It’s tricky to rate this movie. It’s a very traditionally made documentary. It’s told in a linear order. It works through a syllabus of topics. As a film, there’s nothing particularly exciting about it. The movie delivers what it promises though. It’s an abbreviated Wikipedia deep dive with some visual cues. I enjoyed the history lesson of where Nickelodeon came from. It was fun to see the early days and how some of the iconic elements came together: the importance of You Can’t Do That on Television, the appeal of slime, the strategy of the Orange logo. At some point though, it shifts from being about the strategies and milestones, and turns into “Do you remember this show? Here’s 4 minutes about it.” That’s fine. I do remember those shows, and I got a serotonin rush from hearing some of those theme songs. I would’ve traded some of that for more talk of strategy and possible brand overreach. Explaining SNICK was great, but how about the decisions to movie into weeknights or create a film division? It doesn’t really get into why the Orange years and the slime went away. It talks about the Universal Studios lot closing down, but it rushes past that. Maybe that stuff is too wonky. I imagine the promise of Salute Your Shorts and Nick Arcade were the selling points, so it made more sense to deliver on those and short the technical stuff. I don’t think this was intended to be a survey on the rise and fall of the Orange empire. It’s transparently a fan film. That’s why the footage of collectors works so well in the credits. It’s a way for the filmmakers to admit that they like the nostalgia too. So really, it’s on me if I expected something else from this movie.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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