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The Rugrats Movie

The popular Nickelodeon kids' TV show gets the full-blown big-screen treatment here. The infantile drama centers on Tommy Pickles, a diaper-clad "rugrat" who's suffering from a parental-attention deficit after his newly arrived brother steals his thunder. None of Tommy's fellow "rats" particularly appreciates the screaming neonate either, so they decide to return him to the hospital and get a refund. In the process they pile into a dinosaurian big-wheel (invented by Tommy's sensitive but floundering father), career through the city, and get lost in the woods. As they try to find their way home, they encounter a big, bad wolf, get assaulted by a band of mischievous monkeys, and learn their first big life lesson about the value of friendship and family.

The animation is top-notch, and though the film boasts some MTV-pulsed vignettes -- including a hilarious maternity-ward rock video -- plus the little bambinos' propensity for scatological excess, The Rugrats Movie is solid on family values and a reasonably good time for the whole mini-van clan.

-- Tom Meek