Destination Imagination, on Cartoon Network
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This is the second movie from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (though I'm calling the first one a "special", because it's shorter than this one). It starts with a couple and their son leaving a toy chest, locked with chains and a padlock, on the doorstep of Foster's. But before it gets discovered, we get to see a day in the life of Frankie. As usual, she's being run ragged by Mr. Herriman, doing all the many chores her job entails, taking care of the Home and all the imaginary friends who live there, with no time for herself. And of course, she's sick of it all, especially since no one ever thanks her or seems to care about her personally. Finally, she finds the toy box, which came with a note not to open it. So Herriman orders her to take it up to the attic and leave it there. She doesn't want to do that, because there's a friend trapped inside, which she thinks is terrible... but the reason she disobeys him is mostly because she's sick of constantly taking his orders.
Anyway, she enters the box after opening it. There's a huge imaginary world in there, and she meets the friend, though she can't see him. He's glad to have someone to spend time with, and he treats her like a princess, gives her everything she could want, and shows her the interest and respect that no one else does. So she keeps coming back to this place over the next few weeks, while paying less and less attention to her duties at Foster's. And eventually, she stops returning to Foster's altogether.
Of course, Mac and the main group of friends get worried about her, so they go looking for her, and find the toy box. They enter the imaginary world, while Herriman decides to fire Frankie, and starts looking for someone to replace her... without much luck. As Mac, Bloo, Wilt, Eduardo, and Coco look for Frankie, they meet an imaginary hero who tells them he'll rescue Frankie, and wants them to go home. But of course they decide to go along with him to find her. Before too long, they start having some suspicions about this hero... Later, they meet a sort of toy dog, who wants to help. But eventually, they learn what's really going on.
Um... I'm leaving out lots of things. There are a number of twists in the story, and lots of really weird and cool imaginary stuff happens. This is perhaps the best thing I've seen from Foster's since the pilot, I mean there's some really old-school craziness going on. Some great imagination went into this. Very trippy. Of course, in the end there's a happy ending for everyone, on a number of levels. In fact I could easily consider this a fitting end to the series, though I see on Wikipedia that there are still a few episodes yet to air in February 2009 (this movie first aired in November 2008, though I didn't see it til the end of December). Anyway... I feel like I should be saying more about all that happened in the movie, but I really don't want to spoil anything. I'll just say that I really loved it....