Rugrats Go Wild

Rugrats Go Wild is a 2003 American animated comedy musical crossover film based on the Nickelodeon animated television series Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys. It is the third and final installment of the Rugrats film trilogy, and the second and final installment of The Wild Thornberrys film series.

The film was produced by Nickelodeon Movies and Klasky Csupo and released in theaters on June 13, 2003, by Paramount Pictures. With a worldwide gross of $55.4 million, it is the lowest grossing of the Rugrats film series.

Plot
Tommy, Chuckie, Angelica, Kimi, Dil, Phil, Lil and Susie find themselves stranded with their parents on a remote island. By coincidence, the adventurous Thornberrys are also exploring the island. With his talking dog, Spike, in tow, Tommy takes the babies and Susie on a walkabout to find Nigel Thornberry and his family. They'll gave to be careful, though, as the exotic leopard Siri is hungry and not afraid to make her presence known.

Dumb Qualities

 * 1) A concept of a crossover between two Klasky Csupo cartoons/Nicktoons sounds good on paper, but the concept feels like it belongs to a TV-special rather than a theatrical film.
 * 2) The premise is predictable; the Rugrats get stranded on an island and they need to find a way to be rescued, with help from the Wild Thornberrys.
 * 3) *What's not helping is that this movie and season 8 sped up the decline of Rugrats.
 * 4) The flanderization of the Rugrats characters got sped up here:
 * 5) *Tommy himself became a wimp and the only way for him to be brave is by being with Nigel Thornberry, even though it's already established that he's the bravest Rugrat.
 * 6) *Chuckie became a side character after Donnie impersonated him and stole his clothes.
 * 7) *Phil and Lil became even more gross and their subplot was forgotten.
 * 8) *Angelica until she met Debbie became rudder to the babies and her singing voice got high pitched.
 * 9) *Kimi became a background character who barley serves anything to the story.
 * 10) *The Rugrats adults (except for Stu and Lou) are at their absolute worst in this movie, as they're careless, oblivious, and neglectful flanderization has gone too far this time, since they blame Stu for everything that goes wrong (when the only bad thing he did was scam everyone into thinking they were going on the Lipschitz Cruise), treat him like a punching bag, and their incompetence on watching their kids have been cranked up to 11 when they put all responsibly on Stu.
 * 11) During its theatrical release the film was presented with "Odorama"; to summarize, "scratch-and-sniff" cards were given to movie-goers, and whenever an icon pops up on the screen with an item inside of it (i.e. a smelly shoe) the aforementioned movie-goers were instructed to sniff a scratch-and-sniff card with the corresponding image. At first this sounds interesting on paper, but it is not only pointless, but also disgusting.
 * 12) Overuse of immature comedy, especially in scenes which contain toilet humor, specifically Angelica being revealed to have pooped herself, Dil licks Phil's smelly feet (which is.....with out a dought, one of the single worst moments in the whole film) and blows snot bubbles.
 * 13) Several scenes are very inappropriate for a PG-rated film, such as:
 * 14) *Charlotte Pickles ripping off her dress only to reveal she is wearing shorts and a saxophone theme playing after that during the sinking scene.
 * 15) *Angelica getting her face covered in bird poop.
 * 16) *Four of the babies removing their diapers in the boat and exposing their butts.
 * 17) While the animation is good, some of the CGI effects aren't all that great, especially the giant wave effect (although they are an improvement over the CGI vehicles in Hey Arnold! The Movie).
 * 18) Lots of moments seem to break reality.
 * 19) *Debbie Thornberry uses gum to fix the Commvee, despite the fact that in reality, gum cannot stay that sticky (a fact even Stu admitted to Debbie in the scene referenced), especially in underwater.
 * 20) *Nigel is still alive after falling off a cliff.
 * 21) Even though the voice acting is great, Bruce Willis' performance as Spike is kinda annoying at times.
 * 22) The scene with the giant wall of water is a blatant rip-off of the wave scene from The Perfect Storm.
 * 23) Too many pop-culture references that feel pointless and dull:
 * 24) *Stu building a coconut radio similar to Gilligan's Island.
 * 25) *Chaz's line "We're going to need a bigger boat", referencing Jaws.
 * 26) *Cynthia posing as the Liberty statue in sand from Planet of the Apes.
 * 27) Angelica has an extremely cringe-worthy singing voice and annoying song, which are both really annoying to sit through. She even butchers "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" by The Clash by singing over it in the Commvee with Debbie.
 * 28) *Adding further insult is that lead vocalist and guitar player Joe Strummer died in 2002, a year before the movie's release.
 * 29) Most of the songs, while are decent (except for "Island Princess"), don't fit in with the plot and mostly come out of nowhere just to add filler and increase the running time.
 * 30) A lot of mean spirited moments, such as the grown ups treating Stu like a punching bag.
 * 31) Christine Cavanaugh, Chuckie's original voice actress, retired in 2001 before the movie was made. Her replacement, Nancy Cartwright, was not that good but thankfully she does improve overtime.
 * 32) Nigel only suffers from amnesia instead of dying when he falls off a cliff, which is nonsensical.
 * 33) The main villain Siri the Clouded Leopard, while decent, doesn't receive much screen time in the movie.
 * 34) This film lacked the emotional depth the previous films had:
 * 35) *The first Rugrats film had the babies lost in the woods while trying to accept a new member of the group.
 * 36) *The second Rugrats film, Rugrats in Paris, had Chuckie yearning for a new mom after losing his.
 * 37) *The Wild Thornberry's Movie had Eliza going through dangers to save her animal friends, and family.
 * 38) *This movie on the other hand was treated more like a mere cash grab with more emphasis on comedy.

