For kids, especially boys younger than 10, the TV event of the fall is finally here.
If you don’t know who Ben Tennyson is, that’s probably because you don’t have a young boy living in your house. If you do, chances are you have the energetic theme song of “Ben 10,” the Cartoon Network hit that premiered in 2006, deeply engraved in your mind.
On Wednesday, the most ambitious Ben Tennyson adventure yet unfolds in “Ben 10: Race Against Time” (7 p.m. Wednesday, Cartoon Network). Unlike the regular “Ben 10” series, which is animated, “Race Against Time” is a live-action film. The young “Ben 10” fan in my household — who spent a recent windfall from his grandparents on a toy Omnitrix — gave it a thumbs-up.
What’s that — you don’t know what an Omnitrix is? . Fans of the series know that the Omnitrix is a wristwatch-style doodad that young Ben Tennyson came across during a road trip with Grandpa Max and cousin Gwen. The device allows Ben to change into any one of 10 superpowerful creatures. But the catch is (isn’t there always a catch?) that Ben can be transformed into one of his 10 alter egos, such as Wildmutt or Ghostfreak or Heatblast, for only a few minutes at a time.
Aliens with eeee-vil agendas often visit Earth, hoping to relieve Ben of his prized Omnitrix. Lucky for him, Grandpa Max is a plumber — and not just the pipe-fixing variety. Max and his fellow Plumbers are a secret society of alien-fighting earthlings, and they band together with Ben and Gwen in “Race Against Time” to avert certain destruction at the hands of Eon, the latest would-be Omnitrix thief.
There are action set-pieces aplenty, and, as you would expect, Eon sports a glowing purple-and-black helmet and is given to issuing blustery threats in a condescending pan-European accent. A gripe I have with the regular series crops up here: Gwen (Haley Ramm) is often written as a snippy, irritating killjoy. It would improve the series if Gwen was less of a petulant presence, and no doubt the many moms and girls in the “Ben 10” audience would appreciate having a cooler female presence on the show.
In the movie, Ben (Graham Phillips) also wrestles with fitting in back at school, after a summer spent in Grandpa Max’s RV, driving around and having Omnitrix-driven adventures. Lee Majors does a nice, understated job as Grandpa Max, and I always enjoy seeing Robert Picardo (“Star Trek: Voyager”), though as a fellow Plumber, he’s not given much to do here. The story is also padded with a subplot starring Ben’s parents, who are annoying and unnecessary to the film.
But the biggest caveat — for parents, anyway — is that “Ben 10: Race Against Time” has a running time of about 65 minutes. Yet it’s being shown in a 2-hour time slot, so prepare yourself not just for a possible alien invasion but a commercial one as well.
More ‘Dirty Sexy Money’
The new ABC drama “Dirty Sexy Money” has been picked up for a full season by ABC.
Though no new episodes are being written because of the Writers Guild of America strike, this is a good sign for the drama, which has been one of the fall’s most intriguing new offerings. Also good news: The announcement Nov. 16 that negotiations between the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are set to resume on Monday. Though the strike has made everything about TV uncertain (except the deluge of reality and game shows we can expect in 2008), if it ends in a relatively timely fashion, the pickup means that Peter Krause and the rest of the cast of “Dirty Sexy Money” will be back on our screens in the new year.
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moryan@tribune.com
