Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie

Theatrical release poster

***Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie*** is a 2007 American animated adventure-comedy family film based on the Cartoon Network animated television series of the same name. The film is directed by series creator Genndy Tartakovsky in his feature-length directorial debut from a screenplay written by himself and John McIntyre. The film takes place after the show's series finale and it was produced by Cartoon Network Studios. The film was theatrically released in the United States on July 6, 2007, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the second film adaptation of *Dexter's Laboratory*, first being *Dexter's Laboratory: Ego Trip*.

The film stars the voices of Candi Milo, Kat Cressida, Kath Soucie, Jeff Bennett, Tom Kenny, Rob Paulsen, Eddie Deezen, Kimberly Brooks and Frank Welker reprising their respective roles from the series, while they are joined by newcomers Hugh Laurie, James Adomian (his feature film debut), Michael J. Fox, Courtney Thorne-Smith and Richard Kind.

In theaters, a *Samurai Jack* short entitled *Jack Vs. Robot Bees* was shown prior to the film. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics and was a box-office success, grossing over $56 million worldwide against a $11 million budget.

## Summary

Dexter, Dee Dee, and the rest of the beloved gang make their big screen debut.

In the film, after coming home from having a fun time at Wacky Wacky World, Dexter and Dee Dee's parents have been kidnapped by a devious mastermind. It's now up to Dexter and Dee Dee, as they are going on an adventure to save their parents from an evil mad scientist, but not without the help of their friends.

## Cast

### Main Characters

* Candi Milo as Dexter
* Kat Cressida as Dee Dee
* Kath Soucie as Mom, Lee Lee
* Jeff Bennett as Dad
* Tom Kenny as Dr. McBoy
* Rob Paulsen as Spork
* Eddie Deezen as Mandark
* Kimberly Brooks as Mee Mee
* Frank Welker as Monkey

### New Characters

* Hugh Laurie as Professor Walker
* James Adomian as Davis, Walker's assistant.
* Michael J. Fox as Jason
* Courtney Thorne-Smith as Gloria
* Richard Kind as Ralph

### Additional Voices

* David Cowgill
* Brittney Lee Harvey
* Mona Marshall
* Steven Barr
* Bob Bergen
* Terri Douglas
* Jack Angel
* Eddie Frierson
* Doug Erholtz
* Cree Summer
* Meagan Smith
* Erik von Detten
* Philip Proctor
* Jon Kent Ethridge

## Production

### Development

The production staff had considered a second film adaptation of *Dexter's Laboratory* since early in the series. Only this time, it would now be a feature-length theatrical movie. The voice cast was signed on to do the film in 2002, and work then began on the script.

The film was announced on September 13, 2004. Work continued on the screenplay from 2004 onwards, taking place at Cartoon Network Studios (formerly Hanna-Barbera Cartoons) where Tartakovsky first pitched *Dexter's Laboratory* in the 1990s, before the series premiered in 1996. The writers spent six months discussing a plot, and each of them offered sketchy ideas. Rudish suggested Dexter and Deedee going on a big adventure, but with the help of their friends, to rescue their parents from an evil mad scientist. Tartakovsky really like this idea, as he felt that it was about time Dexter and Deedee went on a big screen adventure.

Having eventually decided on the basic outline of the plot for the film, the writers then separated it into seven sections. Tartakovsky, John McIntyre, Rudish, Don Shank and Lauren Faust wrote 25 pages each, and the group met one month later to merge the seven sections into one "very rough draft". The film's script was written in the same way as the television series: the writers sitting around a table, pitching ideas, and trying to make each other laugh. The script went through over 10 revisions, and at one point the film was a musical. However, the film started using pop songs for its soundtrack and the idea was dropped. Tartakovsky described his desire to also make the film dramatically stronger than a TV episode, saying that he wanted to "give you something that you haven't seen before".

### Casting

The series' regular voice actors: Candi Milo, Kat Cressida, Kath Soucie and Jeff Bennett, as well as semi-regular performers Tom Kenny, Rob Paulsen, Eddie Deezen, Kimberly Brooks and Frank Welker, reprised their roles. By January 2005, it was announced that Hugh Laurie joined the voice cast. On March 16, actor James Adomian was in a negotiation to join the cast. This is James Adomian's first animated feature film role. On May 9, Michael J. Fox and Courtney Thorne-Smith were confirmed additions to the cast. On July 12, it was reported by *Variety* that Richard Kind had joined the cast.

