Day Forty-nine - Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension, or "Epic (Made for TV) Movie Time!"

With 80's week over, I felt the need to bring back an old favorite to the Blog in order to not necessarily purge that New Wave taste from my mouth, but return me to some sense of post-millennial normalcy.

To do so, I decided to queue up the P&F made for television movie, Across the 2nd Dimension, which has the boys inadvertently helping Dr.Doofenschmirtz create a portal to an alternate dimension. Not really clear on why Doof wanted to do so, but that's generally the case with most of his Inators.

Anyways, since Perry the Platypus couldn't break cover in front of the boys to stop it, they all are transported along the great dimensional circle to a reality where Doof is an actually competent evil scientist and has taken the Tri-State Area over and everyone and everything is Doof branded and miserable.

Of course, things go wrong when the more-evil Doof decides to invade the boys' reality and dooms them all to, well, doom!

I really like this super-extra-long episode as it fulfills quite a few fanboi dreams of the show: the boys finding out that Perry is a secret agent, their ultimate human/platypus teamup, a Candace that actually participates in the shenanigans (which happens occasionally in the series, but I just like alt-Candace's attitude)... and Isabella finally lays one on Phineas.

Sadly, there are quite a few things missing or that are awkward in their implementation. For one thing, there's no alt-Vanessa. I would've really have liked to see her either more-evil version or have her show up as a resistance mole or something. At the very least, there needed to be a moment for her and either alt-Ferb or regular Ferb.

Plus, it was weird having Major Monogram as alt-Doof's butler or aide de camp or swami or whatever he was in the 2nd dimension... especially when he showed up post-thwarting with the alt-dimension Fireside Girls to arrest alt-Doof. Made no sense.

I did like the climax, though, where a deus ex device that Major Monogram introduced at the beginning of the movie is used to recreate every cool invention the boys have made all summer in order to fight the invasion of Norm-bots from the portal. It was a fun way to remind us of the good times and allow the kids and townspeople (with musical accompaniment by Love Handel!) take up arms against the overpowered Norm-bots.

Fun times, I just wish they didn't have to rely on a memory-wipe to reset everything at the end of the episode. For one thing, they could start cross-polinating the A and B stories of the regular show more often... and for another, Isabella and Phineas could finally stop the whole "one's ignorance to the love rays of the other's" bit. Sure, it's a tried and true sitcom gag, but it's run its course over the years. Need some development!

If you're a fan of P&F, I heartily recommend it. It's a quadruple long episode with tons of fun... and its tie-in game isn't that bad either. Not great, but not bad.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~