The Gabriel Garza Movie

The Gabriel Garza Movie is a 2002 American animated adventure comedy film based on the Gingo animated television series of the same name. Directed by series creator Geo G., the film stars the regular television cast of Debi Derryberry, Rob Paulsen, E.G. Daily, Kath Soucie, Billy West, Doug Lawrence, Charlie Adler, Tara Strong, Jim Cummings, and Jeff Bennett, with guest roles from Jodi Benson, Dan Aykroyd, Richard Kind, and John Goodman. In the film, Gabriel sets out along with Roge, Leno, Cole, Loy, the Elves, Jan, and their new friend Laura to foil an emerging plan by Vio to imprison all of Sinking Spring.

Plans for a Gabriel Garza film adaptation, along with Ray Eilo, BJ and Wally and Metro Cone, began when Gingo made a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to produce films in 1995, with Multimedia Motion Pictures co-producing and co-financing the films. However, the contract expired with no films into production. Around the same year when the contract expired, development of the film restarted with Universal Pictures since its then-parent company, MCA, purchased Gingo's parent company Multimedia in 1996.

The Gabriel Garza Movie was initially set to be released as a direct-to-video film, but was instead theatrically in the United States on July 31, 2002 by Universal Pictures. It was the second film to be based a Gingo television series, after Hatty in the Big City: The Movie in 1999. The film received mixed reviews from critics, praising the film's animation and humor but criticizing its story, and fell short of Universal's financial expectations earning over $89 million worldwide on its $60 million budget making it a box office bomb. It also served as the series finale of the original Gabriel Garza series, as no further episodes were made to continue from where it left off. However, the series was revived in 2018 for a thirteenth season.

Plot
After getting tired of failing catching Gabriel and his friends for years, Vio decides to build up a new plan: kidnap the rest of Gabriel's friends and family, including Claire Jones. Meanwhile, on an ordinary day, Gabriel and his friends are hanging out together and relaxing until they meet a cheerful girl named Laura, who orders them to go on a mission to defeat Vio and his henchmen. Gabriel tells his friends that they would head off for Vio's lair, along with Laura.

Back at Vio's lair, Claire breaks free and escapes the lair with the help of a pulp man named Mr. Mockles. In a meantime, Gabriel and his gang were almost caught by some of Vio's henchmen Maxion, Big Guy, Mikey and Joe, but Leno and Cole interfere long enough for the rest of the gang to escape and end up being captured instead. While escaping from Vio's lair, Claire decides to call Gabriel and his friends. She tells them that she is trying to escape the lair, but they say that they are in danger as Leno and Cole were in jail. Shocked, Claire then teams up with Mr. Mockles to rescue Leno and Cole.

Meanwhile in jail, Leno and Cole try to escape from prison, but when they saw Claire and Mr. Mockles, Claire grows frustrated with their lack of initiative. Later at Sinking Spring, Vio and his minions attack everyone in town and rename the city to "Viotopolis." Back at Vio's lair, Vio sets a bomb on Gabriel and the rest of his friends and family (minus Claire, Leno and Cole) and Vio tells them that the bomb is a timer and he leaves the room. Then, Leno, Cole, Claire and Mr. Mockles arrive to save them, stop the timer and escape. When Vio got into the room, he saw that the gang was gone and the timer is stopped. He tells his minions to get them.

Gabriel and his gang fight Vio's henchmen for a battle. Leno is given an energy drink, which brings him to move faster than the speed of light. He then found the Tele-O-Manic, Loy's new invention from earlier. Leno puts Vio and his minions inside the Tele-O-Manic to teleport to prison. With Vio gone, Gabriel and his friends celebrate their victory. The film ends when Claire was left confused after unintentionally giving Roge advice, he looks toward the camera and says, "What did I do?".

Voice cast

 * Debi Derryberry as Gabriel Garza / Mrs. Picksit / Mallory / Additional Voices
 * Rob Paulsen as Roge Garza / Additional Voices
 * E.G. Daily as Leno Garza / Claire Jones / Additional Voices
 * Kath Soucie as Cole Garza / Becky / Additional Voices
 * Billy West as the Elves / Jan Soto / Mikey / Alsen Nosyit / Additional Voices
 * Doug Lawrence as Loy Garza / Additional Voices
 * Charlie Adler as Marvin Garza / Maxion / Additional Voices
 * Tara Strong (uncredited) and April Winchell as Christine Garza / Additional Voices
 * Jim Cummings as Vio / Joe / Additional Voices
 * Jeff Bennett as Big Guy / Additional Voices
 * Jodi Benson as Laura
 * Dan Aykroyd as Warren Parker
 * Richard Kind as Darren Parker
 * John Goodman as Mr. Mockles

Additional Voices

 * John Kassir
 * Danny Mann
 * Kevin M. Richardson
 * Neil Ross

Loop Group

 * Tom Amundsen
 * Moosie Drier
 * Ike Eisenmann
 * Dominic Hoffman
 * Danielle Judovits
 * Scott Menville
 * Jonathan Osser
 * Melissa Osser
 * Dina Sherman
 * Doug Stone
 * Claudette Wells
 * Ruth Zalduondo

Production
Rumors about a possible Gabriel Garza film started since the beginning of the second season of the series. Creator Geo G. wrote a treatment for a Gabriel Garza feature film midway through the series' fifth season production in late 1994. It was to center on a dilemma for Gabriel, but it was never pitched. Another attempt was in 1995, when Gingo made a five-year contract deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to produce new material while Multimedia Motion Pictures would co-produce and co-finance the films, but a Gingo spokesperson did not rule out the possibility to make films based on their existing properties, one of those that was proposed was Gabriel Garza, Ray Eilo, BJ and Wally and Metro Cone, but the contract expired, with no movies produced. In 1996, MCA acquired Multimedia, and Universal Pictures would distribute the movies instead, development on the movie started in 1998. In September 1999, Gingo officially announced that Gabriel Garza was to star in his own feature film.

