Ellie O'Ryan

When I say "I didn't like it", that is the understatement of the century. I loathed it and the fact that this exists in this puerile, hackneyed form meant to be a novelization of what is a wonderfully energetic and entertaining film. I'll break it down for you in list form why this is the worst novelization of anything I've ever seen, even beating out the abysmal Target novel for Doctor Who: The Twin Dilemma - and believe me, beating out that particular title for 'worst of' takes a special talent!

1. Did you know the original movie was choc full of songs? Bet you'd never guess that with the book! Now granted, I actually expected them to cut out the songs, but to not even hint at the fact that they're there? It's Phineas And Ferb - singing is a must, make a reference to it or something! What few references to the musical numbers there are are heavily truncated; the opening song "Everything's Better With Perry" is cut down to a handful of lines at the beginning and not even given so much as a curt nod in the actual writing.

2. A lot of other stuff is cut out. A lot. Did you like the Isabella/Phineas kiss at the end? It's gone. How about the bulk of the Candace and Stacy scenes, or the entire sequence of Phineas and Ferb and company traveling through the various dimensions? Yeah, that's gone. They even cut out the best parts of the scenes with Buford and his Victory Gum - the ones with the philosopher trading cards. And maybe, just maybe, these cuts wouldn't have been so depressingly noticeable if it wasn't for the next point.

3. Nothing is described. Nothing. I'm not talking about characters, because it's a given that the reader is aware of what they look like. The actual scene for things is never set up; if you've never seen the movie, it would be hard to get a good handle on where they are or create a half-way decent mental picture of the scene itself. Also, a lot of the visual things from the film don't get translated into prose, as if the author couldn't be arsed to do it. The scene where we see Alt Doof's army of Norm Bots? Yeah, that got butchered real hard. Same with the reveal of who is in the resistance force as well as the majority of the action scenes. It's a real bare bones story with no description, which does a film that prides itself on visuals and quirky artwork a real disservice. Really, this author couldn't be bothered to describe the final battle in more detail, or even the P&F inventions that get released onto Danville? Ugh.

4. No emotion. The story whips by so quickly, you really don't get a handle on things like Phineas' anger at Perry for keeping a secret for so long, or alt!Phineas' reaction to seeing our Perry, or probably the most emotional scene at all - when Perry leaves Phineas and Ferb to save Danville, leaving them only his locket which turns out to be a major factor in the plot. I know, this is more of an early reader book, but don't early readers deserve to see how things effect characters in the story? Aren't we doing early readers a huge wrong by robbing them of things like consistent emotional arcs, telling character self-realizations, and straight up PLOT LINES? We can still incorporate these things as writers into our stories and keep them accessible to all kinds of readers, really! Yes, even in a Phineas & Ferb book!

5. Oh, we could have had it all (rolling in the deep, etc etc). This was a perfect opportunity to incorporate missing/cut scenes from the film into the novelization, including all of the Vanessa scenes that were cut from the final version. But naturally, this book couldn't be bothered with bigger aspirations like those. It seems rather content with mediocrity on all levels: mediocre writing; character building; world building; humor; emotional relevance; everything.

This book is not worth it, even if you are the most hardcore of Phineas & Ferb fans. You're better off buying the movie and watching it over and over again instead of picking up this forgettable excuse of a fluff piece. I almost wish Disney would consider releasing another version of the novelization, just to give fans another chance at a book that doesn't completely suck all the life out of the original work. Sigh. What a disappointing read!… (meer)