By now, even if you live in a cave, you’ve probably become aware of “Rugrats.”

They’re on TV. They’re in toy and department stores. They’re featured in a new campaign at a major fast-food outlet.

And now the ubiquitous round-headed kids with the bulging eyes step from Nickelodeon into a Paramount feature film, “The Rugrats Movie,” which opened Friday nationwide.

The film brings along the entire cast of the hit TV show: brave 1-year-old Tommy Pickles; his fraidy-cat friend, 2-year-old Chuckie Finster; and adventurous 15-month-old twins Phil and Lil DeVille. As always, dogging the babies’ footsteps is bossy 3-year-old Angelica Pickles, Tommy’s cousin. In the background are the dim but loving adults in the children’s lives. The movie also serves to introduce newborn Dylan “Dil” Pickles, Tommy’s baby brother.

“The Rugrats Movie” opens with a first-rate homage to “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” in which Okey-Dokey Jones (Tommy) is leading his intrepid band of adventurers on a quest for an ancient treasure. The imaginary episode dissolves, and the babies find themselves at the baby shower for Tommy’s mother DiDi.

DiDi goes into labor and everyone rushes to the hospital. While there, the four babies wander into the newborn nursery, what they see as the “baby store.” The production number set there, “This World is Something New To Me,” features newborns voiced by Beck, Jakob Dylan, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, the B-52s and Lou Rawls, among others.

Baby Dil comes home, and Tommy and his friends have trouble adjusting to the noisy new presense in their world. So Phil, Lil and Chuckie decide that Dil is broken, and propose to help out Tommy by taking the newborn back to the “hop-sickle” so Tommy can get his money back.

They pile into the Reptar Wagon, the latest creation of Tommy’s inept inventor Stu, and roll off on an adventure. Angelica takes off in pursuit with Tommy’s dog Spike, as she seeks to get back her precious doll Cynthia, who had been grabbed by Dil. All end up in the forest, and spend the rest of the movie trying to get home, with their parents looking for them at the same time.

With essentially one plot line, the movie ends up feeling like a very elongated episode of the TV series. But the TV series is successful in that it is writtent to appeal to both children and their parents. Much of the sharp satire that attracts adults to the show has been left out of “The Rugrats Movie.”

In attempting to attract the children’s audience that Disney has always ruled, “The Rugrats Movie” itself became Disney-fied. It’s as if the creators, in trying to lure in a general audience, dulled the “Rugrats” edge, turning the film into a message movie (“Siblings good. Jealousy bad.”)

That’s not to say that it won’t keep children entertained. The kids at the first showing at Hoyt’s in Bangor were mesmerized, creating very little background noise. It was the adults who were slumping in their chairs toward the end of the 90-minute film.

“The Rugrats Movie” could be the start of a new movie franchise. But the creators must be willing to take more satiric chances for that to happen.