The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure

Plot

The film opens with an introduction explaining the interactive nature of the movie and introducing the Oogieloves, Goobie, Zoozie, and Toofie.

The Oogieloves awake to prepare a surprise birthday party for their living pillow Schluufy, with the aid of magical window Windy Window, vacuum cleaner J. Edgar, and fish Ruffy. However, J. Edgar accidentally releases the five magical balloons they bought for Schluufy, so the Oogieloves set out to retrieve them.

The first balloon is found at the treehouse home of Dotty Rounder (Cloris Leachman) and her daughter Jubilee (Kylie Dakota), who is obsessed with circles. The second is found at the milkshake cafe of Marvin Milkshake (Chazz Palminteri), who has them participate in a milkshake contest for the balloon. The third balloon is found in possession of Rosalie Rosebud (Toni Braxton), a pop singer who denies her allergy to roses. The fourth balloon is by the truck of Bobby Wobbly (Cary Elwes), a cowboy with an unusual walk. The last balloon is found on top of a windmill, where the Oogieloves retrieve it with the help of Lola and Lero Sombrero (Jaime Pressly and Christopher Lloyd), who ride a giant flying sombrero.

Just before they reach home with all the balloons, the Oogieloves accidentally release them again but blow kisses to persuade them to return. They then hold the surprise party for Schluufy, who did not awake until just before their return.

Cast

Production

The film was written by Scott Stabile and produced by Kenn Viselman, who was behind the American localization of the British children's series Teletubbies and Thomas & Friends. Viselman claims that he and Teletubbies creator Anne Wood had multiple disputes with each other, because Wood refused to let Viselman pursue a film adaptation of the show. The film is loosely based on the characters from the children's TV show My Bedbugs. After seeing Madea Goes to Jail in a theater, where he saw how the audience members would shout out advice to the characters on screen, Viselman was partially inspired to create a children's film in the vein of Teletubbies with the interactive aspect, allowing the children to sing, dance, and respond to the characters on screen. He felt that "The idea of interactivity isn't new, but the idea of interactivity in a theater is."

Release

The film was released on August 29, 2012. On its opening weekend, the film became the biggest box office bomb of all time for films released in at least 2,000 theaters.

Home media

The film was released on DVD on February 5, 2013, exclusively at Walmart.

Critical reception

The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure was critically panned, with a 27% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 22 reviews, and a score of 32% on Metacritic, based on 11 reviews. Loren King of the Boston Globe considered The Oogieloves to be a "dumbed-down mash-up of the least creative parts of Teletubbies, Barney & Friends and Pee-wee's Playhouse" which preschoolers would enjoy due to its interactivity, but would be a waste of time for parents "in a world where Sesame Street is on TV every day [and/or] even in a world where Sesame Street didn’t exist." King also questioned whether the intent of the film was to set the stage for future merchandising of its characters. Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times criticized The Oogieloves for being a "prefab construction meant to appear like a beloved set of characters", and for being "so ineffectual and disengaging that it may be better to call it just plain dumb." A. O. Scott of the New York Times reviewed the film from the perspective of the seven-year-old daughter of a family friend. She stated that she "thought it was for babies" and observed, among other things, that none of the children in the audience were paying attention to the film, and that the toddler whose family she saw it with fell asleep partway through the movie.

Box office

In its debut weekend, Oogieloves proved to be the biggest box office bomb of all time for films released in at least 2,000 theaters. Its production budget was $20 million, in addition to another $40 million in marketing costs. On August 29, 2012, the film opened at #17 at the box office to $102,564 in 2,160 theaters, with a per-theater average of $47. Box Office Mojo said the film needed "at least $5 million to avoid being dubbed a legendary flop, and it's not going to come anywhere close". It grossed only $445,000 in its opening weekend, surpassing Delgo for the lowest opening weekend of a film in 2,000 or more theaters. Delgo also played in the same number of theaters as Oogieloves, and was also distributed by Freestyle Releasing. The film has the second worst opening weekend per-theater average for a widely released film at $206. "To put that in perspective, if each location played Oogieloves five times a day on one screen at an average ticket price of $7, that would translate to fewer than two people per showing", according to Box Office Mojo. Over the life of its exhibition in theaters, the film grossed a grand total of $1,065,907 as measured by total box office gross. Only Delgo had a worse theatrical gross by total gross; however, The Oogieloves played for 23 days while Delgo played for only 7.

Accolades

The film was nominated for Worst Picture and Worst Screen Ensemble at the 33rd Golden Raspberry Awards, but lost both to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2.

Soundtrack