Bleeding Fiction

(Subtitled: I Am STILL Such a Geek)

I just watched the Kim Possible movie So The Drama. (We use the word movie loosely here, since it ain't exactly a theatrical release or anything.) It was... Well, to steal a line from the world of Kim Possible, it was spankin'.

They bumped up the frame rate and used some cg, so it looked great (including opening sequence done in Jame's Bond silhouette-style), but it's the content that really gets me. Most of the action revolves, as usual, around Kim & Ron's daily life, interspersed with the schemes and plots of evil villains Dr. Drakken and his hench-woman Shego.

Drakken's in rare form. He's got a cadre of ninjas with laser swords and a legion of advanced humanoid syntho-drones and he plays his master plan close to his chest. He actually seems like a credible threat. But without losing his characteristic goofiness - his poor attempts to be hip, his pathetic self-doubt, his inability to remember Ron's name.

The little villain touches are nice (he actually says "You've failed me for the last time, Shego!"), too, but the best is when Shego's trying her hardest to figure out Drakken's evil plot. He refuses to tell and explains that it's because Kim is no smarter than she is; if Shego hasn't figured it out yet, Drakken knows that Kim hasn't, either. See? Credible threat! (And I'll admit that until that scene I hadn't figured out Drakken's exact plot, either.)

As for the personal stuff, it starts with Kim worrying that she'll have to go to the prom with Ron; he's the not-boyfriend, which Kim finds awkward given that everyone else she knows is dating someone. That's when the new guy shows up, and you cue the usual run of drama and self-discovery. (Shorthand for the media impaired: Kim & new guy start dating and Ron's pushed to the side, thereby growing jealous and realizing that he's in love with Kim. It's good that they don't ignore show continuity here; Ron brings up Kim's previous boyfriend and how he wasn't jealous of him.) It says something about me that I found the entire sequence here absolutely heartbreaking.

The movie ends pretty much as you'd expect it to - Drakken's plot is foiled, Kim & Ron finally get together (with an actual kiss - sort of risque for the Disney Channel, no?). A very sweet and happy ending for both the movie and the series.

I might buy it on DVD, if I could get a boxed set of the whole series to go along with it, but I want to at least see it - it's got a few extra scenes and a never-aired episode on it, too, involving the return of the Japanese ninja high school that Ron spent a week at one episode. This also means the return of my favorite Kim Possible villain, Lord Monkey Fist, as well as cool ninja chick, Yuri, voiced by Keiko Agena who, of course, plays Lane on Gilmore Girls!

Oh! Oh! And Kim swaps her usual khaki mission-getup for a skin-tight, self-repairing, force-field-generating, energy-projecting super-suit. Which is so cool!

Ok, I'm done geeking out now. Well, for now...