### Animation

The film was rendered on Cartoon Network Studios' 500-CPU render farm, managed by the open-source Unix-like job scheduler. The nodes started out with RHEL 3 Linux with a modern 2.6.x kernel, but the new Itanium 2 nodes are running RHEL 4. Most of the applications are commercial, including Toon Boom Harmony.

*Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie*, like the series, was animated at Rough Draft Studios in Glendale, California, and Rough Draft's division in Seoul, South Korea, with additional animation provided by Pixel Magic in Los Angeles, California. As with the television series, the storyboarding, character designs, background layout, general animation, and animatic parts of production, were done in America. The overseas studios completed the camera work, inbetweening, and digital ink and paint before being shipping the animation back to the United States.

### Sound and music

Alan Silvestri composed the score for the film with Kimberly Oliver serving as the music supervisor. In addition to using the original series' music work from Thomas Chase, Steve Rucker and Gary Lionelli on the film, he also composed themes for each Dexter's Lab operative. Dexter and Dee Dee's adventure score was the major focus and he also composed themes for Mom, Dad, Professor Walker, Davis, Mandark, Mee Mee and Lee Lee, and Monkey. The music score was recorded and mixed at Warner Bros. Eastwood Scoring Stage in Burbank.

The sound design work was done at Hacienda Post and Twenty First Century Entertainment both in Burbank, California.

## Soundtrack

### Official soundtrack

The movie soundtrack was released by Zomba Music, Jive Records, and Cartoon Network Records on July 3, 2007. It contains several original songs from mid 2000's pop stars, as well as covers of The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again", Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger", Montell Jordan's "This Is How We Do It", and a rendition of the franchise's theme song. "Back to the Lab" by Prince Paul, which is a song from the compilation album *Dexter's Laboratory: The Hip-Hop Experiment*, is also used on the soundtrack.

**Bonus enhanced track on enhanced CD**
 Total length:

**Songs featured in the film, but not in the soundtrack**
* "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-Lot

## Release

*Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie* was originally going to be released in 2006; however, in February of 2006, the date was changed to 2007. This happened because Cartoon Network released *Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi 2* in August 2006, thus pushing *Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie* to 2007.

*Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie* premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on July 1, 2007, and was theatrically released on July 6, 2007, in the United States and Canada, in Australia on August 9, 2007, and in the United Kingdom on September 14, 2007. The film's theatrical release was preceded by *Jack Vs. Robot Bees*, a *Samurai Jack* short.

### MPAA rating

*Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie* is rated PG for parental guidance.

### Marketing

* The film's first teaser trailer was released with *Cars* on June 9, 2006, and was also shown before *Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties*, *Nacho Libre*, *Monster House, The Ant Bully*, *Barnyard,* and *Everyone's Hero*.
* The first theatrical trailer was attached on October 13, 2006, and was shown before *Night at the Museum*, *Flushed Away*, *Happy Feet*, *Charlotte's Web*, *Arthur and the Invisibles,* and *Eragon*.
* A second theatrical trailer was attached on January 19, 2007, and was shown *Bridge to Terabithia*, *The Ultimate Gift*, *Mr. Bean's Holiday*, *TMNT*, *Meet the Robinsons*, *Shrek the Third*, *Surf's Up*, *Evan Almighty*, *Nancy Drew*, and *Ratatouille*.
* TV Spots began to air between June and August 2007.

The film was backed by a large marketing campaign, with various merchandise becoming available throughout 2007, Such as:

* Burger King, having put 8 toys for their Kids' Meals in the US and UK. The toys are Dexter, Dee Dee, Mom, Dad, Mandark, Professor Walker, and Monkey.
* A tie-in comic titled Dexter's Laboratory: Dexter and Dee Dee To the Rescue was released on June 2, 2007, collecting three prelude issues.
* AirHeads promoted the film with the sweepstakes for the film, including winning free movie tickets to go to the film's premiere.

