The Gabriel Garza Movie

The Gabriel Garza Movie is a 2002 American animated adventure comedy film based on the NBC animated television series of the same name. Produced by Gingo Animation for Universal Pictures, it was the second film from Gingo and was directed by Michael Wildshill (in his directorial debut). 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.

The film stars the regular television cast of Debi Derryberry, Rob Paulsen, E.G. Daily, Kath Soucie, Billy West, Doug Lawrence, and Charlie Adler, with guest roles from Jodi Benson, Dan Aykroyd, Richard Kind, and John Goodman. Series creator Geo G. wrote and executive produced the film, but had a clause in his contract preventing him from directing it while he directed 2002's Cland Ann: The Movie; therefore, Wildshill was selected to direct.

The Gabriel Garza Movie was originally released on July 31, 2002, making the first Gingo film to be released on a summer schedule, and received mixed reviews from critics. Despite earning over $89 million worldwide on its $60 million budget, it fell short of Universal's financial expectations; as a result, Gingo abandoned traditional animation in favor of computer animation shortly after the film's release. The film 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 franchise was rebooted in 2011 with a computer-animated film of the same name.

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 Maxio, 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 they escape. When Vio got in 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 jail. 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 / Christine 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 / Maxio / 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

Loop Group

 * Bob Bergen
 * Rodger Bumpass
 * Jennifer Darling
 * Paul Eiding
 * Sherry Lynn
 * Mickie McGowan
 * Phil Proctor
 * Jim Ward

Production
Rumors about a possible Gabriel Garza film started since the beginning of the series. Creator Geo G. wrote a treatment for a Gabriel Garza feature film at Gingo. It was to center on a dilemma for Gabriel, but it was never pitched. However, in 1998, Geo and the rest of the Gingo team began working on a theatrical film based on Gabriel Garza by putting their finances into Script Development.

In September 1999, Gingo officially announced that Gabriel Garza was to star in his own feature film. It would have been the studio's next film after The Tub People, which was subsequently abandoned in September 2000, owing to script issues.

Animation
The film was animated by Wang Film Productions/Cuckoo's Nest Studio in Taiwan and Saerom Animation in Korea.

Release
The Gabriel Garza Movie was initially scheduled for release on November 22, 2002, but was pushed back to July 31, 2002 to avoid competition with other films released during the Thanksgiving season.

Marketing

 * The official teaser trailer was released on May 11, 2001, and was shown before films such as Shrek, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Princess Diaries, and Rat Race.
 * The first theatrical trailer was released on October 5, 2001, and was shown in front of films such as Max Keeble's Big Move, Monsters Inc., Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
 * The second theatrical trailer was released on March 15, 2002, and was shown in front of films such as Ice Age, Spider-Man, and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
 * TV Spots began to air between June and July 2002.

Home media
The Gabriel Garza Movie was released on VHS and DVD on November 19, 2002. A 3D version of the film was released on Blu-ray 3D on December 9, 2014, along with the other Gabriel Garza films. The films were sold separately in 2016.

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 Atlantic 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, praising the film's animation but criticizing its story. 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: "Gabriel springs his way to the big screen with an undeniably sparkling self-image. Sadly, that 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 horrible end of 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 self from the show, it's just awful that Gingo and its creative team led by Geo G. should've been shamed of themselves."

Conversely, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, saying "The Gabriel Garza Movie is a truly touching and hilarious family adventure featuring Gabriel Garza with a blast of humor and soundtrack, as well as a comical plot from the folks at Gingo Animation". Jeffrey Lyons from NBC-TV also enjoyed the film and considered it "sharply hilarious."

Box office
On the film's opening weekend, the film earned $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.

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

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