Jonah – A VeggieTales Movie

[rate 4.5]

From the Cover

Get ready as Bob the Tomato, Larry the Cucumber and the rest of the Veggie gang set sail on a whale of an adventure in Jonah, Big Idea’s first full-length, 3-D animated, feature film.  Filled with music, laughs and some of the silliest adventurers ever to be swallowed while, this is the story of Jonah and the whale as you’ve never seen it before– a story where everyone learns that one of the best gifts you can give– or get– is a second chance.

This movie is made up of two separate plot lines.  Rather than trying to cover both of them in sequence, I’m going to cover the plot lines separately.  Hopefully this makes sense.

Bob, Junior, Laura, and the Here and Now

The setup for the Bible story is a couple of fights that are going on in the van that Bob the Tomato is driving on the way to the Twippo concert.  In the midst of singing a song, Mr. Asparagus breaks the steering wheel off of the car because Bob’s looking at a map– and they end up off the road after a porcupine shoots out one of their tires.  In all the commotion, Laura the Carrot loses her backstage pass out the window.

When they all show up at a fish restaurant trying to find a way to still get to the concert– Junior and Laura are still fighting and Bob and Mr. Asparagus are feuding over whose job it was to do what and who to call first.

It is at this point that the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything hear the arguing at the table and decide to tell Junior and Laura the story of Jonah.  They are now the narrators for the Bible story– and only break in to underscore the importance of the lesson.

At the end of the Bible story, they ask the veggies “what have you learned today”– a take off of the ending countertop if there ever was one.  They then apply compassion and mercy directly to the two situations, and are greeted by Twippo, who offers to give them a ride to the concert and to sing a song for them right there.

Jonah, Veggie-style

Jonah gets the Veggie-style makeover.  He includes commandments like “don’t do drugs” and “stay in school” to hit the moral crowd.  Along with some of the other sins Nineveh was embroiled in is “slapping with fishes” and as Jonah flees he ends up having the Pirates as transportation to Tarsus.

At this point, we meet Khalil, a worm with an identity crisis.  Of course, instead of casting lots to find out why the storm is coming up, they have to play go fish.  (And the whale is one of the cards.)  There’s an amusing sequence where the whale takes the boat for a ride after they’ve tried to save him.

Inside the whale hasn’t changed since Pinocchio in that there’s still the small boat, it’s cavernous, and there’s room for 100 angels (give or take a few).  They get Jonah to realize that God is a God of second chances, and he’s sent back to Nineveh.

Once there, he finds that he can’t get in without the help of the pirates, who think they are folk heroes for winning a contest, but find themselves (conveniently) in front of the whole city on accounts that they stole some cheese curls.

Jonah gets them to listen to him because he’s been inside a whale and lived to tell about it (the Ninevites worship the fish).  They repent, and he leaves and finds a nice spot to watch God destroy the place.

Only that’s not what God does.  And Big Idea uses Khalil as the voice of God to tell Jonah how absurd it is to be so bent out of shape that his weed died, but to desire that the whole city be destroyed.