The psychology of "Grow Up, Timmy Turner!"

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So, in this thread I will be discussing the implications and questions that this film brings up. If you don't want any spoilers (including spoilers for the episode "Stupid Cupid"), best click away now. Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on psychology, this is just for entertainment purposes.

For those that are still here, let's dive into this film. The movie is set thirteen years after the events in the show, hence the title name. So it's a fairly interesting premise for a fairly odd movie. Personally I've always wondered what Timmy Turner would be like when he got older, so I was curious to see what direction this film would take.

As it turns out, there's a loophole in "Da Rules" that allows for Timmy to keep his fairies. A child loses their fairies if they A) Grow up or B) fall in love. Since Timmy has only physically grown up, but not mentally, he can keep his fairies. So of course, he uses this to his advantage. The fact that Wanda doesn't object to this is rather odd.

In order to remain in a child like state, Timmy essentially halts any potential progress in his life. He makes a wish to stay in Elementary/ Primary school forever, retains the same personality, and refuses to take on adult responsibilities.

Now, I can understand Timmy making such a wish at ten years old, but I'm supposed to believe that nowhere in those thirteen years did he at least once regret making that wish? That he just saw all his friends move on with their lives and he wasn't jealous? Although a main plot point in the series is that Timmy only has his fairies because he's miserable, so if he became happy enough then he would automatically lose his fairies. That would suggest that Timmy isn't as happy in the film than he lets on, otherwise he would have lost his fairies regardless.

The psychological aspect of this movie intrigues me. It's a rather poorly written film, but fascinating to watch if you're interested in the psychology of emotionally stunted behaviour and repression.

Now, Wanda and Cosmo are actually terrible at their job if you ever stop to think about it. The idea of this fairy system is to help at risk children deal with their lives and their reality in the hopes that they become well-adjusted adults. Timmy's fairies fail to do this, and instead of helping him to cope with his own life he actually becomes more involved in the lives of the fairies and loses contact with his friends/support system in the process.

It is also partly the fault of Fairy-World, someone should have realised this and stepped in. Simply taking Timmy's fairies away isn't going to help him. I guess at this point everyone just sees him as a lost cause.

Think about it, if Jorgen had successfully taken away his fairies at the start, he would forget about them and wonder why he's stood there in childish clothes only to receive some confusing news that he's just left the grade he was in when he was ten years old. (Due to the magic finally breaking). I'd imagine that would be a rather confusing situation to suddenly find yourself in.

At this point, what Timmy truly needs is some guidance in his life. Jorgen really ought to just fire Cosmo and Wanda, then replace them with a more capable fairy that will offer some tough love and encourage Timmy to improve his life. Perhaps he'd have an easier time moving on. I guess everyone in Fairy-World is just incompetent and not suited to such a job. Maybe they tried this at one point but it failed.

The fact that Timmy has managed to stay in school for this long is surprising, but it can be explained by the strength of fairy magic. I'm sure that there were plenty of events that must've happened for this situation to occur. Special Education officials who try to get Timmy into a program for adults with learning difficulties and intellectual disabilities, happen to magically forget what they were doing, or get blown backwards whenever they get close to the school. Concerned parents that feel uncomfortable about the fact that there is a twenty three year old man playing with their kids happen to forget about Timmy Turner's existence every time he is no longer in their sight....etc.

Only hanging out with ten year olds further stunts his emotional growth, especially his development of social skills. The children that hang out with him tend to use Timmy for their own personal benefit. Despite this, he remains oblivious.

Which bring me onto the next scene. Jorgen has a plan. He realises that if he hits Timmy with one of Cupid's love arrows, then Timmy would fall in love and therefore lose his fairies. This would be fine, but Jorgen decides to show up at a school with them. So er, we have some rather unfortunate (and hopefully unintentional) implications here.

The majority of the school is filled with prepubescent children (with a few just beginning to start puberty perhaps) and the arrows make you fall in love with the first thing you see, so chances are if Jorgen did hit Timmy with an arrow then he'd become a paedophile. Not exactly the most child friendly of possibilities, but this was probably just a first draft mistake that somehow escaped the editing team. Either that, or a writer involved in this movie has a rather dark sense of humour.