The film was animated in-house by Gingo Animation in North Hollywood, California and by Wang Film Productions/Cuckoo's Nest Studio in Taiwan and Saerom Animation in Korea.

During the recording of this movie, Tara Strong had some falling out with Geo G. by having been paid a low salary, which led her to walk out on The Gabriel Garza Movie and preferred to stay uncredited. To complete the rest of Tara's lines, April Winchell was chosen. While Winchell was credited in the movie, she was not on the poster. This was a mistake, however.

Originally, Vio's lair was supposed to explode after the time bomb finishes when Gabriel and the gang escape, but the scene was changed to Mr. Mockles stopping the timer as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Release
The Gabriel Garza Movie was originally set to be released as a direct-to-video film in fall 2002, but in February 2001, Universal announced that the film would be released theatrically for a July 26, 2002 release, which in turn was later pushed back a week later on July 31 to avoid competition with Disney's The Country Bears.

Marketing
The official teaser trailer was released in December 2001 and was later shown theatrically with Momo: The Conquest of Time in the United States. A second trailer consisting of new animation debuted in March 2002.

Home media
The Gabriel Garza Movie was released on VHS and DVD on November 19, 2002.

Music
The music for the film was composed and conducted by James L. Venable, who also composed the original series. The soundtrack to the film was released by Geffen Records on July 30, 2002.

Track listing

 * 1) Happiness Is - The Verve Pipe
 * 2) American Girls - Counting Crows
 * 3) Every Morning - Sugar Ray
 * 4) Who Done It? - The Arrows
 * 5) Can't Get Away - Third Eye Blind
 * 6) It Only Took a Minute - Mandy Moore
 * 7) These Walls - Trapt
 * 8) Garza Family Medley - James L. Venable

Gallery
Coming soon!

Critical response
The Gabriel Garza Movie received mostly mixed reviews from critics and fans. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 38% based on 173 reviews, with an average rating of 4.8/10. The site's consensus reads: "The Gabriel Garza Movie 's sparkling self-image won't compensate for a messy story stretched way too thin to meet the theatrical-length standards." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score to reviews from mainstream critics, gave the film an average score of 44 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Claudia Puig of USA Today stated that "With so many stupid ideas for the its story, The Gabriel Garza Movie has unexpectedly destroyed the entire Gabriel franchise. It feels like an one-hour series finale that should've made for TV instead of movie theaters." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film two stars, stating, "The Gabriel Garza Movie, Gingo's first truly negative response, has a predictably weird plot that even tries hard enough to follow the usual wit of the show, but rather ends up being a 'last call' for the glasses-wearing cartoon boy we all know in love." Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman said, "If it's even not as good as the Gabriel Garza show, The Gabriel Garza Movie is a complete disaster to the series for the fans of the original. I don't even care if the animation is good and the characters have their usual selves from the show, it's just awful that Gingo should be shamed of themselves."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 1.5 out of 4 stars, saying "The Gabriel Garza Movie is a flop. With a predictable story, the Gabriel Garza series doesn't end with a bang, but with a wimper." While he disliked the movie very much, he did give it some redeeming features, as quoted by him, "A few redeeming features of this box office flop, is that the animation looks sharper, and the cast did a great job with their voices, and the soundtrack is fine." Jeffrey Lyons from NBC-TV enjoyed the film and considered it "sharply hilarious."

Box office
The film earned $2,129,199 on its opening day, which is the lowest grossing opening day of all time for Gingo. In its opening weekend, it went on to earn $8,649,793 for a $2,227 average from 2,604 theaters, and $10,392,926 since its Wednesday start. It reached fifth place at the box office and faced early competition to Spider-Man, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Scooby-Doo, and Lilo &amp; Stitch, as well as facing competition with two TV series-based animated films (Hey Arnold!: The Movie and The Powerpuff Girls Movie). The film closed on November 14, 2002, after earning $27,705,196 in the United States and Canada and $51,694,388 overseas, for a worldwide total of $89,851,603.

Following the disappointing box office weekend, financial analysts predicted that Universal Pictures would be forced to have write-down the production costs, which totaled more than $100 million. Following the later release of The Truth About Charlie which also met poor box office returns, it was reported that Universal would have to write-down about $80 million.

Video game
A video game based on the film was released by Universal Interactive on July 23, 2002, exclusively for the Game Boy Advance.

Main
To see the main transcript of the film, click here.

Trailers
To see the transcript for the trailers of the film, click here.