Jeremy Monroe: The Biggest Movie Ever

***Jeremy Monroe: The Biggest Movie Ever*** is a 2003 American animated musical comedy film based on the Fox animated television series *Jeremy Monroe.* Produced by Maldonado Studios as its first feature-length film, it was written, produced and directed by series creator Jake Maldonado, co-directed by Mike Minchin, co-produced by Tim Blackburn and Mark Wilson, and co-written by Jon Vitti, Brad Garland, Steve Rowland, Tim Conner, Dan Irwin, Nancy Carter, and Larry Lee. The film stars the regular television cast of Tom Kenny, Tara Strong, Billy West, Hank Azaria, Catherine Cavadini, Isabel Maldonado, and Rob Paulsen, with guest appearances by Dave Foley, Mike Myers, Minnie Driver, Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, Ewan McGregor, and John Goodman. The events of the film takes place during the seventh season of *Jeremy Monroe*.

When Jeremy Monroe and his friends, see the long-awaited Barry & Bob movie, they are turned into "teenagers with corrupted minds", causing United States to wage war against Europe, declaring Jeremy and his friends national fugitives from seeing the now-banned film in the first place while The Devil and Roman Vetrov II plan to conquer Earth.

The film was originally intended as the series finale, but Fox ordered more episodes of the series as it had become increasingly profitable, as Jake Maldonado resigned as showrunner with Tim Blackburn taking his place.

*Jeremy Monroe: The Biggest Movie Ever* premiered at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on July 7, 2003 and was released in the United States by 20th Century Fox on July 18, 2003. It received universal acclaim from critics and was a box office success, grossing over $343 million on its $50 million budget, making it the fifth highest-grossing film based on an animated television series, and was the highest-grossing television adaptation animated film of all time until it was surpassed by *The Simpsons Movie* in 2007. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song at the 76th Academy Awards, but lost to *Finding Nemo* and *The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*, respectively, and through home video releases and television syndication, the film gathered a cult following years later. A sequel was released on July 10, 2020.

## Plot

Before the main feature, a faux theatre concession stand advertisement plays. A group of anthropomorphic theater snacks, The Soda Dog Refreshment Band, sings a spoof of Let's All Go to the Lobby until they are interrupted by another snack band (performed by Red Hot Chili Peppers) They proceed to loudly sing their own bizarre theater rules before finishing on a guitar solo.

Jeremy Monroe, Sara Summers, Robert Robinson, and Nikki Williams are four high school friends who live in the town of Slewood Springs, California. One Sunday morning, Jeremy invites Sara, Robert and Nikki to see a movie starring the teens' favorite European comedy duo, Barry and Bob. However, the teens are not admitted due to the film's nature being too sexual and suggestive, and so they pay a drunk man to accompany them although they make him leave once he gets them into the auditorium in a $10 beer exchange.

*More coming soon*!

## Cast

*Main article: List of Jeremy Monroe characters*
* Tom Kenny as Jeremy Monroe / Mr. Gay Marvin / Mr. Robles / George Sanford / Police Officer #2 / additional voices
* Tara Strong as Sara Summers / additional voices
* Billy West as Robert Robinson / additional voices
* Isabel Maldonado as Nikki Williams
* Hank Azaria as Mr. Morrison / Ted Norman / Jeffrey Summers / additional voices
* Mona Marshall as Gladys Summers / additional voices
* Richard Steven Horvitz as Jacob Young
* Tress MacNeille as Leslie Robinson / Principal Barbara
* Russi Taylor as Florence Monroe / additional voices
* Kevin Michael Richardson as Chef Jack Hensley
* Eric Bauza as Clyde Wells / Bob / Karl Blumenthal
* Jake Maldonado as Ambassador / Bombardiers / American Soldier #1 / James – News Reporter / Police Officer #1 / Truck Driver
* Catherine Cavadini as Wendy Hopkins / Carol Williams
* Jess Harnell as Victor Monroe / Barry
* Rob Paulsen as Chief Gene Simmons / Dan Williams
* Madeleine Wood as Mike Summers
* Susie Markowski as Hazel Perkins
* Carlos Alazraqui as Roman Vetrov II
* Kelsey Grammer as The Devil
* John Goodman as Sergeant Charles Strickland
* Brad Pitt as Jay Cohen
* Ewan McGregor as Luke Oliver
* Mike Myers as Dr. Wille Villadsen
* Minnie Driver as Bella Crawford
* Dave Foley as Troy Hickman
* Bruce Willis as Dr. Montes
* Randy Thom as Man In Theater
* Samantha Campos as Woman in Theater
* Sebastian Hanson as American Soldier #2
* Fred Hanson as American Soldier #3
* Jimmy Benton as European Fighter Pilot