Also, I'm curious as to how Jorgen got a hold of these arrows. Did he manage to get past the security system and sneak past Cupid? Perhaps he beat him up and then stole the arrows. Or maybe he just asked for them? After all, I don't think that Cupid would object to this as he's tried to get the two together before anyway. There's also the possibility that Jorgen simply bribed him since it's been shown before that Cupid is rather materialistic and if Jorgen gave him money then he'd probably give him the arrows without a second thought. Nevermind this film, I want to hear the story behind how he got those arrows!

I also have something of a headcannon theory regarding Tootie and Timmy. During the show there's an episode called "Stupid Cupid" where he freaks out after finding out that Cupid plans to make him fall in love with Tootie, so he decides to separate men and women. Which of course puts the entire World in danger with the threat of the human population dying out and put Cupid's life at risk since he's apparently powered by love.

The love meter is at zero, because gay people don't exist. Granted, I realise this episode came out in the early 2000's and if they had put it at anything more than zero, parents would've complained.

However, the ironic thing about this is that Cupid himself is a gay stereotype in the show.

Anyway, at the end of the episode Timmy Turner is given a choice by Cupid. He can either use a single arrow to make Trixie Tang fall in love with him, or use the arrow on himself so he falls in love with Tootie.

Just before he is about to use the arrow to strike Trixie, he sees how miserable Tootie is and with a "I can't believe I'm doing this" he decides to use the arrow on himself.

Interestingly, this seemingly doesn't affect the rest of the episodes and it's almost as if the arrow had little to no effect on Timmy. But what if, it did? Perhaps it's possible that the arrows don't always have an immediate effect and can slowly release over the years.

This could explain why at the start of the episode Cosmo and Wanda weren't concerned about the possibility of losing Timmy due to him falling in love. If they knew that the arrow wouldn't take full effect until he got older, then the fact they reacted positively makes more sense.

Also, if Cupid also knows about this possibility then it could explain why he's allowing Jorgen to attempt this. If he knows that the arrow will probably take effect soon, then he has less to lose as the intended outcome will most likely happen regardless.

However, he also does run the risk of Jorgen ultimately messing everything up, but he could probably fix whatever mess Jorgen managed to create.

I know that some fans complained about this movie because they wanted Trixie and Timmy to get together, but personally I think that the show was always quite clear about the fact that would never happen.

Now let's talk about Tootie in this film. Imagine that you haven't seen someone in thirteen years, and they show up wearing the exact same outfit they used to wear as a kid. What would you think? Personally I'd assume that they have quite an obsessive personality and enjoy familiarity/ a sense of routine.

Tootie understandably finds this a bit odd, but she moves past it fairly quickly. Curious to know what Timmy is up to these days, she asks about what he does for a living and he replies "I'm still in school actually", of course Tootie assumes that Timmy is talking about University/ College so she replies "Well it's nice to meet a man that values his education". This scene made me laugh on first viewing.

Here's where their relationship starts to get a little strange. Even though Tootie and Timmy are the same age, Timmy is nowhere near close to where Tootie is in terms of mental development. So this leads to a rather strange power dynamic between the two.

It's never made fully clear where Timmy actually is at mentally, and how much of it is just an act he puts on in order to keep his fairies. As such, it comes across as rather odd that Tootie remains attracted to him. If you reversed the genders of this film, a grown man goes after an emotionally stunted woman, then this movie most likely would've received more criticism for this relationship.

Yet stories of women pursuing men with the mental age of a small child aren't as looked down upon.

Cosmo and Wanda realise that Timmy has a crush on Tootie so they try to keep the two apart, but through the magic of hormones and plot convenience they are unsuccessful. The film often describes Timmy's feelings as love, but they are actually closer to infatuation.

Plot wise, there is little left to the imagination. It's quite clear from early on what direction the narrative is going to go in. That's why it can feel rather predictable and dull watching this film. However, predictable stories can work, it just means that there is more reliance on visual gags and comedy to keep audiences entertained.

In the show, this style of humour works. Often when a cartoon is made into a live-action film the jokes don't tend to translate well into the new medium.

We know that Timmy is going to get with Tootie in the end, so there's no suspense there. Sometimes the movie attempts to keep us guessing, but it just feels forced because we know that they will definitely end up in a relationship.