Wild Qualities

 * 1) The idea of putting two Klasky Csupo shows together in one theatrical film is a pretty novel concept for its time, especially since shared universe films weren't jump-started until 2008's Iron Man and more particularly 2012's The Avengers.
 * 2) Pretty good animation, which is a nice step-up for the Rugrats franchise, despite the CGI effects not being that great and not aging well.
 * 3) Spike, an obviously mute character, gets a chance to speak (his voice is provided by Bruce Willis, who, prior to Rugrats Go Wild, was famous for his role as John McClane from the Die Hard franchise) and there's a good reason for it. Since this is a crossover with The Wild Thornberrys, a show known for having animals talk through magic.
 * 4) Good voice acting for the most part, having the entire cast from the movie's respective shows returning. Bruce Willis was a decent choice to voice Spike.
 * 5) Some great songs like "Lizard Love", performed by Aerosmith, or "The Big Bad Cat".
 * 6) * In fact, with the exception of "Island Princess", all of the other songs are pretty decent.
 * 7) The Wild Thornberrys characters are still pretty likeable, including Siri the Leopard (despite having less screen time). Most of the Rugrats characters are still likable too, such as Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil (despite the former four's flanderization still being present), Susie, Spike (who has a decent speaking voice), Fluffy, Lou & Stu (the only likable and non-flanderized Rugrats adults), Kimi and Dil (the latter two, who are surprisingly not flanderized like they usually are). Angelica is still tolerable in this film (despite her flanderization, and is not annoying for the most part, which is surprising, since she’s normally annoying most of the time). She actually helped save the Rugrats and Nigel Thornberry from the cave near the end of the film.
 * 8) Susie Carmichael has a bigger role in this movie than she did in the previous two films who only appeared in small roles as this time she tags along with the babies and Angelica on the adventure.
 * 9) The ending is good as the Pickles family and the Thornberrys have fun at the Lipschitz Cruise together.
 * 10) ”As long as the queen doesn’t sing, I’m happy.”

Reception
Rugrats Go Wild was released on June 13, 2003 and received negative reviews from critics. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 39% based on 89 reviews, with an average rating of 5.02/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "The Rugrats franchise has gone from fresh to formulaic." Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 38 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale. It has also been considered to be one of the worst Nickelodeon movies of all time.

Videos
S4Toc1kzRII PhantomStrider's "Top 10 Worst Animated Sequels", in which Rugrats Go Wild ranked at #4