The Best of Beakman’s World (1993) – DVD Review

Film:
DVD:

Series Created by Jok R. Church, based on the newspaper feature “You Can With Beakman and Jax”
Starring Paul Zaloom, Mark Ritts, Eliza Schneider, Alanna Ubach, Senta Moses, and the voices of Alan Barzman and Bert Berdis

Released by: Columbia Tri-Star Home Entertainment
Rating: NR (suitable for all audiences)
Region: 1
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: If you’ve got kids, own it…

A little over ten years ago, a television show called Beakman’s World made its debut on American television. The idea was to answer science questions that kids sometimes have about stuff they see in their every day life. It used a series of simple science experiments that kids could also do at home to accomplish this. The format consisted of the zany Beakman (Zaloom) answering said questions with the help of his lab assistants Lester the rat (Ritts) and, in the case of this DVD, Josie (Ubach).

This show should not be missed. I remember when it aired–I loved it despite the fact it was geared toward a much younger audience than I was in at the time. I never played along with the experiments at the time, but since they put out this DVD, I decided that I finally would. It was almost like being a kid again. If they only could have done an experiment to make my hair grow back, it might have completed the transformation, but that’s not a special feature of this DVD. Maybe the special edition later on will bring that to the table. Anyway, what made this show so great was the foley work. Just about every time any character moved, there was a sound effect associated with that movement–whether it was warranted or not. Oh yeah, and everything is very fast paced, which helps to keep the younger kids interested.

Speaking of special features, there really aren’t any. When you first look at the menu, it looks like there might be, but the item labeled “The Experiments” turned out to be nothing more than a scene selections menu that allows you to jump specifically to the experiment of your choice. The other thing that became obvious was that they just dumped (remastered) a VHS version of this collection of Beakman’s experiments onto a DVD. The first little tidbit of information that Beakman passes on to us is exactly what length of tape there is inside the VHS tape that we are watching right now. I couldn’t help but laugh. All in all, this collection of experiments last a little over an hour.

So, if you have never seen the show, of if you’ve got kids, you might want to pick this one up.

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