First, there’s Cricket, the thrill-seeking and wildly unpredictable son. Then, we’ve got the unique and whimsical daughter, Tilly. Up next is family patriarch Bill Green, a loving father but overwhelmed farmer. And finally, there’s Gramma. If you threaten her son or grandkids, she’ll come after you with a sword, mace or even her prosthetic leg in a pinch. But she also loves distributing kisses and hugs.

Bill and his kids moved to Big City to live with Gramma after they lost their farm. And the family has adjusted. They’ve made friends and even converted Gramma’s yard into a profitable vegetable garden.

But after working so hard to get their lives back together, they’re ready for a vacation. Cricket knows just the thing: a luxurious stay at Big Tech’s Space Hotel in, you guessed it, space.

There’s just a little matter of funding this spacecation. Though the Greens work hard, they don’t make enough to cover the $10 million a night stay.

Luckily, Cricket has the solution for that, too. In addition to creating the Space Hotel, Big Tech has also created a farm located on an asteroid. And the farmbots created to harvest the plants are malfunctioning.

So, Big Tech CEO Gwendolyn Zapp makes the Greens an offer: Go to the asteroid and harvest the produce for her and she’ll let them stay at the Space Hotel for free.

It’s not exactly the family road trip Bill had in mind for this vacation. But after a little convincing from Cricket, he finds himself saying a sentence he never thought he’d utter: “Let’s get to that asteroid and harvest those space crops so we can enjoy our space vacation at that Space Hotel!”

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Murderous gutter clowns, cancer induced by cell phone waves, infected mosquito bites, clogged toilets.

Orion has plenty of fears, and they cripple him every day. His school counselor told him that documenting them might help him overcome them. But really, cataloging them all just seems to authenticate them in Orion’s eyes.

Fear of rejection prevented Orion from finally mustering the courage to say “hi” to Sally, his school crush. Fear of being crushed by falling model planets prevented Orion from turning in his permission slip for a planetarium field trip. And fear of humiliation prevented Orion from saying “yes” when Sally asked Orion if he’d like to sit next to her when that trip arrives.

Instead, Orion walks home in terror, fearing that today will be the day that his parents moved away without telling him while he was at school. (No such misfortune, he finds, as his parents come to console his anxiety once more.)

But not even they can dispel Orion’s greatest fear of all: the dark. When the sun leaves and shadows reign supreme, Orion finds little comfort in his bed.

It certainly doesn’t help when the darkness itself converges around him, forming into a pudgy, cloaked figure. Orion screams in terror.

“OK, that’s it!” the entity yells. “I’ve had it with you! Of all the kids who are terrified of the dark, you are by far the loudest, the most obnoxious, and frankly, the most hurtful.”

Huh?

That’s when the darkness introduces himself as … well … Dark. And he’s keen to make a deal with the kid whom he and other supernatural night entities refer to as “Night Enemy Number One.”

“You come watch me do my job for one night, and you’ll finally see that I’m nothing to be afraid of,” Dark offers.

And maybe, just maybe, if Orion can overcome his greatest fear of all, it’ll help him get past his lesser fears, too.

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Damien Wayne is the son of Bruce Wayne—Batman, to all you evildoers. But when Bruce learned that he would soon be a father, he put in the overtime work, taking down all the city’s criminals in mass to make it safe for little Damien. Now, the infamous Arkham Asylum is now Arkham Daycare, and Gotham’s been voted the “safest place on planet Earth.”

With no crime to bust, Damien and Bruce spend their days hanging around Wayne Manor. And with Christmas coming, Bruce decides to let Damien open a present one day early.

Inside that box, the Batman-obsessed Damien finds a utility belt—his father’s first one, in fact, modified to be child-safe. Now, it includes a first-aid kit, foam Batarangs and safety whistle. Bruce tells a slightly disappointed Damien that he’ll need to earn the weapon attachments when he’s older.

And that’s when the dust-covered Batphone rings, beckoning for Bruce to travel to Nova Scotia to investigate a strange weather occurrence. He doesn’t want to leave Damien (especially on Christmas Eve), but none of the other Justice League members are available. So he soon prepares to be vengeance for the Canadian province.

