It’s taken me a long while to review this film because Sean hadn’t seen the show and so we windingly made our way through the series first, and finished with this cherry of a movie.

When the series was cancelled because there weren’t enough people willing to watch a smart show, Rob Thomas deliberately left us with an anti-finale. Everything was up in the air. Who would Veronica end up with? Would her dad go to jail? Would she? What was she doing with her life? Thomas tried to convince the network to move Veronica from child detective to newbie FBI, but they didn’t go for it. Years later, when diehard fans were still clamouring for closure, the cast and crew decided to take it Kickstarter, where they asked for movie and boy did they get it. In fact, they set records, the fastest project to ever reach a million dollars, and then the fastest to reach two. Large donors won roles in the movie but most were much humbler, just regular folk like my baby sister, who helped set another Kickstarter record – for most individual backers. Veronica viewers (called Marshmallows) believed.

And so the little show that couldn’t became the movie that could. We find Veronica on the verge of becoming a big-time lawyer in NYC with sweetie-pie boyfriend Piz by her side, having left her crime-solving days behind in Neptune. But as usual, she gets pulled back in when a certain someone calls her up after 9 years of silence. It’s Logan, her on-again-off-again, star-crossed bad boy in Navy whites. And she can’t resist. He’s been accused of murder (again! How many times can that really happen to a person before we start to doubt their innocence) and so she drops everything to save the day. But does she? Well, yes. That’s not a spoiler, that’s simply how every episode ended, and so she must. But not before fans are gratified with glimpses of all our (and her) old friends – Mac, Wallace, Weevil and yes, even Dick.

Of course this movie was made to appease the fans who felt abondonned, and to reward the many contributors. But the good news is, you don’t have to be part of the cult following to appreciate the movie. It probably plays like a super-sized episode, but Kristen Bell is charming as ever and always fun to watch. She was always too good for TV and she’s got a successful film career to prove it, but she’s humble enough not to deny her roots. Veronica was a sassy girl and is clearly a woman full of zing. She’s a fully-realized female character who is smart, secure, and relatable to both men and women. She must be fun to play, and watching Bell around all her old castmates is like watching a really fun (if slightly homicidal) family reunion.