Kim Possible (2019)
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"I want to be a dog"
— Ron Unstoppable
Kim Possible (2019) is a Disney Channel live-action television movie based on the 2002 Disney animated series of the same name. It premiered on February 15, 2019.
Plot
The film follows the titular hero, Kim Possible, a typical high school girl who saves the world from her nemesis, Dr. Drakken, with the help of her best friend/sidekick Ron Stoppable, his naked mole-rat Rufus and computer genius Wade
Why It's (K)Impossible
- The movie has a very terrible grasp of the source material, although the same creators of the beloved 2002 show, Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle returned as the writers and executive producers for the movie, and the fact that the movie aired on Disney Channel (the channel that made the original show famous) doesn't help it either.
- Most of the characters in this film are flanderized badly and lack the charm they had in the series:
- Kim herself suffers from the worst Flanderization of all the characters, as she has gone from a badass spy with great experience in fighting into a spoiled, jealous, attention-seeking Mary Sue who is obsessed with being popular at school and a better spy, and cares more about validation rather than saving the world. She is also depicted as being much weaker and more emotionally vulnerable than in the original series just to make Athena seem stronger in comparison, which is evident in how she is often doubting herself and crying multiple times in the film ever since Athena became more popular than her. Her crying is also really annoying.
- Kim's sports profession has changed from cheerleading to soccer despite that this was one of Kim's defining character traits in the original series and it explains why she's so athletic and is great at fighting as to quote Drakken from the original series "Why did she have to be a cheerleader?! If she was on the debate team, I would have vaporized her by now!", in this film however, this is mostly explained by gaining the athletic trait solely from Nana Possible's dojo.
- Kim's jealousy towards Athena completely goes against her character in the show of how she doesn't hold grudges against those she's jealous of for very long and eventually moves on.
- While in the original series, Kim does show jealousy towards her rivals at times, she quickly moves on from her jealousy and instead overcomes it maturely and quickly moves on to more important tasks like saving the world, unlike this live-action counterpart of hers.
- For some strange reason, in the film Kim is shown to be actually deathly terrified of electric eels, while in the episode "Rufus in Show" of the original cartoon, electric eels barely even frighten her.
- Ron is a lot dumber and a more incompetent sidekick than in the original series.
- Wade, despite having good intentions, continuously alerts and updates Kim on what is going on in the world way too much on almost every aspect of Kim's life, even during the most inappropriate of times, hence making him (unintentionally) come off as a stalker, Wade also looks more light-weighted than in the original.
- Bonnie is still a one-dimensional popular girl, but she is far meaner and crueler to Kim than in the original series. For example, despite being impressed with Kim's soccer skills, she still refuses to allow Kim on the Middleton High School soccer team and instead demotes her to being the team's equipment manager as freshmen can't be on the team. This makes no sense as she even lets the new girl Athena be on the soccer team despite her being a freshman due to her skills, which makes her come off as very hypocritical.
- Steve Barkin has been changed from a tough-as-nails militant and funny teacher into a completely weakling and crazy cat person, which is not how he acted in the original cartoon. In addition, he is not even funny at all, since his original voice actor Patrick Warburton is what made his original animated counterpart a funny and memorable character due to Warburton's humorous voice and over-dramatic voice-over performance, something which his actor Michael P. Northey failed to recapture in the character.
- Drakken and Shego's dynamic isn't as well-written here and isn't nearly as funny as they were in the original cartoon.
- Kim's younger twin brothers Jim and Tim are pointless as they only serve as background characters instead of comic reliefs of harassing Kim and other characters for fun like in the original cartoon, they don't even have a dialogue in this film.
- Kim herself suffers from the worst Flanderization of all the characters, as she has gone from a badass spy with great experience in fighting into a spoiled, jealous, attention-seeking Mary Sue who is obsessed with being popular at school and a better spy, and cares more about validation rather than saving the world. She is also depicted as being much weaker and more emotionally vulnerable than in the original series just to make Athena seem stronger in comparison, which is evident in how she is often doubting herself and crying multiple times in the film ever since Athena became more popular than her. Her crying is also really annoying.
- Despite being based on the show, due to the creators being involved in the movie’s process, this resulted in the film's continuity becoming a mess. Sometimes it acts as a prequel, or interquel, and the rest of the time not so, all in one film.
- In the series, Kim always uses a variety of spy gadgets, but in the film, she's obsessed with only grappling guns, so much so that she has a huge collection of grappling guns in her room.