Damien tries to stowaway in one of Bruce’s bags. And as he tries to prove his fighting abilities to his dad, Damien only succeeds in kicking Alfred in his “one good hip.” Furious, Bruce confiscates the utility belt and gives it to Alfred. Batman tells his son that he’s not ready for the responsibility of it before zipping away. Damien is devastated, so much so that Alfred decides to go to the store to get the ingredients needed to make his world-famous hot chocolate to try to cheer the boy up, leaving the belt behind.

And while he’s away, that’s when a couple of burglars sneak into Wayne manor and manage to get away with the utility belt. But that’s nothing but good news to Damien—because if he can track them down and get his belt back, his dad will finally recognize Damien’s ability to dish out a dark night’s worth of justice.

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Isn’t Christmas just awful? Having to gather with family and friends. Giving presents to one another. Rejoicing in God’s grace, mercy and blessings? Bleh.

Wait, you like those things? Well, bleh to you, too! At least, that’s Ebenezer Scrooge’s whole thought process on the matter.

“Christmas is a humbug,” he says, looking quite upset that it’s one bug he can’t squash. “I despise it and all it stands for.”

Scrooge would much rather spread Christmas fear than cheer. And the money lender likewise shows little mercy to anyone who owes him a pound or a pence.

But like it or not, Scrooge is about to get his own Christmas present: his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, visits him, gripped by chains he claims are of his own greedy and grubby making. And Scrooge is quickly bound to join him in the same horrific fate, Jacob claims, unless the ruthless miser can change his selfish ways.

And fortunately for old Scrooge, Jacob’s sent three ghostly beings to help guide him towards such change.

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But what is the message of Blue’s Clues? It’s simple: You can do anything you wanna do! (Within reason, of course. To, say, invade a small country would be taking the message out of context.) And it turns out, Josh’ chance for Broadway stardom hasn’t faded yet. Rainbow Puppy—yes, the Rainbow Puppy—would love for him to audition for her Broadway production!

Alas, Rainbow Puppy didn’t give Josh a lot of notice. The audition is at 3 p.m., and Josh’ll have to travel all the way to New York City. And while the Skidoo Express can get him there, Josh gets so flustered that he leaves behind his Handy-Dandy Notebook!

That’s a big deal because Josh wrote down the theater’s address in that Handy-Dandy Notebook. And it’s not like you can stop a Manhattan cabbie and say, “Take me to the theater.” Broadway’s a pretty big place.

No, Josh will need a little help. He’ll need to follow some clues to find the right theater. He’ll need some of his Storybook World friends to bring him his Handy-Dandy Notebook. And hey, he might just find a little help from some old familiar faces, too.

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Billions of people around the globe revere soccer deep in their hearts—along with its All-Star players, too. And now, it’s time to see which athlete is truly the best in the “All-Star Cup All-Star of All All-Stars of All Time” competition. Who’s in the running for the title, you might ask? Well, there’s Zlatan Ibrahimović, Megan Rapinoe and … wait … is that “Weird Al” Yankovic?

As it turns out, Weird Al isn’t just a world-famous parody song writer; he’s also a bit of a mad scientist—and he’s developed a way to “borrow a teensy bit of soccer skills from each player using advanced genetics.” Soon, All-Star players are attacked by mutant slugs which sap away their talent and give it to Weird Al, turning the players into mindless hulking mutants in the process.

Fortunately, there’s a group that stands in Weird Al’s way: the Creature Catchers, a soccer-loving pest-control team made up of four children. And if there’s anyone who’s oddly specific qualifications meet the job description, it’s them.

With the big game coming up, the Creature Catchers need to eradicate the mutant slugs and return the star players back to normal—and that’s not even mentioning dealing with Weird Al’s schemes.

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The turtle bros. look different. They’ve got new gadgets and skills and they’ve got some souped-up mystical abilities, too (at least most of the time). Even their sidekicks are rolling with a different vibe. Sensei Splinter is kinda short and rotund these days. And April O’Neil is now Black and much more into kicking baddy backside than rocking a news reporter’s mic.

But no matter how they’ve all changed, they’ve still got a driving need to do the right thing and be the heroes that New York City, and the world, need.

And if a guy named Casey’s right, they’ll be needed badly.

Casey—a friend of the Ninja Turtles in the future—pops up and spouts news about a calamity in the making. Some deadly dudes called the Krang are about to escape from a prison dimension. If they have their way, the world will be destroyed. And it’s all going to fall in the current Turtles’ laps.

