Movie Movie Podcast

The Magic School Bus

This movie sucks.

From the creators of Night at the Museum comes Shawn Levy’s next big film.  The Magic School Bus: The Movie takes the classic book series we all loved, but punches it up for today’s moviegoing public.

The film opens on Carlos Ramon, and Ralphie Tennelli played respectively by Daryl Sabara, and Joel Courtney.  Carlos and Ralphie are two foster kids who are always getting into trouble.  They are High school freshmen and dangerously close to falling in with the bad crowd at McKinley HS.  One day they are caught by cops vandalizing the school and they are arrested.  As conditions for them not going to jail a judge, played by Whoopi Goldberg sentences the two boys to attend an alternate high school with smaller classes so that they get the attention the need.

The next scene opens on the two boys walking onto the campus of their new school, Walkerville High, where all of the kids seem to be rushing around and working on nerdy science projects and stuff. The bell rings and they walk into their first class, which appears to be Science 101 (yes a class called Science 101 doesn’t make sense on a hs campus, but whatever) and an excited teacher with VERY red curly hair named Ms. Frizzle, played by Amy Adams, says to the camera “Seatbelts everyone! We’re in for a BUMPY ride.”  A very Dr. Who reminiscent theme song begins to play as the kids rush to the bus. We don’t see where they go exactly, but we hear a lot of hooting and hollering and a whizzing sound before the bus takes off.  The screen shot of Magic School Bus The Movie shows.

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