- The pacing is very slow and inferior compared to the series, which is known for its fast pacing and action to fit the show's comedic timing. Not helping is the film's bad cinematography used in most of the action scenes which slows down the film's pacing.
- Most of the film's focus is on Kim's high school popularity rather than doing any spy-related missions and crime fighting, which feels very tedious to watch.
- The new designs for the characters don’t fit very well. Like Kim's new mission outfit, and Drakken and Shego's change of skin color. Kim said that the changes in her outfit were because she thought it was too cartoony (Ironically enough, the film is based on a cartoon).
- In the cartoon series, Kim had about three different mission outfits, the iconic crop top and cargo pants outfit, the white outfit from the 2005 special movie So The Drama, and another one that first appeared in the season 4 episode "Clothes Minded", in the film, however, the new outfit Kim wears is nowhere near as good as the iconic crop top and cargo pants and other outfits and out of all the other mission outfits, this is the only one she has.
- Despite her claim that wearing her iconic crop top and cargo pants outfit from the animated series regularly made it look cartoony, she still wears the same mission outfit (as pictured here) regularly, which comes off as hypocritical.
- On that topic, Kim also looks at the camera in a very meta way, which wasn't featured in the series. This remark also feels more like a jab to the series rather than a homage.
- Despite her claim that wearing her iconic crop top and cargo pants outfit from the animated series regularly made it look cartoony, she still wears the same mission outfit (as pictured here) regularly, which comes off as hypocritical.
- Drakken's skin looks normal despite that his skin was blue in the original series, however, it was never explained why he turned blue in the first place, all he said in the original series finale "Graduation" in the stinger is that it happened on a Tuesday.
- In the cartoon series, Kim had about three different mission outfits, the iconic crop top and cargo pants outfit, the white outfit from the 2005 special movie So The Drama, and another one that first appeared in the season 4 episode "Clothes Minded", in the film, however, the new outfit Kim wears is nowhere near as good as the iconic crop top and cargo pants and other outfits and out of all the other mission outfits, this is the only one she has.
- The humor and jokes in this film are cringe-worthy and unfunny and it's a downgrade since the original series is known for having great creative humor.
- Despite being one of the main characters from the TV series, Rufus doesn't have much focus in the film and barely has any screen time. In the series, Rufus is revealed to be an intelligent mole rat that can do a lot and could even provide comic relief like his owner Ron, but in the film, the only thing he's done is simply push a button.
- Speaking of which, the film contradicts the events of how Ron met Rufus, in the original cartoon series, Ron wanted a pet that had no skin since his dad is allergic, so he bought Rufus the naked rat with no skin, there was even a rap song about it "The Naked Mole Rat", in this film however, Ron just happens to find Rufus in Drakken's lab which makes Kim and Ron's first encounter with Rufus seem rather unethical because they stole him rather than own him.
- Most of the characters are miscast and barely resemble their original animated counterparts;
- While the outfit Sadie wears looks kind of good on her, she feels more like a random choice to play Kim Possible, and she also looks way too young for the character compared to Christy Carlson Romano who was 35 at the time the movie came out.
- Erika Tham is seriously miscast as Bonnie Rockwaller because Bonnie is a brunette Caucasian, not a black-haired Asian, which can already be considered whitewashing.
- Steve Barkin hardly even resembles his animated counterpart in any way. In the original cartoon, he is muscular-built with brown hair, but here in the film, he is bald and obese-built. Although unintentional, he even looks uncannily similar in appearance to Bertram Winkle from the Disney Channel sitcom Jessie.
- Kim, Ron, Bonnie, Steve Barkin, Shego, Drakken and Kim's Parents have been heavily recast from their original actors to the point where they sound nothing like their original counterparts (except for Professor Dementor and Rufus who has their voice actors Patten Oswalt and Nancy Cartwright reprise their roles), especially Kim who sounds extremely whiny and annoying when compared to Christy Carlson Romano who gave her life and character for her personality in general. It is also hypocritical because Christy Carlson Romano did appear in the film which was a missed opportunity for her not to reprise her role as Kim but is instead voicing a popular singer "Poppy Blu".
- The acting is incredibly bad, especially from Sadie Stanley's performance as the titular character.
- The special effects are very cheap and poor looking for late-2010s standards and even for Disney Channel TV movie standards, especially the laughably bad CGI used for Rufus.
- The dialogues are very cringeworthy and laughably bad, such as the infamous line by Ron "I want to be a dog".
