Nora Laudani Movies

This animated feature serves as the coda to the MTV series Daria, which spawned 65 half-hour episodes and one previous movie (Daria: Is It Fall Yet?) during its five-year run. It is wry teen misfit Daria Morgendorffer's senior year at Lawndale High -- time to figure out what university to attend. Her first choice is Bromwell, which is also the first choice of her blue-blooded boyfriend, Tom, whose illustrious ancestors are all alumni. When Daria, Tom, and Tom's mother head off for a campus visit, things don't go as planned. Daria almost bombs her interview; even worse, traffic, bad weather, and the need for Tom to suck up to the alumni keep Daria from getting more than a drive-by look at her second-choice school, Raft. Ironically, though, she gets into Raft and not Bromwell. Tom, of course, does, and the resulting friction leaves a question mark hanging over their relationship. College questions also plague Daria's friends: Jane frets over whether even to apply to art school in Boston, while Jodie must convince her status-obsessed father to let her attend a primarily African-American university where she can finally fit in. Big questions face even Lawndale's younger students as Daria's fashion-plate sister, Quinn, is forced to take a restaurant job to pay off the credit-card bills she's rung up on clothes; hanging out with college kids and helping a new friend through a drinking problem help give Quinn a new outlook on her previously shallow life; can the end of the Fashion Club be far behind? Daria: Is It College Yet? premiered on MTV on Monday, January 21, 2002; nearly commercial-free, the original presentation included the world premiere of the video for "Breaking Up the Girl" by pop band Garbage, alongside clips from all five seasons of the show. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

For its 2002 fourth season, Daria revisited the themes and comic approaches it had employed on MTV the previous three years. High-school politics, family warfare, and the occasional movie parody kept the titular angsty teen (voice of Tracy Grandstaff) -- and her audience -- in stitches. But even as it wandered around familiar territory, the show found time to explore one new milieu: that of the soap opera. Daria's friendship with Jane (voice of Wendy Hoopes) and her love/hate relationship with Jane's boyfriend, Tom (voice of Russell Hankin), provided Daria with its first-ever season-long through-line. From its opener to its cliffhanger finale and beyond, Daria's penultimate season wove a dense continuing plot out of the title character's sexual awakening and the resulting stress on her friendship with Jane. Really, the final two seasons and the two movie-length specials that punctuate them can be viewed as one long storyline. Of course, not all episodes focused on Daria's love triangle. Supporting characters sometimes took center stage. Quinn (voice of Wendy Hoopes) continued her metamorphosis into an actual person. And college loomed larger than ever on the horizon. By the time the first special Is It Fall Yet? appeared between the fourth and fifth seasons, a senior-year framework similar to that of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 3 and not one but two seasons of Beverly Hills 90210 had been established. In short, Daria had become an honest to God continuing serial. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

If the first season of MTV's animated comedy Daria set up the show's enduring themes and characters, then the 1998 second season provided the first glimpses of the more grownup issues that would come to dominate as the series progressed. The most obvious examples include dating angst and college-admissions anxiety, but a different kind of fear emerges as a subtle constant that will later pick up steam. With Daria (voice of Tracy Grandstaff) already established as the world's most cynical teen, season two begins to map out the flipside of willful alienation -- that is, the alluring danger of letting one's guard down and fully engaging with life. From the poster contest of the season opener "Arts 'n' Crass" to the short-story competition in the finale "Write Where It Hurts," school activities provide the reluctant Daria with an audience for her creativity and dare her to connect with people beyond best friend Jane (voice of Wendy Hoopes). Of course, this being Daria, these scenarios almost always end poorly. But each time, the disaffected teen returns to her apathy with a little less resolve. Meanwhile, the show's writers have a ball expanding their supporting cast and extending the back stories of their existing characters. Kid sister Quinn (also voice of Wendy Hoopes) shows the first signs of the stubborn, Daria-esque individuality that will eventually cause a rift with her Fashion Club compatriots, while both Jane and Daria find friends and foes within their extended families. The politics of stupid high schoolers remain the focus of the plotlines, but the equally clueless antics of parents and teachers also generate laughs. As for the show's style, its ensemble-sitcom approach broadens to include movie parodies and elaborate set pieces (including an over-the-top Renaissance fair). By season's end, even TV critics had begun to notice Daria's sharp writing and thematic resonance. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi