The Alaina Gleen Movie

***The Alaina Gleen Movie*** is a 2004 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Twentieth Century Fox Animation and based on the animated television series of the same name. The film was directed by Karey Kirkpatrick (in his directorial debut) and Kevin Lima, and co-written by J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, Tab Murphy, and series creator Thalia Ward. Thaila wrote and executive produced the film, but decided not to direct it, therefore, Kirkpatrick was selected to direct. The film stars the regular television cast of Catherine Cavadini, Tom Kenny, Jason Marsden, Tara Strong, Jim Cummings, Rob Paulsen, Kath Soucie, Nancy Cartwright, Doug Lawrence, and Dan Castellaneta with guest roles from Jodi Benson, Nathan Lane, Jim Carrey, Christopher Lloyd, Whoopi Goldberg, and Eric Idle.

*The Alaina Gleen Movie*was initially set to be released as a TV movie, but was instead theatrically on September 17, 2004 by 20th Century Fox, and received generally positive reviews from critics, and was a modest box office success, grossing over $376.4 million in receipts. This film along with fellow Universal's *Computeropolis* and *Zina and the Vivid Crew*, DreamWorks Animation's *Shrek 2* and *Shark Tale*, and Disney/Pixar's *The Incredibles* were nominated for the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2004, ultimately losing to *The Incredibles*. It also served as the series finale of the original *Alaina Gleen* series, as no further episodes were made to continue from where it left off; however, the franchise was rebooted in 2010 with a computer-animated film of the same name.

## Production

### Animation

The animation was provided by in-house at Film Roman in Burbank, California, and Rough Draft Studios in Glendale. California. Additional animation was done overseas at AKOM Production Co. in Korea, Wang Film Productions/Cuckoo's Nest Studio in Taiwan, and Bardel Animation in Canada.

The team of animation directors was supervised by Bradley Raymond and lead by Genndy Tartakovsky, and directed by Gary Trousdale, Larry Leker, Robert Alvarez, John Rice, Jim Reardon and David Silverman, all animation directors for the series, respectively.

The layouts for the movie were done between Studio B Productions in Canada and Walt Disney Animation Japan.

## Marketing

Coinciding with the film's release, Burger King released eight toys in their Kids' Meals. A video game adaptation was released on the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, Game Boy Advance, on September 21, 2004

### Trailers

* The film's teaser trailer was released in November 2003, and was later released with *Looney Tunes: Back in Action*, *The Cat in the Hat*, *Cheaper by the Dozen*, *Peter Pan*, and *Teacher's Pet*.

* The theatrical trailer was released on May 19, 2004, and was shown before *Shrek 2*, *Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban*, *Garfield: The Movie, Around the World in 80 Days, Spider-Man 2*, *Computeropolis,* *Thunderbirds*, and *The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement*.

## Release

### Box office

*The Alaina Gleen Movie* earned $12.4 million on its opening day (Friday, September 17, 2004), in the United States, finishing first at the box office. It grossed a total of $38.7 million during its opening weekend, at 3,608 theaters, averaging $9,428 per venue. It closed on February 10, 2005, earning $140.6 in the United States and $235.8 worldwide on a budget of $50 million.

### Critical reception

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 74% approval rating with an average rating of 8/10 based on 167 reviews. The site's critical consensus states: "*The Alaina Gleen Movie* hassurreally goofy humor for both children and their parents, a visionary plot, slicker animation and polished writing that hearkens back to the original show's glory days."

Peter Travers of *Rolling Stone* gave the film three out of four stars and called it "an animated adventure that's even funnier than *Shrek 2* and more charming than *Finding Nemo*." Jeffrey Lyons from NBC-TV also enjoyed the film and considered it "amazingly creative and cleverly hilarious." Roger Ebert gave a positive review, and said *The Alaina Gleen Movie* offers the whole family could enjoy: the delightful plot, amazing animation, creative soundtrack, and of course, non-stop humor, just like the original television show.

Bill Muller of *The Arizona Republic* gave the film a negative review, saying "With a stupid plot, *The Alaina Gleen Movie* has unexpectedly destroyed the entire Gleen franchise. It feels like an one-hour series finale that should've made for TV instead of movie theaters."  Charles Herold of *The New York Times* said, "95 minutes [was] not long enough to do justice to 14 years of a pink-haired teenage girl and her talking hat friend".

### Home media

The film was released on VHS and DVD on January 25, 2005, both in widescreen and full-screen editions, by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The DVD release included an audio commentary by Karey Kirkpatrick, Kevin Lima, Thalia Ward, Drew Cohen, and the cast of the original Alaina Gleen television show, a 28-minute making-of HBO documentary, a gallery of concept art, storyboards, isolated audio tracks, trailers and TV spots, deleted scenes, DVD-ROM features, a sneak preview of the 2005 Blue Sky animated film *Robots,* and a THX optimizer. Another single disc release was released on June 20, 2006, in time for the release of *Puppet Pals**.*

The film was released for the first time on Blu-ray on September 14, 2010.  A 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray version was released on September 10, 2019, in time for the film's 15th anniversary.