There's a new villain introduced in this film, he doesn't have much of a personality outside of power-hungry politician/ business man that was never hugged as a child. He's your typical copy and paste antagonist.

We also come across Vicky, turns out that she's still allowed to be around children. She even owns her own daycare. I guess she just really loves torturing children. Three cheers for the flawed education system of Dimmsdale.

AJ and Chester are oddly jealous of Timmy, you'd think that they would feel pity for him instead. I can understand Chester growing up to be a loser, but I'm surprised that AJ doesn't seem to be doing well for himself. The two instead spend their time wishing they could act like a twenty three year old man pretending to be a ten year old.

So Crocker decides to pair up with the new villain, and kidnap the fairies. They also kidnap Tootie as a way to lure Timmy into their evil liar. Whilst this is happening, Timmy is hanging out at the park with a bunch of kids. It must be difficult for him seeing each year group leave, he makes friends only for him to say good bye a year later, then the process repeats. You'd have thought that he'd have learnt how to move on due to this...

As you'd expect, he finds out what has happened and he goes to rescue her. The villain uses the fairies to experience the childhood he never had. I can see what they might be going for, sometimes stories have villains that mirror their protagonists. Often this is done as a cautionary tale to show what the protagonist might become if they don't alter their ways.

It is unclear what the villain was planning to do to Timmy. Anyway, he saves his fairies by kissing Tootie and so he finally accepts his fate. This would be an alright way to end the film, putting aside the issues with their relationship. However, the film doesn't end there. Instead, it decides that Timmy gets to keep his fairies after all. Seems kind of a forced happy ending, but alright.

The film never actually states if he ever leaves his school grade, but it's implied that he doesn't go back. So, with the academic level of a ten year old and a magic van, he flies off with Tootie just after a scene where Poof speaks in a stereotypical vernacular associated with black men. I guess it's supposed to be funny because it goes against expectations, but I just cringed at this.

Logically, it would've made sense to end the series here. Every good story has an ending, and when a show goes on for longer than it needs to...the material tends to get stale as the quality just gets worse and worse with time. Much like an out-of-date food product, Fairly Odd Parents has long since gone past its Best-Before.

Very fascinating dissection of this movie. I actually saw this movie out of boardom while i was sick. I think I might have seen it twice since I was on bed rest at that time. For a supposed "kid movie" being based off the tv show Fairly Odd Parents, there was a lot wrong with the movie. While much of what you said pretty much covers a lot of what I was thinking you also covered other stuff that I didn't pick up on from seeing the movie. Then again as I said, I was sick when I saw it so I wasn't really in the mood for super close dissecting and the like :p

I definitely agree with the "woman pursuing an emotionally stunted man" as a thing that should have been addressed when the movie came out. As you said the amount of protesting and feedback that would have gotten had that situation been the other way around would be outstanding. I'm not too much into movies and TV so I can't think of a situation where the other way around was depicted but I do know in real life many people have alot to say about such a situation where a female is either slow or mentally stunted and a guy befriends or gets into a relationship with her. They'll say he's a monster, that he's taking advantage and all that jazz.

I've just now noticed the typos I made in my original post, shame it's too late to edit it now. The perfectionist side of my personality is currently kicking herself. Metaphorically, of course.

Thank you. I've put way too much thought into this film. Still, I find it interesting from a psychological focus, albeit for little else.



Recently I've been feeling sick, but I just have a cold though. Staying in bed has become rather dull. Personally, I saw this film whilst in good health and in the mood to dissect the various elements. I've watched it a few times.




Agreed.



That's understandable, I know that when you feel sick it can feel as if your mind is spinning, and that everything is suddenly out of focus.



Neither do I, but it would be interesting to know if such a movie exists (and if it does exist, then I'm curious to see what various reviewers say). There is definitely a double standard when it comes to how such portrayals would be perceived.

I know that there was an episode where Timmy stopped everyone in Dimmsdale from ageing for fifty years whilst none of the fairies noticed, and if you take that into account then the fact he stays the same for thirteen years isn't as surprising considering that he's certainly had a lot of practice. However, personally I've always seen that episode as non-canonical joke.