### ADR Group

* Tom Amundsen
* Newell Alexander
* Rosemary Alexander
* Stephen Apostolina
* Bob Bergen
* Susanne Blakeslee
* Rodger Bumpass
* June Christopher
* David Cowgill
* Joey D'Auria
* Jennifer Darling
* Debi Derryberry
* Sandy Fox
* Eddie Frierson
* Don Fullilove
* Elisa Gabrielli
* Jackie Gonneau
* Nicholas Guest
* Jason Harris
* Wendy Hoffmann
* Hope Levy
* Sherry Lynn
* Danny Mann
* Mickie McGowan
* Caitlin McKenna
* Scott Menville
* Laraine Newman
* Jan Rabson
* Michelle Ruff
* Kelly Stables
* Pepper Sweeney
* Marcelo Tubert
* Lynnanne Zager

## Production

### Animation

The animation in *Jeremy Monroe: The Biggest Movie Ever* was created in 3D using the Maya animation software, running on Silicon Graphics and Octane workstations. Characters and individual scene elements were designed with both texture mapping and shading that, when rendered, resemble 2D paper cut-out stop-motion animation. The artists at Maldonado Studios used a 120-processor rendering farm that can produce 30 or more shots an hour.
However, the film's opening movie theater policy parody scene was hand-drawn and storyboarded by Disney veteran Eric Goldberg, which took six months to make.

As the show's visual quality has substantially improved in recent seasons, the animation of *Jeremy Monroe: The Biggest Movie Ever* is a prime example of the show's old, cruder, even more primitive animation style.

### Music

In December 2002, Jake Maldonado chose Hans Zimmer to compose the film's score, as Maldonado liked his music in other films.

### Post-production

The team working on the film commuted between the project and the series, pushing both to scheduling extremes (changes to The Biggest Movie Ever were made as late as two months before its release) and fighting constantly with Fox and the film's writers.

Jon Vitti noted, "50 percent of the things in (one of the trailers)—based on where we were nine weeks ago—are no longer in the movie." Various new characters were created, and then cut because they did not contribute enough. A car chase in which
Jeremy throws TNT out of a truck at the Army and ending with a huge explosion was replaced with a "more emotional and realistic" scene at the motel that allowed for a change of pace. Further changes were made after the February 28, 2003 preview screenings of the film in Denver, Colorado. This included the deletion of Jeremy's own musical number of being alone after his friends left him.

At one point in the film, Maldonado attempted to involve his audience in the story by making it seem as if Jeremy Monroe and his friends had taken control of the theatre where The Biggest Movie Ever was showing. After the scene where Jeremy's friends abandoned him, the filmstrip then gets jammed in the projector and burns on screen. Robert Robinson and Jacob Young, who then engage in shadow puppetry over a white, blank screen before Jeremy runs in and intimidates Robert and Jacob into running the rest of the film. Fox feared that people might leave the theatre if they thought the film had broken; Maldonado therefore secured the inclusion of the sequence during the March 28, 2003 preview of the film. When the scene was shown, the real-life audience found it enjoyable and stayed in the theatre. When the film made its debut on television in 2005, the directors replaced the scene to make it seem as if the viewer's TV had been broken by Robert and Jacob. In this version, Robert and Jacob do their shadow puppetry over white noise before changing the TV's channels. Their antics stop at a broadcast of *The Simpsons* where Robert and Jacob appearing in the Simpsons' home and Homer Simpson making a cameo appearance (with Dan Castellaneta voicing him) telling the two teenagers to get out of his house, and Robert quickly changing the channel. Robert and Jacob are then relocated in a white, blank area with Jeremy walking in, and forces the two teens into continuing the film.

