What A Cartoon Movie! - Dexter's Laboratory: Ego Trip

Never knew this existed. I’ll have to watch it with my boys.

FootFungus

This movie fucking slaps and it's a goddamn shame it's so hard to find (and never been uprezzed even to DVD standards) because it absolutely deserves to be remembered as fondly as the show that spawned it. I don't have strong enough memories of my experience with the show to remember if I was watching the revival years, but the original years have such a soft spot in my memory that one of these days I'm going to have to track down the DVDs of them and binge the whole thing. -- So, given the Powerpuff Girls edgy young adult revival news, how long until we get the same with Dexter's Lab?

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

I'm glad Henry underscored how brilliant the moment where Deedee pushes the button is, it was definitely the thing I noticed most on this rewatch that I did not understand as a kid (I think I got too invested in the action set pieces). Dexter being so wrapped up in his self image - which has been the running theme for the series and the entire film! - prevents him from being happy he helped saved the world because he's too hyper focused on Deedee accomplishing the final step. It's so perfect an ending to the series it's legitimately kind of a shame they made more.

SomeBloke

I'm sure this isn't an observation original to me but having watched through the entire run last year, Dexter's Dad is the original Randy Marsh. A funny, excitable, Dad who goes too far and often ends up stealing the show.

Joshua Marchant

And you can really see the Ren & Stimpy influence on Chicken Scratch, to the short's detriment. Dexter shouldn't make faces with that many lines on his face.

Joshua Marchant

Yes, finally! I’m glad after all this time we get to go back to Dexter, and it was a fantastic discussion as always. To go to a point mentioned at the beginning in the history segment, you both discuss why Eddie Deezen wasn’t in “Revenge of the Nerds”, and it reminded me of a conversation Deezen had on Gilbert Gottfried’s podcast discussing exactly that. So I went back and listened and he said that while filming “The Whoopee Boys”, he discussed this with Adam Fields, who was producing and helped to produce “Revenge of the Nerds”. According to Adam, Deezen was deliberately looked over in the role because the whole point of the movie was to get actors and dress them up to be nerds. Deezen, already being nerdy, would’ve blended perfectly into the role, and that is exactly why he wasn’t cast.

AllTheTrophies

Bob Belcher too though he was kind of like that from the beginning

Paul

Oh! Great episode! Though, I actually have to chime in, because back in 2018 some fans made an HD remaster of this movie. It isn't legit "HD", but the quality is amazing considering they pretty much upscaled the VHS footage. Though, the forum where I found it is completely shut down, because it was piracy afterall, but I certainly wouldn't be pirating if I could just buy the darn thing on some current format. I don't know what the rules are about sharing that stuff here, but for preservation's sake, I do have a Google Drive link if anyone is interested.

Lennycarl

You bring it up but it feels to me like there's an odd trend in cartoons about dads going insane. Randy Marsh from South Park, Dexter, even Timmy's dad from Fairly Odd Parents got extra flanderized as things went on. I can only wonder what this says about the generation...

Devin Hoffarth

Also: the episode with Silver Spooner (called "Barbequor") was banned after initial airings and replaced with a rerun of "Dexter's Lab: A Story", the cartoon where Dexter gets a labrador retriever. Luckily Barbequor is still pretty easy to find online. Not sure if it was banned for the stereotype or drunk Krunk.

Having just rewatched the whole series, I just wanted to make a note: there actually was one female boarder on the show! Her name is Nora Johnson, and she did three or four episodes, including the one where Deedee becomes a car.

To answer you question on the Hotel Transylvania movies I'd say this; the first movie is honestly good whe the second and third are weaker than the first (in kind of a reverse Toy Story way where they keep getting better) and Paranorman is a really underrated movie. It's produced by Laika and directed by the guys who worked on Coraline and Flushed away.

Boyd Adkins IV

Genndy did work on two more Dexter’s Labs after this. One was the theatrical short “Chicken Scratch” released with The Powerpuff Girls Movie, which was animated solely by him, and is the only Dexter thing in widescreen (but cropped on HBO Max). He also storyboarded the very last Dexter episode “Comedy of Feathers”. There's a reason why Powerpuff Girls was the first World Premiere Toon. In 1993 Craig pitched the show to Fred Seibert and they went into negotiations for a greenlight. During the process, they came up with the idea for World Premiere Toons, so they told Craig to just make a short instead of going straight to series. They focus tested the short and the audience hated it, so that's why it wasn't the first Cartoon Network original. And Powerpuff Girls almost didn’t happen. The summer before he came up with the concept, John K offered him a job to work on season 1 of Ren & Stimpy, but he declined because he wanted to finish college.

ToonJay723