“How come common sense goes flying out the window every time he sings a song?”

Justin’s rating: Two tokens out of the four needed to activate an actually good movie

Justin’s review: Can we acknowledge that Chuck E. Cheese (or “Showbiz Pizza,” depending on where you lived) left a very weird cultural footprint? Nominally, these were gambling casinos for kids that also featured the worst pizza known to mankind and an animatronic band that would occasionally come to life and orchestrate nightmares. It was a place for kids to do things while taking a mild hit to their psyche while parents sat at booths and glumly drank beer (which is, believe it or not, something you also can purchase at this fine dining establishment).

So why wouldn’t there be a horrible direct-to-video movie that utilized bad CGI and giant mascots that clearly want to collect your eyeballs? Oh, they’re coming for you, Shelly. They’re coming for you.

At a suspiciously clean restaurant, Chucky and company are called to a meeting by an Italian stereotype who would never pass muster in 2023. He brings to the gang Charlie, a kid earnestly trying to read the cue cards with every fiber of his enthusiastic being. Charlie is here to hit up the gang for $50,000 for his farmer aunt and uncle to buy a new tractor.

Why go to a plus-sized mouse for this kind of money? Charlie’s not that bright, let’s just put it that way. But it’s a plan crazy enough to work, as long as the mouse decides to enter into an interstellar racing car circuit to win American currency and be trained by a Scottish hermit.

Their only opposition is a pair of lunk-headed Germans who are obvious clones of SNL’s Hans and Franz and their boss, the elusive Doctor Zoom. Our only opposition to making it to the end credits is the frequent appearance of awful musical numbers.

Before you know it, everyone is teleported to a green screen set where the finest budget CGI that 1999 had to offer is on display. If The Phantom Menace’s pod racing segment is starting to look a little long-in-the-tooth these days, Chuck E. Cheese in the Galaxy 5000’s speedway looks old for 1988. In short, it looks exactly like the graphics that the Chuck E. Cheese video cabinets use.

While the hour-long plot plays out as predictable as you’d expect, what I wasn’t expecting was the bizarre subplot involving the giant chicken, Helen. She’s a firecracker, that one. At the start of the movie, she’s flipping out that people eat chicken eggs and deep fry her friends to snack on their flesh, which is a true observation that probably doesn’t belong in this movie.

As Galaxy 5000 goes on, we find out that Helen has a huge crush on Chuck and is dismayed that Chuck sees her as “one of the guys” and is flirting with a racing groupie. Then the bad guy kidnaps her and threatens to turn her into “juice.” I suspect that a vegan screenwriter who was recently dumped is working out some heavy issues through this script, and I am here for it.

Do I have to tell you that this is terrible? It’s certainly not good in the least. Yet there’s a streak of weirdness that kept my eyeballs glued to this $17 spectacle.

Intermission!

• It’s an Italian stereotype more blatant than Mario!
• There are way too many smiling people for this to be a real Chuck E. Cheese
• Who called “Sound of Music musical reference” on their bingo card?
• The bird mascot FLIPPING OUT over people eating chicken and eggs
• VEGA TWO SPEEDS
• That’s way too much sniffing
• Those adults are clearly filled with self-loathing as they dance
• The dog’s reading “Of Mice and Men”
• “This is an awesome adventure machine”
• Toenails can be stinky
• “DOCTOR ZOOM!”
• Race car groupies can’t wait to take you to the soda shop
• This is the longest countdown ever
• “A snowball’s chance in Texas” is not the phrase the writers wanted to use
• A gymnasium AND a bachelor pad AND two giant tesla coils
• “It is ME you have come to worship!”
• The Zoom Gas song
• “Loose beaks cause leaks that sink ships”
• Your friendly neighborhood hermit who talks like Star Trek’s Scotty