Designed almost exclusively for the teenage to twenty-something male, Tripping the Rift: The Movie is a saga of filth, sex, and raunchiness that should satisfy most fans of the CGI-animated television series. For those with no introduction to the television series who are going in cold, the film version of the show might seem a little hollow.
“Think South Park in Space,” says TV Guide. If South Park were less witty, relevant, and well written, TV Guide might be on to something. As it is, Tripping the Rift is a meandering saga that never quite delivers. Jokes come off as awkward, strained, and even outdated at times. The main characters are bland.
Tripping the Rift takes place in space in a sort of Star Trek-type universe. There are things such as warp drive, “beaming up,” bad impressions of Captain Kirk, and other parodies of Star Trek material. Elements are also borrowed from other sources, like Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Terminator.
The characters come from a sort of Star Wars-meets-the-porn-industry archetype. Chode (Stephen Root) is the central character. He’s a big purple blob with three eyes, and is the captain of the smuggling ship Jupiter 42. Chode is selfish, obnoxious, and constantly aroused. Six (Jenny McCarthy) is a sexy cyborg (aren’t they all?) who serves as the ship’s sex slave and science officer. She somehow has sex with Chode in the movie, and essentially serves to titillate and entice with her CGI boobage.
The other characters are a bit more interesting, with the triple-breasted T’Nuk (Gayle Garfinkle), Chode’s nephew Whip (Rick Jones), a gay parody of C-3P0, Gus (Maurice LaMarche), and Spaceship Bob, the ship’s Hal 9000 (Jay Leno’s John Melendez).
Tripping the Rift expands on the television series by putting Chode and his crew in a seemingly routine mission in black and white (that’s how we know they’re in trouble) to protect a pissed-off princess. A time-traveling killer clown assassin has been dispatched to take out Chode, so he and his crew must dodge the clown assassin while heading from one backdrop to the next. After heading to suburbia, the crew meet a big-breasted Desperate Housewives parody and trouble continues until a booze-soaked birthday party allows it all to mercifully come to an end.
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