveh" on Yahoo. As it turns out, Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie is based on the delightful tale told in the Book of Jonah, where the prophet travels by sea to heathen lands to convert the people of Nineveh to Christ. Of particular note is that apparently Jonah hated the Assyrians, and was actually hoping they wouldn't repent, so that God would destroy them utterly. But repent they did, their religion and culture destroyed utterly instead, and everyone ended up loving Christ, The End. You know, just flipping through this light-hearted tale in the Bible now, even I immediately thought: "I smell a screenplay here." So: VeggieTales is a thinly-veiled attempt to win over kids to the glories of Christ -- a rockingly fun-filled premise that I'm sure will have the tots lined up around the block, clutching their toy crucifixes that transform into a missile-firing Jesus. At least this explains some of the offensive foreign stereotypes presented in the trailer. I was wondering why the filmmakers had taken such pains to make every foreign character in the film filthy-looking and ignorant-sounding. Now I know. We're supposed to want to change them. What's frustrating, though, is the film's inability to pick a racial stereotype and stick with it. Historically, Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire, putting it in modern-day Iraq. Yet in the trailer, the Ninevites speak with thick Indian accents while Australian music plays. It's more than a little aggravating, not knowing who's supposed to walk away from this feeling insulted. (Well, everybody, I suppose, but I meant as a direct result of racist content.) According to their website, The VeggieTales gang have movies, books, videos, board games, and Jesus knows what else available for immediate purchase. Among the many videos available: VeggieTales: God Wants Me to Forgive Them!?! (note the extreme indignant shock of the title; man, these are some hard vegetables. Don't cross these guys). Or, if games are your pleasure, the VeggieTales cult has you covered there, too: "It's the grand opening of the VeggieTales Carnival ... and you're invited! Clown around, disguising your favorite veggie character in hats, wigs, clothes and more!" Wow! I can dress a Christian fundamentalist British asparagus in a top hat? I'd better buy two copies, in case I wear the first one out! Finally, I found something worth reading. Here, in the books section, was an adaptation of the film: "This funny, rhyming tale from the VeggieTales' story of Jonah tells about the people of Nineveh and their fall from God's glory. The Ninevites were a mean ol' sort-because they "wouldn't do dishes," and "they'd squirt the insides out of knishes," and worst of all, "they'd slap each other with big, smelly fishes!" But God loved those mean ol' Ninevites and wanted them to change their ways, so he sent Jonah with a special message to save the day. The Ninevites listened to Jonah and decided to obey God's wishes, and best of all ... they even stopped that slapping with fishes!" Note the use of wacky, Dr. Seuss-eque rhyming to distract from this book's (and the film's) intent to sway young readers into converting heathens from Iraq (or possibly India... or Australia) to the one true path of Christ. It's a pretty noble goal, I suppose, if you're into that whole "let's brainwash our child early into devoting his or her life to suffocating zealotry" thing. I can't imagine too many non-Christians finding it as much of a laugh-romp, to be honest -- but hey, they're probably too busy slapping each other with big smelly fishes to notice. But back to Veggie Tales: The Idiotic Motion Picture. Let's assume that you're six. You can still do better. As a zygote, you should be able to find better entertainment than this. I wouldn't even be able to wrap my mind around how a movie this stupid could be made, except that I have in mind exactly who would make it. You remember when you were a kid, and there were certain adults who professed to be good with kids, and despite this they'd be horribly bad with you, and baby-talk at you like an idiot, and bore you, and maybe crack open a Bible at some point? This film was made by those people. No doubt they picked vegetables as their central characters precisely because kids need to eat their vegetables, and they genuinely believe children are this reprehensibly dim to fall for it. If you at all care about your child's frontal lobes not being fused together from the pure idiocy of events shown to them on a screen, I'd advise you to give them something safer to amuse themselves with, like your car keys or a Ginsu knife set. A half Billy Crystal for viewers who like their films great tasting, less dogmatic. Four Christs for those who would disagree. RATING: RATING: