Review: The Greatest Thing Ever packages Christian values in a fun, peppy package

As a millennial, Butch Hartman of course has a place in my childhood. I grew up watching a lot of the shows he worked on like Dexter's Laboratory and Johnny Bravo, as well as, of course, The Fairy OddParents, which he created at Nickelodeon. While watching The Greatest Thing Ever: A Garden Cartoon Movie, there was an instant feeling of familiarity at play. My husband came into the room at one point and I asked him if he could tell who made it. He answered correctly, immediately.

Back in the late 2010s, Hartman left Nickelodeon and pivoted to making faith-based content, including this movie, which is a spinoff of his animated series The Garden (sometimes known as The Garden Cartoon). Both the series and the feature follow the adventures of best friends Lenny the lion and Lucy the lamb, who receive instructions from The Boss (God), who appears to them as a rainbow. Sometimes he's a literal rainbow coming down from the sky, sometimes on a phone or TV screen. He's chatty, helpful, and very chill. It's definitely a vision of God that gels well with a more laidback Christianity, one that focuses on a personal relationship, the love-and-peace vibes of the New Testament. No hellfire or plagues with this guy.

Here's the standard disclaimer that I'm not a Christian. I was raised in a Christian home, continued being one through most of college, but then decided it wasn't for me. Now I'm an atheist. But I remain kind of fascinated by movies about religion, especially Christianity. Maybe it's the PTSD talking, maybe it's being able to look at it with a more clear-eyed (?) perspective. I'm not sure. But I've been really happy to get the chance to engage with a few faith-based movies this year on this blog, including The King of Kings and Book of Joshua: Walls of Jericho. It kind of feels like checking in with an old friend. Oh yeah, you're all still over here believing those things I used to believe, living your lives the way I used to. How's that been going for you?

Of the bunch, The Greatest Thing Ever is easily my favorite. A big part of its success is the Hartman-ness of it. With his background on so many beloved shows over the years, he brings a lot of expertise to the table. And this movie is, among other things, a kind of study in a lot of classic cartoon rhythms and humor. There are so many gags, beats, and escalations that are so funny, half because we feel them coming in our bones. There's a lot of random bits, like a blanket hatred for/distrust of gophers and a burning building that gets increasingly more dramatic as new details are revealed, that scratch that cartoon-y humor itch perfectly. I laughed out loud a lot during this.

And the movie has such a 90s/2000s cartoon feel to it overall. It looks very Hartman: big-eyed characters with fun designs, that instantly recognizable style. The backgrounds are more nondescript, but all colorful and nice-enough to look at. The voice cast is bubbling over with personality, all doing really nice work, especially the leads.

And the episodic structure means we're never bored. This really feels like one of those movies that's actually just a few episodes of the show stitched together with a loose narrative string holding it all together. Here, the Boss instructs Lucy and Lenny of their latest mission: to find the Greatest Thing Ever (spoiler alert: it's Jesus). From there, the best friends go on various missions, each of which contains a Bible-based lesson. They learn about greed, humility, kindness, etc., with lots of Scripture getting quoted along the way. Each chapter is capped with a song, and we get a couple Bible stories thrown in for good measure.

It's a structure that keeps things peppy and moving along. And the scenarios these lessons are wrapped in are creative and unexpected. In one part, the besties are shrunk and turned into bees. Another finds them at Comet-Con, a geeky convention where they're mistaken for real-life superheroes who are enlisted to help settle an argument between two alien tribes. The go-for-anything spirit and genuine laughs reminded me of the best Christian entertainment of my childhood. By which I mean, of course, VeggieTales.

Even if the lessons learned along the way aren't particularly surprising, I was pleased with how funny and even weird the journey was. And hey, maybe the Greatest Thing Ever really is the personal Lord and Savior we accepted into our hearts along the way, eh? (Not for me, but for Lenny and Lucy, sure!)

The Greatest Thing Ever: A Garden Cartoon Movie will be available digitally on July 1.