MTV's favorite disaffected teen stumbles through her first romance, suffers through an awful summer job, and pines away for witty banter with her absent and estranged best friend in this feature-length entry in the animated series Daria. It's the summer before Daria Morgendorffer's senior year at Lawndale High, and her best friend, Jane Lane, is heading off to the Ashfield Artists' Colony for the summer. Jane withholds this piece of information until the last possible moment, presumably in retaliation for the relationship that has developed between her ex-boyfriend, Tom, and Daria. Unable to deal with her feelings for Tom and the rift they've caused between her and Jane, Daria blows the boy off, nearly sabotaging her nascent dating career. Daria's mother, however, refuses to let the girl spend the summer moping. Daria soon finds herself manning the OK to Cry Corral, a day camp where one of her teachers, Mr. O'Neill, bores and oppresses the children with his sensitive new age ways. Meanwhile, supporting players Kevin, Brittany, Jodie, and Mack suffer through employment horrors of their own. As for Daria's shallow younger sister, Quinn, she ignores the dictates of the Fashion Club and enlists the help of a tutor to get her test scores up and prove she's not stupid; along the way, she learns a little bit about depth and maturity. Jane, too, decides to act her age after Daria arrives for a weekend visit at Ashfield -- just in time to save Jane from the manipulative poseurs who surround her. Is It Fall Yet? premiered nearly commercial-free on MTV on August 27, 2000, serving as a bridge between the show's fourth and fifth seasons. MTV host Carson Daly and musicians Dave Grohl and Bif Naked provided guest voices, Daly in the role of Quinn's tutor. A second movie, Is It College Yet? followed in January 2002, putting an end to Daria's five-year run. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Review
Witty, touching, and full of telling insights into the hyper-scheduled, go-go adolescence of many turn-of-the-millennium youths, this feature-length Daria outing suffers only when it tries to cram too many supporting characters and subplots into its running time. In other words, most of the scenes involving Brittany, Kevin, and Mr. DeMartino could have been left undrawn -- or at least been severely edited. Such quibbles aside, however, Is It Fall Yet? manages the twin tasks of driving home the show's overall plot arcs and introducing new thematic concerns, all the while hanging together as a stand-alone experience. Programs such as The Simpsons are content to treat their animated characters as eternally unchanging archetypes; heck, most live-action sitcoms do the same thing. But Daria and her cohorts have slowly developed over the course of the show's run, and Is It Fall Yet? gives these three-dimensional, two-dimensional adolescents even more weighty issues to chew on. Milestones abound, from first boyfriends to first inklings of maturity to first blatant seduction attempts by bisexual acquaintances. Daria's protective shell shows signs of cracking, Quinn displays heretofore unglimpsed signs of humanity, and Jane gets a rare chance to stand on her own as a character instead of serving as Daria's perpetual foil. Along the way, we also get jabs at inner children, art-school twaddle, inane Buzz Bin bands, and shifty legislators -- plus more Fashion Club venom and a hilarious new song from top Lawndale rockers Mystik Spiral. If the countless live-action dramas on the WB and UPN nailed even half as many adolescent details as Daria, maybe the Beverly Hills 90210 style of American entertainment would finally give way to something richer. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Credit
Tom Marsan - Art Director, Maria Rodas - Associate Producer, Lemon Krasny - Co-producer, Karen Disher - Director, Guy Moore - Director, Karen Sztajnberg - Editor, Abby Terkuhle - Executive Producer, Glenn Eichler - Executive Producer, Janet Wygal - Composer (Music Score), David Trexler - Production Manager, Cindy E. Brolsma - Producer, Amy Palmer - Producer, John Bowen - Sound Mixer, Peggy Nicoll - Screenwriter, Glenn Eichler - Screenwriter, Lisa Janus - Background Artist, Adrian Newkirk - Background Artist, Splendora - Musical Performer, Gilat Meltzer - Post Production Coordinator, Felecia Stevens - Production Coordinator, Kaori Hamura - Properties Designer, Mike A. Baez - Properties Designer, Louis Henry Mitchell - Properties Designer, Ted Stearn - Storyboard Supervisor, Bobby Suarez - Storyboard Artist, Mike Wisniewski - Storyboard Artist, Kimi Arndt - Storyboard Artist, Christian Dechert - Storyboard Artist, Maurice Fontenot - Storyboard Artist, Joy Kolitsky - Storyboard Artist, John Hassler - Foley Walker, Karen Disher - Supervising Director, Choon Man Lee - Supervising Director
