Animation | 07 October 2003

James Isaac Neutron, pint-sized kid genius with the wild pompadour and the robot dog Goddard, is a weirdly marvelous creation in this age of brain-dead Saturday mornings. His vocabulary is consistently challenging—even for some adults—and his ideas are insanely intricate and fun, and yet he retains that aura of silliness and ridiculousness so vital to kids' programming. The show's Retroville setting is a perfectly vivid and colorful environment for Jimmy to thrive in. Characters interacting with Jimmy include his pie-obsessed dad Hugh Neutron, his loving 50s-TV-show-patterned mom Judy, and his friends—Far Side-inspired Carl, Ultralord-obsessed Sheen, and Kirsten Dunst-soundalike Cindy. It's a fun ensemble whose actions appeal to the kiddie set but whose words often aim for the parents. You get fart jokes combined with quotes from Shakespeare and words like "exacerbate."