The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart

The search for the missing Hank Venture leads to untold dangers and a few unexpected revelations, all while a new evil emerges to wreak havoc on Team Venture, the Guild of Calamitous Intent, and even the marriage of the supervillain known as The Monarch and his extremely capable and velvety-voiced wife, the former Dr. Girlfriend, now known as Dr. Mrs. The Monarch.

This film isn’t really a film, so much as it’s a longer-than-usual episode of the TV show The Venture Bros.

And like in the show, it’s basically the continued continuation of the continuing adventures of Dr. Rusty Venture, a third tier super-scientist and the unimpressive son of the legendary super-scientist and very impressive adventurer, Dr. Jonas Venture. Dr. Rusty Venture is aided by his two overly-eager, overly-chipper, and hopelessly naive twin teen boy adventurer sons, well... the clones of them, at least, Hank and Dean, as well as their meep-meeping robot butler, Helper, and that mulleted man’s man, that renowned super soldier, the fearsome all-around badass, Brock Sampson, the family's original bodyguad.

In addition, they are backed up by a cast of weirdos and freaks, like the Venture’s replacement bodyguard, the past his prime, and always on the verge of another heart attack, former super soldier, Sgt. Hatred, the boys’ juvenile delinquent of a half-brother, Dermott Fictel, the mysterious necromancer renting a room on the Venture compound, Dr. Orpheus, and the half human/half vampire Blacula-killer known as Jefferson Twilight, as well as Rusty’s old college roommates, a pair of unimpressive super-scientists themselves, the hydrocephalic Master Billy Quizboy and the albino Pete White, not to mention that salty old spymaster General Hunter Gathers, plus his right-hand man, the ever-fabulous Shore Leave, and the rest of America’s highly-trained special mission Anti-Supervillain force, the O.S.I.

Together, they stand against the ever-present, relentless, and contractually obliged villainous threat of the previously mentioned The Monarch, his wife, Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, and his chief henchman, Henchman #21, Gary, as well as the terrifying Red Death, his robotic hell-horse Daisy, and the entire Guild of Calamitous Intent.

Also, like I mentioned at the start, there’s a new face on the villain scene, a mysterious woman in white, who turns out to be The Monarch’s ex-girlfriend, the vengeful Mantilla.

Plus a few others…

I loved it. Loved it.

Mostly, this film just reminded me of how much I love The Venture Bros. TV show. I imagine if you're a fan of the show, you'll feel the same way too.

A hilarious, pop-culture-infused, 1960s mod style meets 1980s windbreaker style flavored mashup of Johnny Quest, The Hardy Boys, Scooby-doo, G.I. Joe, Sci-fi movies, pulp novels, superhero comics, sometimes things like the Tiger King, and sometimes things like Zardoz, as well as pretty much anything else that you might want to reference, homage, riff on, or maybe completely ripoff because why not, it’s awesome and funny, all of which is then thrown into a blender…

Honestly, I’m probably going to rewatch the whole series again now.

But what about you, you ask? What about the newbie? Will this film make sense to you, if you haven’t watched the show at all? Will the story and its characters, will its constant references, non-stop action and excitement, not to mention its razor sharp, lightning-quick patter of witty barbs and in-jokes, have the same meaning to you?

Well, let me ask you this... Does it sound like a good idea to jump blindly into the deepest of narrative deep-ends on what may be the final chapter of a 15 year and 7 season long labyrinthine chronicle of an incentous world of heroes and villains, adventurers and spies, aliens, freaks, and monsters–all of whom are the reluctant inheritors of legendary legacies, all of whom are either related to each other, have dated each other, are currently married, and/or are clones of each other—as they do a terrible job of living up to a long line of proud legacies that at this point have all somewhat lost their luster?

No.

No, not at all.

But I loved it, and if you’re still into the Venture Bros. after all these years, then you’ll probably love it too.