George's Marvellous Medicine

George's Marvellous Medicine is a 2000 American animated fantasy film produced by Paramount Feature Animation and based on the 1981 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. The film follows George Kranky, a boy who lives with his parents on a farm near a village, who, after having enough of his maternal grandmother, makes a magic medicine to replace her old one. When his magic medicine proves to be very effective, George's family offers to sell it to farmers across the world, while George is left to think about the implications of his actions, as if he is granted access to a magical world unlike anything he had ever seen.

The film was released in the United States on June 2, 2000 by Paramount Pictures. Upon release, it was met with mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, many of whom praised it for its faithfulness to its source material, animation, humor, John Debney's score, and performances. In addition, the film was a box office hit, making about $392.3 million worldwide, prompting a TV series that ran from August 18, 2001 to 2003 on Nickelodeon.

Plot
George Krankey is an 8 year old boy living with his parents and grandmother on a large farm laying outside of the town. His grandmother is a mean old woman, telling George stories of how she loves to eat insects and always making him make cups of tea for her that she always is never satisfied with. These stories even lead to George thinking she may be a witch, even though his parents would often deny him. One day, his parents leave the farm to get groceries at the nearby town, and George, now fed up with his grandmother after yet another story, decides to make his own homemade medicine to replace her old one.

He grabs a stockpot and explores the farm, looking for various ingredients for the medicine. He first visits the bathroom, where he collects some shampoo and deodorant in the pot, then goes to the laundry room, where he drops in some floor polish. He then goes to the kitchen, where he adds some horseradish and quality gin, then goes to the garage, where he then adds some animal medicine, engine oil, anti-freeze, and he finishes it off with some blue paint to mimic the old medicine. He sets out back into the kitchen, where he cooks up his medicine, and as he cooks it, colorful smokes starts to erupt from the boiling mixture, worrying George. His worries are thankfully short-lived, as he finishes the medicine, then pours the old medicine down the sink, and pours his new medicine in, which made him confident that it will help his grandmother. He heads into the living room, pours out a spoonful of the medicine and gives it to his grandmother.

She immediately goes dead eyed, and shortly after, she starts to cough out little bits of smoke. This quickly starts to worsen as smoke starts to come out of her ears, nose and mouth, and then she starts to inflate with smoke. A terrified George heads off to get a bucket, and he comes back with it, now full of water, then splashes it at his grandmother, who starts to deflate. After she goes back to normal, George tries to ask her if she's alright, but then she springs up out her chair, completely still. All of a sudden, her entire body starts elongating, she goes through each floor of the house, until she is finally at the roof.

However, she still believes that she has magic powers, and she made herself huge, and thinks that George is lying. She eventually realizes that George was telling the truth all along, seeing that he has indeed made a new medicine all by himself. Just then, George notices a brown hen pecking about in a yard close to where he was standing, and decides to pour out a spoonful of medicine and give it to the hen, thinking that it's full of corn and eats a peckful of it. Suddenly, after strange events happen to the chicken (like black smoke pouring out of the hen's beak, which George took care of by splashing water over it, and doing aerobatic stunts), it starts to grow taller, like Grandma, but stayed plump rather than getting thinner, and it keeps growing until it reaches the size of a horse.

Just then, George's parents return home to find to their shock and surprise that the gigantic brown hen is towering over their son and that his grandmother has her head coming out of the roof, having taken the magical medicine along with the brown hen. Upon realizing that George has made the magical medicine, Mr. Killy Kranky, the child starts telling his father about the medicine. Before he can talk any further, the hen lays a brown egg the size of a football that would make scrambled eggs for twenty people. Realizing that bigger animals could potentially give more benefit to not just their family, but the entire country, they decide to give the medicine to the pig, the bullocks, the sheep, Jack Frost, George's grey pony, and Alma the nanny-goat, just for fun, making them bigger in the process.

As the enormous animals were getting more and more attention, George's grandmother starts getting cranky about not getting enough attention, and after an argument between George, his parents, and his grandmother, Mrs. Kranky phoned the crane company, Cranes-4-Us, and the people from that company come to lift her right up through the roof. It was at that point that George realized that his medicine may have cured his grandmother of all her aches, and is actually having fun with the enormous animals now. However, because she is now too tall to get back in the house, she has to sleep in the hay-barn with mice and rats until further notice. Meanwhile, Mr. Kranky is looking at George's Marvellous Medicine and begins to think about how rich he and George would become if they made more and more doses of the magical medicine.

The next morning, George was just having breakfast when his father came rushing down and tells him about his plan to make a fortune and change with doses upon doses of the Marvellous Medicine, which will make his son and his medicine famous. However, he doesn't really know all the ingredients he used the first time he made it, and messed up on his second dose of his Marvellous Medicine, causing a white chicken with black specks, after taking a beakful of Marvellous Medicine Number Two, to have its legs grow longer until they were about fifteen feet long, while its body remained the same. With his third dose, a black cockerel didn't have its legs grow taller, but rather its neck, but George still knows that isn't what he's looking for. Marvellous Medicine Number Four achieved the opposite effect of his first dose with the brown hen, as instead of another brown hen growing larger, it became smaller until it was no bigger than a newly-hatched chick.

By that point, Grandma was furious and demanded George go and fetch her a cup of tea, until she spots the cup that he has in his hand, thinking that it's tea. However, while George and Mrs. Kranky try to get her not to drink it, Mr. Kranky just lets her drink it. When she did, Mrs. Kranky points out that she has drank 50 doses of George's Marvellous Medicine Number Four. Soon, she began shrinking even beyond her normal height, and continued to shrink more and more until she appears to disappear completely, leaving George quite wonder-struck. Although he and his parents were in relief that his grandma is gone, George still can't figure out why it has happened, but he knows what happened that morning and how it happened, feeling as if he has touched the edge of the magical world.

More coming soon!

Voice cast
More coming soon!
 * Jonathan Lipnicki as George Kranky
 * Betty White as George's grandmother
 * TBD as Mr. Kranky
 * TBD as Mrs. Kranky
 * Tony Hale as Speckling

Additional voices
Coming soon!

Development
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Writing
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Animation
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Casting
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Release
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Marketing
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Home media
George's Marvellous Medicine was first released on VHS and DVD on February 6th, 2001 with both full-screen and widescreen versions on one disc, an audio commentary by the filmmakers and a sneak preview at PFA's next feature film, Orque, among other features. It was later re-released as a Special Edition DVD on April 27th, 2004 with new special features on top of what was already available on the previous DVD release. On September 14, 2010, for the film's 10th anniversary, the film was released for the first time on Blu-Ray, and contained new special features in addition to most, if not all, of the old special features from the previous DVD releases.

On November 15th, 2017, George's Marvellous Medicine became available on Netflix.

Box office
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Critical reception
George's Marvellous Medicine received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 76% based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's consensus reads, TBD. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 68 out of 100 points, based on 54 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

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Accolades
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Television series
A spin-off animated series, simply titled George's Magical Adventures, ran from 2001 to 2003 on Nickelodeon. Produced and developed by Paramount Television Animation, alongside Nickelodeon Animation Studio, the series is set after the events of the film, where George has learned about the magical world, and now visits it daily to meet his magical friends.

Video game
A video game based on the film was developed by Artificial Mind & Movement and Neon Studios and released by Infogrames for the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, Dreamcast and Microsoft Windows. The game received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, praising it for its atmosphere and soundtrack.

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

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