The Devil's scene with the Slewood Springs townspeople at the film's conclusion was added later during the film's production to fully resolve Nikki's own story, along with the "film burn" joke. Two months later, the film was sent to Skywalker Sound, where the sound effects were mixed with the music score. Other deletions included Jeremy's encounter with a pizza truck driver, which was featured on the DVD, and a news report, showing the P.A.E (Parents Against Europe) effects on daily life in Slewood Springs in areas such as farming and sport, was cut because it did not fit the overall context of the film.

## Release

*Jeremy Monroe: The Biggest Movie Ever* was initially scheduled for release on December 13, 2002, but was moved up to July 18, 2003 to avoid competition with other films released during the Christmas season. The film received a PG-13 rating by the MPAA due to “violence, language, and obscene sexual content” making it the first 20th Century Fox Animation film to receive this rating. The film made its network premiere on Fox on November 23, 2005 and its cable premiere on FX on December 17, 2005.

### Marketing

* The official teaser trailer was released on May 16, 2002, and was shown before *Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones*, *Scooby-Doo*, and *Lilo & Stitch.*
* The theatrical trailer was released on November 15, 2002, and was shown before *Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets*, *Treasure Planet*, *The Wild Thornberrys Movie*, *The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers*, and *Daredevil*.
* The final trailer was released on May 2, 2003, and was shown in front of *X2: X-Men United*.

### Video game

*Main article(s): Jeremy Monroe: The Biggest Game Ever*
A video game based on the film was released on August 5, 2003 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and Microsoft Windows. It was developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts.

### Home media

The film was released on DVD, D-VHS, and VHS on December 9, 2003. The film earned $49.6 million in DVD sales during the beginning of 2004. A special edition DVD was released on July 17, 2007. It was later released on Blu-ray in North America on November 20, 2012. An Ultra HD Blu-ray was released on February 25, 2020, containing a new 4K restoration.

## Reception

### Critical reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, *Jeremy Monroe: The Biggest Movie Ever* holds a 91% "Certified Fresh" rating based on 212 reviews, with an average score of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "*Jeremy Monroe: The Biggest Movie Ever* is unabashedly offensive, subversive and good-hearted, and unexpectedly funny in which that makes the show so popular." On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 88 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

### Box office

In North America, the film was released on Friday, July 18, 2003 alongside *Bad Boys II*, *Johnny English*, and *How to Deal* as well as facing competition to *Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,* *Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines*, *Finding Nemo*, and Fox's own *The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen* during the rest of summer 2003*.* The film earned $17,742,299 on its opening day in the U.S. and a combined total of $52,916,577 in its opening weekend at 3,070 theaters, topping the box office for that weekend. This outperformed the expectations of $30 million that Fox had for the release. The film then grossed $27,741,221 million in its second weekend opened to number two, behind *Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over,* with $19,421,112 million in its third weekend and $12,121,234 million in its fourth.

The film closed on December 18, 2003, after earning $163,245,147 million in the United States and Canada and $180,422,237 million with a worldwide total of $343,626,992 million which became the highest animated TV adaptation of all time until being surpassed by Fox's own *The Simpsons Movie*. It is also the third-highest-grossing animated film from 2003 worldwide, behind *Dusk and Dawn* and *Finding Nemo*.

## Sequel

*Coming soon!*

**Upcoming:** *The Pixelators: Supercharged* (2023)