Review: PHINEAS AND FERB THE MOVIE: CANDACE AGAINST THE UNIVERSE Is Amazing
On Friday, Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe dropped on Disney+. I was honestly a little surprised when I went to watch it, and it’s almost 90 minutes long. I know a lot of their previous movies were closer to an hour, so that was already exciting. Well, I sat down and watched it, and I really liked it. There are some spoilers ahead, but I do my best to keep them to a minimum.
The film definitely feels like the other Phineas and Ferb movies, but that’s not a bad thing. It helps you measure your expectations. Instead of the typical formula of an episode, the movie flips the script a little with the focus being more on Candace. She’s unable to bust her brothers at the very start, but then instead of her spending the rest of the movie trying to bust Phineas and Ferb, she gets abducted, and the movie is more about her trying to figure things out about herself and her relationship with her brothers.
Speaking of under represented characters, I was sad that Lawrence and Linda aren’t in it more, but when they are, it’s pretty fantastic.
I do really enjoy that the films do break up the formula at least a little. I also enjoy the fact that the characters all tend to meet up and interact in some way. I was especially happy at the start that Vanessa played a bit more of a role, although I was a little saddened that she was ditched pretty early on. However, her return towards the end was fantastic. She was needed to help get Doofenshmirtz involved with the plot, but she’s a personal favorite character of mine, and I love to see her in action. I also wish that we’d seen some interaction between her and Ferb because that’s always fun.
The humor in the movie was spot on, and it never felt like pandering. Doofenshmirtz has to fight Isabella to be leader of the little expedition, whether or not “adulting” is a word is of constant debate, and Doofenshmirtz’s need to call everything an -inator leads to some fun moments. If you’ve watched the show, you know exactly what kind of jokes to expect. They’re usually pretty clever.
The story itself is very well written in my opinion, and nothing feels forced or out of place. The characters all feel true to themselves, there’s no stupid or weird logic that gets us from Point A to Point B, it’s very well done. The only problem I really had with the film was trying to place it in the timeline of the show. There might be a case for saying it’s the following summer, but that doesn’t feel right. Doofenshmirtz would be a high school teacher and no longer evil, which, while he’s not particularly evil in the film, Perry is still sent to deal with him at first because of the normal shenanigans. I feel like it’s supposed to be the same summer which is normally fine, but the fact that Candace comes to terms with her relationship with her brothers and seemingly no longer feels a need to bust them just doesn’t seem to line up very well with the show at any point. I am glad that they didn’t just do a memory wipe this time around though. That was definitely a good call.
What did you think of Candace Against the Universe? I personally loved it and would recommend it to any fan of the show. You can watch the film now on Disney+.