### Home media

*Main article: Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie/Home media*
*Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie* was released in the United States on DVD on November 13, 2007. The DVD included the "Good Feeling" music video by Kelly Clarkson, a Samurai Jack short film titled *Jack Vs. Robot Bees*, audio commentary, behind-the-scenes featurettes, 4 mini-movies, production notes, interactive games, and trailers and television spots.

### Video game

A video game based on the film was published by Midway Games and released on June 7, 2007, for Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Game Boy Advance, and PC.

### Critical reception

Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 80% approval rating based on the 115 reviews, and its average rating is 7.1/10. The critical consensus reads, "Though basically a television cartoon stretched out to movie length, *Dexter's Laboratory* has enough successful jokes and smart writing to make it a worthwhile view." Metacritic, assigns the film a score of 69 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". CinemaScore gives the film a "A–" on its A+ to F scale.

### Box office

*Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie* grossed $30.7 million in the United States, and $23.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $56 million. Despite failing to out-gross animated competitor *The Simpsons Movie* (2007) ($536,414,270), it is one of only twelve feature films to be released in over 3,000 theaters and still improve on its box office performance in its second weekend, increasing 18.4% from $5.9 million to $6.13 million.

## Trivia

* This is the first ever feature film of the series.
* This is the first animated *Dexter's Laboratory* movie to hit theaters.
	+ This is also the first ever Dexter's Laboratory movie in general to hit theaters. The previous Dexter's Laboratory film *(Dexter's Laboratory: Ego Trip)* was just a television release.
* This is the sixth Cartoon Network theatrical film.
* The seventh Warner Bros. animated film to be released in July, after *Treasure Island*, *Oliver Twist*, *The Powerpuff Girls Movie*, *Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi* and *The Ant Bully*.
* The twelfth Warner Bros. animated film of 2000s to be produced in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, after *Pokémon: The Movie 2000*, *Pokémon 3: The Movie,* *The Powerpuff Girls Movie*, *Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi*, *Clifford's Really Big Movie*, *Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light*, *The Ed, Edd n Eddy Movie*, *Mike, Lu & Og: Journey Back to Manhattan*, *Class of 3000*, *The Ant Bully* and *Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi 2*.
* This is the tenth Warner Bros. animated film of 2000s to be rated PG by the MPAA, after *Osmosis Jones*, *The Powerpuff Girls Movie*, *Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi*, *Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light*, *The Ed, Edd n Eddy Movie*, *Mike, Lu & Og: Journey Back to Manhattan*, *Class of 3000*, *The Ant Bully* and *Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi 2*.
* The fourteenth Warner Bros. animated film to be rated PG by the MPAA, after *Twice Upon a Time*, *Batman: Mask of the Phantasm*, *Space Jam*, *The Iron Giant*, *Osmosis Jones*, *The Powerpuff Girls Movie*, *Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi*, *Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light*, *The Ed, Edd n Eddy Movie*, *Mike, Lu & Og: Journey Back to Manhattan*, *Class of 3000*, *The Ant Bully* and *Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi 2*.
* The film was released on DVD on November 13, 2007, by Warner Home Video.
* In theaters, a *Samurai Jack* short entitled *Jack Vs. Robot Bees* was shown prior to the film.
* Most scenes are fully hand-drawn animated, while some scenes also incorporate cel-shaded 3D computer animation.
* This is Meagan Smith's second contribution to Cartoon Network.
* Hugh Laurie and Michael J. Fox's first ever feature film outside the *Stuart Little* franchise.
* Jon Kent Ethridge's second Cartoon Network film after Re-Animated (2006) (NOTE: *Re-Animated* was a telefilm).
	+ Fortunately, this is Jon Kent Ethridge's first Cartoon Network film made specifically for worldwide theatrical release.
* This is the sixth Cartoon Network theatrical film to have a box office success.
* Michael J. Fox, Cree Summer and Steven Barr work together in Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), from Walt Disney Animation Studios.

## Transcripts

### Main Transcript

*Main article: Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie/Transcript*
### Trailer transcripts

*Main article: Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie/Trailer transcripts*
## Credits

 *Main article: Dexter's Laboratory: The Movie/Credits*