Brow Beat

Stephen Colbert Let a Bunch of Adorable Kids Write a Movie for Andrew Garfield and Idina Menzel

An adorable kid writing a terrible movie.

CBS

Taking the mad ravings of children literally is a gag that never fails, especially if those children happen to be adorable. (Note that rule this doesn’t apply if you’re the head of a studio greenlighting your 4-year-old’s movie idea, the way Paramount did with Monster Trucks.) Stephen Colbert is not the head of a studio, so this Late Show With Stephen Colbert clip, in which he has a group of kids pitch him a movie idea and then shoots a trailer for it, can be watched with no fears about CBS’s share price.

The kids are ultra-cute and their movie ideas are, as you’d expect, adorable nonsense, though Colbert does his best to shape the rambling into a narrative. There’s not too much he can do when he has to include German spies, high school dances, and robot monster pigs, though. Actually, Colbert has a notably good rapport with the kids; if he ever loses Late Night, he’s got a bright future in elementary schools.

The trailer for the kid-written film, starring Andrew Garfield and Idina Menzel (plus some celebrity cameos best left unspoiled) is pretty funny but honestly way less cute than the kids who wrote it. You can tell it’s not a real movie, though: One of the kids suggests the villain could be gender-swapped, and Colbert takes her advice, reimagining the villain as a dual role so he can cast a woman. He’ll never get to greenlight things like Monster Trucks at a real Hollywood studio if he keeps pulling that kind of stunt!