- As mentioned before, there are little to no action scenes, spy-related missions, and crime fighting at all, except for the intro and the final battle.
- Athena is a very pointless and unnecessary character because her assistance to Kim and Ron disrupts the dynamic teamwork they were always known for and her role is nothing but a rehash of Eric's role from the special movie Kim Possible: So the Drama. The plot twist of her being a robot was an obvious attempt to make her survive the explosion under the G-rating rules.
- The revelation that Athena is evil feels very rushed and forced, unlike Eric's evil revelation which is much better written and executed.
- Speaking of which, the film's plot is a gender-swapped rehash of Kim Possible: So the Drama, where this time it is Kim who is facing jealousy over a far superior girl who turns out to be evil (Athena) instead of vice-versa with Ron facing jealousy over a far superior guy turns out to be evil (Eric).
- The revelation that Athena was created as part of Drakken's evil plan to demote and humiliate Kim into a total weakling is just as stupid as it sounds, even for a supervillain like Drakken.
- Some of the characters such as Monique (Kim's friend from the cartoon), Monkey Fist (Ron's arch nemesis and the villain from the cartoon), and DNAmy are nowhere to be seen in this movie.
- The film tries too hard to be hip and "modern" for kids such as using outdated slang and bad marks, the Instagram reference "Villaingram", as well as over-reliance on selfies.
- False advertising: Despite the film's intro (which is a good recreation of the intro from the TV series) depicting a scene of Kim as a cheerleader, she is never shown to be a cheerleader in the actual film.
- Plot Holes: Why does Kim continue to be friends with Athena although she is revealed to be evil all along and tries to make Kim look bad so many times throughout the film? While it’s true that Kim may have been willing to forgive her, it feels rushed.
- How does Drakken becoming more invincible with Athena's robot powers turn him back into a child in the process? Wouldn't it make more sense if it turned him blue? That would explain why he turned blue in the original cartoon.
- There's an infamous scene where Shego makes a feminist preach to Drakken by the film's climax for no reason other than political pandering, which is when Drakken calls out his henchmen to attack Athena and Kim "Henchmen, attack!", only for Shego to correct him with "HENCH-WOMEN, attack!", which mainly doesn't work because most of the film was spent with the title character associated with being heroic moping, crying, sabotaging missions purely for attention and doing almost little to nothing heroic such as crime fighting, making the line feel a lot more out of place.
- The marketing of the film was a bit poor. While the teaser trailer received positive reviews, the official trailer received a lot of dislikes from fans of the original.
- The film simply lacks the charm the TV series has.
- Cliffhanger Ending: Sheggo drives a now kid version of Drakken to school to spy on Kim, ending the film right there.
- This film overall killed the Kim Possible franchise once and for all as there is little to no new Kim Possible media announced after this film, even worse, the film ended on a cliffhanger that will probably never get solved.
Redeeming Qualities
- It has a pretty good recreation of the intro from the TV series, along with Kim's famous "What's the sitch?" line.
- Despite the acting is terrible, some do a great job such as:
- Patton Oswalt reprises his role as Professor Dementor from the cartoon, and while he looks different from the cartoon version (both costume and appearance), Oswalt still does a decent performance as Dementor.
- Additionally, Nancy Cartwright also reprises her role as Rufus from the cartoon.
- Sean Giambrone is a spot-on casting choice as Ron Stoppable, as he both looks and sounds perfectly just like the character from the cartoon.
- Connie Ray's role as Nana Possible gave a good performance, giving the character a more realistic approach.
- Ron's and Drakken's new acting does sound a lot closer to their original ones.
- Patton Oswalt reprises his role as Professor Dementor from the cartoon, and while he looks different from the cartoon version (both costume and appearance), Oswalt still does a decent performance as Dementor.
- There is a great reference to the cartoon where the sign near Middleton High changes every time it appears.
- Despite that Kim's original voice actress, Christy Carlson Romano didn't return to reprise her role, she at least did make a cameo appearance in the movie as the popular singer Poppy Blu.
- Despite all of the flaws of the movie, it is great to see another Kim Possible-related media on TV after 13 years.
Reception
The film received extremely negative reviews from fans of the cartoon and currently holds a 3.6/10 rating on IMDb. Despite this, it received high reviews from critics by being presumably the only film on this wiki to hold a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (though it should be noted that this remains today with only 6 reviews with no critical consensus), but the audience score is 29% and is widely regarded by many people as one of the worst films of 2019.
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