'Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus' perfectly picks up where the show left off
The best thing about Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus is the way it manages to perfectly capture the spirit of the TV show and transport my brain right back to the early aughts.
Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus premiered on Netflix Friday and marked the movie-length return of Invader Zim after 13 years of silence. It’s delightfully funny, gorgeously animated, and hits every beat that Zim fans could ever ask for.
Instead of ignoring that there hasn’t been an episode in well over a decade, the movie acknowledges the wide chasm of time since the final episode of Season 2 in 2006, and although it appears nobody has really aged, a lot has happened.
There’s now a Game Slave 4, a nod to the Game Boy parody from early episodes. Everyone is obsessed with smartphone-like bracelets now. Nobody reads newspapers anymore.
But what have Zim and Dib been up to for the past 13 years? Well, Dib has been sitting in a chair in his room diligently watching his surveillance monitors, looking for any sign of Zim. Meanwhile, Zim was sitting in a toilet maniacally laughing. For 13 years.
Zim accomplished nothing. Dib’s butt fused to his chair.
It’s a fantastic setup to get things rolling after so long. From there, it’s classic Invader Zim antics. Zim is trying to prepare Earth for an alien invasion that’s never going to come, and Dib is trying to stop him despite nobody believing that Zim is actually an alien.
GIR is still an adorable, oblivious character who loves eating cheesy nachos. Dib’s dad is still unconvinced of Zim’s diabolical plans. Every other human on the show is an idiot.
The humor in Enter the Florpus is on point. Timing is perfect. Even obvious gags made me laugh out loud, toeing the line between childish and cerebral.
The only mark that this isn’t ripped straight from the early 2000s is Zim’s plot to take over Earth, which involves supplanting the leader of a tech company similar to Apple and selling children products that turn them into tools of the invasion.
The creators of the show take a jab at companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google with Zim’s line, “Look at them GIR, all this time trying to subjugate the humans and all I had to do was charge them for it.”
A handful of moments in Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus are reminiscent of Rick and Morty (and creator Justin Roiland even lends his voice to a few characters in Enter the Florpus) between the colorfully animated science fiction sequences and the sometimes-nihilistic attitudes of the characters.
The only problem with Enter the Florpus is it made me want to watch more Invader Zim. Hopefully this collaboration between Nickelodeon and Netflix will give us more Zim in the future.
Topics Netflix