Casey points to a mystical/magical key to that dimensional prison door that can’t, I mean can’t, fall into the wrong hands at this point. Problem is, the drawing of the key that Casey produces looks a whole lot like the thingamajig that team leader Leo let the nefarious Foot Clan steal away with just this morning.

Oops.

Looks like it’s time for the Turtles to fly into action and save the day. But when they do, they discover those Foot Clan baddies have already started the ceremony to open the mystical prison door and give Krang monsters a chance at a goopy, tentacled reign.

Well, nobody said saving the future would be easy…

The post Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie appeared first on Plugged In.

That was 20 years ago. Now, Chickenhare’s father is king, Lapin is in prison for attempting to overthrow the kingdom and Chickenhare aspires to be a great adventurer just like his dad was. But in Chickenhare’s eyes, he feels that the only thing holding him back are his physical differences—namely, the fact that his legs are chicken legs and his body is that of a hare.

He decides to hide his feet from the world, using large hare-feet shoes to conceal his chicken legs. Now, he can surely be a true adventurer like his father! Only, it’s Chickenhare’s false legs that cause him to fail his once-in-a-lifetime qualifying test for joining the Royal Adventurer’s Guild—meaning that his chance to become that adventurer is over.

But Chickenhare can’t just give up on his dream, so he has to go to desperate measures to try to get them to reconsider:  he’ll find the Hamster of Darkness, come back to great laudation and applause and impress everyone so much that they’ll have to let him into the guild!

Only, while searching for the artifact’s potential whereabouts, he inadvertently helps his uncle Lapin escape. What’s worse, Lapin knows where the Hamster of Darkness is, and he’s going to use its mystical powers to overthrow the kingdom! What’s worse than that, Chickenhare discovers that the kingdom’s army has fallen for a diversion and is sailing the wrong way—leaving the self-conscious Chickenhare as the only one left who can stop Lapin.

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Well, maybe it is. Especially when you’re a family of 13. But the point I’m trying to make is that it’s not always easy being Lincoln Loud.

I mean, Lincoln is a great brother, a super organizer and a good all-around kid. But compared to his 10 vivacious, talented and generally spotlight-worthy sisters, he’s kind of a less-than-special-but-right-about-average boy.

The Loud family’s house may be chock-full of trophies and ribbons, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find one with a boy’s name on it. And when neighbors step up to pat Mr. or Mrs. Loud on the back and praise them for their kids’ accomplishments, “You must be proud of your girls,” is what most often comes out of their mouths.

Don’t think Lincoln hasn’t noticed.

Lincoln’s best friend, Clyde, tries to pooh-pooh the idea of having to be special. Still, the fact is that Clyde is pretty special at baking. When Clyde attributes his gifted abilities to his family coming from a long line of bakers, however, a light bulb lights up in Lincoln’s head.

What if he could dig into his dad’s family history? There’s bound to be something that male Louds have been good at. Maybe that’ll help Lincoln find his special niche.

And before you can say “Caledonia,” the whole Loud clan is packing up and heading off for a vacation in Dad’s ancestral homeland of Scotland!

Lincoln hopes he might find some genetic connection to being really good at, oh, I don’t know, dragon hunting or bell tower-building. But what they find is something altogether unexpected. They stumble upon a town called Loch Loud—a whole town with their name on!

Not only that, but the townsfolk become pretty excited when they learn who’s arrived for a visit. Turns out the Loud family is nothing less than direct relations to the royal family that founded Loch Loud. They’re royalty, by gum! And young Lincoln, why he’s nothin’ shy of a duke.

Now, that’s special. And as the Louds move in for a stay at the nearby castle, Lincoln can’t help but think of what he’ll need to do to make this duke thing stick. I mean, as an honest-to-goodness royal he could do … duke stuff: dub knights and junk. That may be exactly what he was born to do.

Hey, it’s cooler than building bell towers.

The post The Loud House Movie appeared first on Plugged In.

And now, an evil group known as the Arcane Order, composed of primordial demigods Bellroc and Skrael, seek to restore balance the only way they see fit: through the rise of ancient titans who have been in stasis and the annihilation of earth itself.

The trollhunter and chosen one named Jim knows this. He’s faced serious threats before. And he and his magical team of wizards, aliens and trolls have once again united forces, this time to stop The Order before it’s too late.

But they don’t have much time. They must protect The Order’s only defector and the key to its destruction, demigod Nari. And they must stop the increasing power of the dark magic before humans are wiped from the face of the earth.

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