For those who didn’t watch Nickelodeon in the early 2000s, you missed out on a great show. Invader Zim was a dark comedy, science fiction cartoon created by Jhonen Vasquez (who is also known for creating the comic series Johnny the Homicidal Maniac) and it ran from 2001 to 2006. The year it ended, all of us fans were super bummed about it.
Sure, we eventually got a comic series (almost 10 years later), which is written by Jhonen Vasquez and published by Oni Press, and it filled a little bit of the gap left, but watching animations is different than looking at still images on a page. Basically what I’m getting at is some of us have waited a REALLY long time for this moment and here we are, 13 years later, finally getting Invader Zim back on our screens. Original voice cast and all.
Quick rundown before we get in to the film: Invader Zim follows the story of Zim (Richard Steven Horvitz), an narcissistic, fanatical Irken, who like the rest of his species, is bent on conquest and destruction of other planets. Despite their conquering prowess, the Irken social hierarchy is based solely on height rather than any type of skill or intellect, thus the Irken Leaders, The Almighty Tallest Red (Wally Wingert) and Almighty Tallest Purple (Kevin McDonald) co-rule the empire because they are the exact same height.
Zim was previously banished to Foodcourtia for almost completely destroying his own planet and race due to not realizing he was still on his home planet during their first invasion. When Zim learns the Tallest are planning another invasion, he attempts to join, however, rather than risk another fiasco, the Tallest send Zim on a fake secret mission to a mystery planet in order to keep him far away and distracted.
Spoiler alert: it’s Earth.
Zim is joined in his mission by GIR (Rosearik Rikki Simons), an ineffective and erratic Standard Issue Information Retrieval (SIR) unit. From here, the show mainly focuses on Zim’s time infiltrating human society, such as going to school, and maintaining his home base where he plots world domination and the enslavement of humanity. Opposing Zim is his classmate Dib (Andy Berman), a young boy who is obsessed with the paranormal and supernatural and is determined to expose Zim as an alien and thwart his plans for world domination.
Now for the film: Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus takes place some extended time period after the original series ended (but not a whole 13 years because Dib is still 12). Dib (Andy Berman) has been sitting in his room, watching Zim’s house the entire time, never leaving to even shower or use the bathroom, much to the disgust of his younger sister, Gaz (Melissa Fahn) who has to wear a hazmat suit (cleverly named “Gazmat”) just to bring him meals.
Finally, Zim (Richard Steven Horvitz) and GIR (Rosearik Rikki Simons) emerge and he reveals that his disappearance was all part of his plan to make Dib overweight and powerless to stop him. Thus, he can now move onto Phase 2 of invading Earth. However, when Zim contacts the Almighty Tallest (Wally Wingert and Kevin McDonald), to tell them of his amazing plan, he realizes he forgot what Phase 2 was meant to be. Meanwhile, Dib’s father, Professor Membrane (Rodger Bumpass), has been working on a “Membracelet” for Peace Day, a small device meant to express world togetherness that Zim will turn into the catalyst for his world domination. Also there’s a ham. Trust me, it’s important.
This movie is everything I hoped it to be. Though it has hints of familiar side characters and jokes, it is an entirely new story of Zim and Dib for fans to enjoy. The humor is the same dark, gross, random, boundary pushing style that we came to love with an added nostalgia that only makes it better. You never know with these things. As excited as I was, there’s still that part of you that’s like, “It’s been 13 years, how will it translate from 24 minutes to a full hour? Is it going to live up to the original series?” The answer is it translated perfectly and yes, it lived up to and possibly even passed its own bar. I found myself laughing out loud and completely engrossed from beginning to end. The fact that they got the entire original cast back was just icing on the cake. The only complaint I had was that Gaz was drawn with her eyes open for the majority of the movie as opposed to her classic, squinted and annoyed design. There were other subtle art differences, but that was the only one that made things feel off to me.
OVERALL SCORE: 9.5 / 10
If you loved the original Invader Zim, you need to watch Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus. If you never watched Invader Zim, you can watch the movie anyway and still be fully entertained – because the show is built on absurdity so things that seem random and make no sense? They don’t make sense to us senior viewers either. That’s what makes it so funny.
