After Paul Germain worked with Joe Ansolabehere on Nickelodeon’s beloved animated series “Rugrats” (which Germain also co-created), the pair turned their attention from one-year-olds to ten-year-olds and debuted “Recess” in 1997. Premiering as part of the “Disney’s One Saturday Morning” program on ABC, the show was a runaway hit and has since been picked up in syndication by UPN, which airs it on the other six mornings. As a series of eleven-minute cartoons, “Recess” has been a rarity in TV animation, neither speaking down to kids nor playing over their heads. Paul and Joe (as they’re fond of billing themselves) refuse to patronize and are refreshingly unclogged by movie references and in-jokes; they’ve had to hold their audience by telling good stories and being funny, and the great news is that they can also do it at feature length, because Recess: School’s Out is a delight.
The special charm of the “Recess” series has been its reliance on character comedy, building situations out of its core group of six friends who attend fourth grade together: charismatic and mischievous T.J. Detweiler, pugnacious tomboy Spinelli, jovial athlete Vince, spindly scientific genius Gretchen, oversized yet sensitive and poetic Mikey, and timid new kid Gus. (All but one are voiced by kids.)
Paul and Joe appreciate the rich mythological world children build up around themselves, and “Recess” wittily observes their elaborate social hierarchies and codes of conduct, while evoking the magical sense of reality which shapes fourth-grade life. Recess: School’s Out changes that focus somewhat, in that it actually does take place when school’s out, during summer vacation. Yet the film shrewdly keeps its characters in their familiar location and uses the quiescent schoolhouse as the site of a rollicking adventure. So if the trailer seems to suggest a cartoon of G-rated classroom pranks, fear not – Paul and Joe and writer Jonathan Greenberg have actually concocted a fast-paced actioner built around the growing solidarity between the kids and the teachers.
The heavy here isn’t any of the school authorities but rather the power-mad, recess-hating Philliam Benedict, an ex-principal who’s using Third Street Elementary as the secret base for his nefarious operation. T.J., left behind when all his friends scatter to different summer camps, stumbles onto the bizarre goings-on within the school, and regroups the gang in order to thwart Benedict. James Woods goes to town as the voice of this sleek psychotic and is especially effective playing off “Recess” regulars Dabney Coleman as the uptight Principal Prickly and April Winchell as the schoolyard harridan Ms. Finster. You’ll have to listen carefully for brief vocal appearances by Andrea Martin, Robert Stack, and Lee Ermey, among others – but you can’t miss Robert Goulet as Mikey’s singing voice, especially in the end-credit tribute to psychedelia, a rendition of “Green Tambourine.”
(This review first appeared in Film Journal International, March 2001.)
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NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 