Fairly Odd Movie (A): Grow Up, Timmy Turner!

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

They made a live action Fairly Odd Parents movie? Actually they made three. Another question: what is Fairly Odd Parents? If you were born in 1982 (like myself) and you’ve never heard of this show, it’s likely you have a lucrative career and are highly successful in your field of expertise. If you were born in 1982 and you love this show, you are likely a local semi-successful self-proclaimed professor who “educates” via poorly researched humor articles and meanderings about random movie titles while feverishly trying to feed your five children by working at your family’s pizza parlor.

Most career driven people probably didn’t have time for this show. But I did. Life well spent! Because Fairly Odd Parents is great. Just like complete sentences.

I always fear movie adaptations of TV shows because the formula is usually what makes the show work and the movies often toss that formula out the window. This movie is no exception to that and yet I could see the show actually doing an episode with this plot.

So the formula of the show is this: Timmy Turner has fairy godparents who grant his every wish which usually come with an unforeseen catch which Timmy must ultimately navigate to get things back to normal by the end of the episode.

In the Fairly Odd movie, Timmy is all but grown up and he’s technically not supposed to have fairy godparents anymore but, thanks to some loopholes he’s aware of, Timmy has managed to maintain his fairy godparents well into his young adult years. Yeah, the regular show might totally have done this storyline which I think makes it work as a movie.

Timmy’s fairy-maintaining machinations begin to complicate when he reunites with a childhood annoyance, Tootie,  now also grown up and blossomed into a very charming young lady. Despite Timmy’s initial attempts to thwart his feelings for her, he eventually succumbs. This puts his fairy godparents at odds with Tootie who take it on themselves to throw a monkey wrench into their budding relationship.

But that’s not all, Timmy’s old teacher, Mr. Crocker, a man obsessed with harnessing the power of fairy godparents, teams up with an eccentric rich guy named Hugh J. Magnate to capture Timmy’s Fairies.

It’s kind of a lot going on but it’s not hard to keep up with and it never felt forced. I actually managed to watch it all in one sitting at normal speed. Hooray for my attention span!

Introducing Tootie as a romantic interest was a good move considering Timmy’s grade school infatuation, Trixie, was not a good match in my opinion. Yes, they could have evolved her character and made her a little less vain and arrogant but that might have also made her virtually unrecognizable aside from her name. Better to go with an unexpected, less developed character for these purposes. I wouldn’t buy the idea of Trixie ever being interested in a self-induced stunted man child unhealthily dependent upon invisible magical fairy friends. Sure, I may have been lucky in that department and actually managed to bag me an adoring wife in spite of my many shortcomings but that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for everyone. I happen to be hilarious.

They did some interesting things in this film. In the cartoon whenever Mr. Crocker says the words “FAIRY GOD PARENTS!” he freaks out and his body flails in a number of physically impossible ways. It works easily enough in 2d. I was a little underwhelmed when they tried it in live action. For one thing they put something like a PowerPoint background behind him while he freaked out which seemed like kind of a cop out. It could have been done better but this is a small nitpic.

At one point the fairies, who had been cgi up to this point, turned into real people played by Cheryl Hines and Jason Alexander. This was a little jarring but it was only for one scene mainly and they were basically in disguise. It would have been super weird if they were live action the whole time. To think of Jason Alexander floating around and saying funny Cosmo things… I just don’t think it would work.

Jason Alexander (left) and Cheryl Hines (right) as human version of Cosmo and Wanda, the Fairy Godparents. After this I hear they auditioned unsuccessfully for the Joker and Harley Quinn.

The villain’s “evil lair” is just an indoor playground location they filmed at, which feels like they ran out of money but one of the crew’s brother works at Discovery Zone and he can let us film after hours so long as we are out by 11. This seems lame but they explain it in accordance with the story decently enough so whatever.

I appreciated how they went about Timmy’s interest in Tootie. It wasn’t just superficial things. They really went out of their way to demonstrate her less tangible qualities and her reciprocation of Timmy’s affection was believable because we knew she wasn’t shallow.

This had some good laughs even if I did have my toungue in my cheek from time to time. Curious about the other ones they made. Probably watch those too. Full sentences!

Strangely, it seems they have a new version of this film planned for 2025 called A Fairly Odd Movie: Remade and Extended. So far I find no details as to what this will entail, primarily because I haven’t looked and I’m utterly unmotivated to do so at the moment. You can if you absolutely must.