Nickelodeon's original cable movie, Shredderman Rules! has been released on DVD. Starring Devon Werkheiser from the superior Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide (please click here to read my review of that fun show), Shredderman Rules! has some clever, amusing moments to be sure, but it's a 30-minute idea bloated to a 90-minute film, with the pace lagging badly by the time its protracted, unfunny finale comes around.

At Cedar Valley Jr. High, the students are terrified of the reigning bully, Alvin "Bubba" Bixby (Andrew Caldwell). A rather gregarious, seemingly light-hearted oppressor, one of Bubba's favorite targets is Nolan Byrd (Devon Werkheiser), a nerdy computer genius. Nolan wishes for nothing more than the chance to get back at the big-boned bully, and that opportunity arises when his cool Social Studies teacher, Mr. Green (Tim Meadows), gives out an assignment for the students to do a multi-media presentation, using their computers. Nolan decides to surreptitiously spy on Bubba by use of a high-tech surveillance back-pack, catching all of Bubba's misdeeds on tape.

But Nolan realizes that if he ever presented the tape, his identity would be revealed, so he creates "Shredderman," a super-hero character/website, where he can post all the Bubba indignities. It's a hit with the students, who look up to mythical Shredderman as not only a giant killer (Bubba finally gets in trouble at school), but also as an increasingly strident voice speaking up for what the kids believe. Taking on Bubba's father, Bob Bixby (Daniel Roebuck), the "Sewer King" (who has a nefarious plot to dump waste into the town's pond), Shredderman/Nolan finds himself in real trouble, with Mr. Green suspended for defending him, and Nolan's object of affection, Isabel (Francia Almendarez), becoming disillusioned with the truth-speaking super hero. Can Nolan stop Mr. Bixby, win back the school's approval, keep his identity safe, and finally ask Isobel out on a date?

Certainly the best thing about Shredderman Rules! are the performances by Devon Werkheiser as Nolan, and Andrew Caldwell as Bubba. Taking a stock role - the school bully - Caldwell is surprisingly inventive and funny in his take on the familiar character. There's a certain lightness to his approach, a gleeful little glint to his eyes, that makes you laugh at the awful things he's doing. He brings a lot of energy to the part. And Werkheiser, who impressed me in the Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide series, could be a promising young lead, given the right material. Predicting who might become a big star is always a chancy prospect (much to my unending shame, I actually thought Klinton Spilsbury was going to be big, until I found out he was dubbed in The Legend of the Lone Ranger), but Werkheiser definitely has that young Tom Hanks kind of easy-going charm and adept physical comedy skills to indicate he might grow into a dependable light leading man. "Man Hands" Miriam, played amusingly by Marisa Guterman, also shines as the potentially homicidal stalker of Nolan.

And a few scenes and moments in Shredderman Rules! promise some fun, including an amusing sequence showing Nolan working on his project, where director Savage Steve Holland goes to extreme split-screen widescreen, creating a jazzy, 60's "caper" style moment. There's also a quite funny scene in a pet store, where "Man Hands" Miriam almost crushes a hamster. Unfortunately, those moments are few and far between in Shredderman Rules!. The reality of Shredderman Rules! is that the story is far too simple and slight to support a 90 minute film - at least in the hands of this director and screenwriter. Padding abounds in Shredderman Rules!, and the deathly dull pace kills any anticipation one might have that the movie is eventually going to achieve lift-off. What the film really needed was more of the bully Bubba; his scenes at least have some oomph, some energy. Too much of Shredderman Rules! diverts with "touching" scenes between Nolan and his too-good-to-be-true teacher Mr. Green, and between Nolan and his nerdy journalist father (Dave Coulier, doing no better here than he did on Full House). And what's going on with Nolan's mother and the plumbing is anybody's guess. Nolan's whole romance with Isobel is clumsily integrated into the plot, and the isolated, exaggerated (and quite frankly, poorly executed) fantasy sequences that pop up, feel like they're coming from an entirely different film. Shredderman Rules! could have been saved in the finale, with the audience all primed to see the villains gets their comeuppance, but it's so badly staged, with slow-as-molasses pacing, that it comes off as a total wash-out. Shredderman Rules! could have been quite amusing - with 60 minutes of its running time chopped out.

The DVD:

The Video:
The anamorphically enhanced, 1.78:1 widescreen video image for Shredderman Rules! looks good, with a clear, sharp picture. Colors are bright and correctly balanced. No compression issues.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 5.0 stereo soundtrack is surprisingly strong, with some good speaker separation during some of the action scenes.

The Extras:
There's an 11-minute behind-the-scenes featurette on the making of Shredderman Rules!, but it consists mostly of the actors introducing themselves, and giving their characters' names. There's a minute-and-a-half blooper reel that's pretty worthless, and a music video, Super Hero, that works as a trailer.

Final Thoughts:
The two leads are funny and smart as bullied and bully, and one or two moments shine in the script, but a funereal pace and obvious padding stretch the 30-minute idea of Shredderman Rules! into a dull 90-minute cable mess. Rent it if you're a fan of Devon Werkheiser, but otherwise, skip it, and catch it for free when they rerun it on TV. It will probably play better with the commercial breaks.