“Candace Against the Universe:” Phineas and Ferb are back!
Despite their endless summer having ended in 2015, “Phineas and Ferb” cemented itself as one of Disney’s best cartoons. It’s one of three shows on Disney Channel to get four seasons, it got an excellent Disney Channel Original Movie and had multiple albums released containing the show’s best original songs. After five years, the show’s creators have returned to produce a second film for Disney Plus.
“Candace Against the Universe” has an obvious conflict: Candace realizes her desire to bust her brothers lies in her desire to feel special. Then the film goes bananas and she gets abducted by aliens. Phineas, Ferb, their friends and Dr. Doofenshmirtz team up to save her. After the first film took place in a parallel universe, the only way to raise the stakes would be to go into space, and Disney did just that.
The middle part of the film is sometimes a drag. Basically, Candace is just vibing the whole time and the characters arguing about who should lead them on the journey is a waste of time. “Adulting” is among the better new songs (“Such a Beautiful Day” and “Us Against the Universe” are my other faves). The film’s humor isn’t as clever as the show’s, making the five year break palpable--it relies way too much on easy jokes, in my opinion. There are definitely plenty of laugh-out-loud bits, but at certain points you’re going to roll your eyes. However, the final showdown is a really dynamic - and surprisingly emotional - set of scenes.
“Candace Against the Universe” has some great jokes, fun action scenes, an interesting emotional angle (with a very sweet ending), and catchy new songs. The story meandres for a big chunk of the runtime, and the humor can get predictable, but all the positive factors make this a nice revisit to a beloved universe. “Phineas and Ferb” should probably stay dormant after this though.
P.S. If anyone sends me videos of them doing the dumb dance from “Adulting,” it would make my year.
Drew Hickman is a Junior
Communication Major from
Shawnee, Kansas