Release: The Tick

 

The Tick

Genre: Comedy/Superhero/Animation

Director: Pierre Perifel

Writer: Lon Charles

Based on the character created for comics and television by Ben Edlund

Voice Cast: Rob Riggle, Michael Cera, Alison Pill, Jimmy Tatro, Vanessa Hudgens, Neil Patrick Harris, David Alan Grier, Johnny Knoxville

Budget: $70,000,000

Domestic Box Office: $84,013,993

Foreign Box Office: $82,882,099

Total Profit: $27,550,750

Reaction: Writer Lon Charles has another animated success on his hands - although not the big hits The Big Top and The Flintstones were.

"The Tick succeeds less as a narrative engine than as a sustained comedic worldview, one where logic bends, stakes deflate, and heroism is defined entirely by enthusiasm. Perifel and Charles lean into Ben Edlund’s original sensibility, though the film occasionally stretches its central gag beyond its structural limits. The story’s middle act meanders in ways that even intentional chaos can’t fully excuse. Still, the film’s commitment to character-based nonsense and its resistance to modern franchise cynicism give it a personality most animated superhero films lack." - Cooper Wilson, The Earl Hays Press

"I'll be honest, I forgot that The Tick was a thing for a moment. He never really struck me as someone who really 'needed' a film of his own, but for what it's worth, The Tick does its job and does it well. Rob Riggle and Neil Patrick Harris especially stand out for their delightfully hammy performances. If you're looking for something that, in theory, could harken back to those Saturday Morning cartoon days, The Tick is worth scratching your itches for." - Mitchell Parker, New York Times

"Pierre Perifel’s The Tick is a deliriously sincere throwback that understands the character’s essential joke: superhero bombast played with absolute conviction and zero self-awareness. Rob Riggle’s booming, proudly dim Tick is perfectly counterbalanced by Michael Cera’s anxious, quietly heroic Arthur, and the film smartly grounds its absurdity in character rather than pop-culture parody. The humor - rooted in repetition, anti-climax, and sheer commitment—lands more often than it misses. While the plot is intentionally ramshackle, the film’s warmth, clarity of tone, and refusal to apologize for its silliness make it one of the more purely joyful animated superhero entries in years." - Dave Manning, Ridgefield Press

Rated PG for comic action violence and some mild rude humor