Bear in the Big Blue House: Heroes of Woodland Valley (2003)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Written and Directed by Mitchell Kriegman
Starring Noel Macneal, Peter Linz, Vicki Kenderes-Eibner, Jim Kroupa, Tyler Bunch, and Lynne Thigpen

Features:

• Four Sing-a-longs
  
• Continuous Play Feature
  
• Trailers
  

Released by: Columbia-Tristar
Rating: NR; safe for all ages
Region: 1
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format

My Advice: Own it if you have kids.

Last night there was a big storm over Woodland Valley and it blew a tree into the town's library! So, Bear (McNeal) and Doc Hogg (Bunch) are going around the town and inviting all of the creatures to have a community meeting about what to do about the damage done. Meanwhile, Tutter, Ojo, Pip, Pop, and Treelo (almost everybody else in the cast) are secretly going around from person to person to collect more books to add to the library after the renovations are complete. It seems that if everyone in the community does a little bit to help, a lot gets done!

Well, they've done it again. This is a great show that teaches what it means to live and help out in a community and how everyone should pitch in the best way that he or she knows how. It's loaded with lots of songs that are great for the little ones, and yet don't get on the nerves of the adults who wind up having to watch this a thousand times a day. That number was not exaggerated. And, even though this is definitely targeted towards the little ones, there are lots of little jokes that the adults might find vaguely humorous (like one of the "French" characters in the community mentions that his mother was not a hamster!) As always, the puppetry is outstanding and Bear himself leaves you wondering how a puppeteer can be so agile in big bear outfit. Also, rather than there being a series of half-hour programs on this disc, this is one one-hour program that covers one day in the life of the characters in Woodland Valley.

The DVD's features are pretty good, too, when you consider that this is a children's DVD. There are four sing-a-longs that, exactly as the name suggests, allow the little ones to go back and sing along with some of the songs that they hear during the program. All this really does it take you directly to the songs in the program and adds the karaoke feature to the bottom of the screen. But, as a parent, the best feature of this (and any other children's DVD) is the capability to turn on the "continuous play" feature that allows your youngster to watch this program over and over again without having to wait through the rewinding of a video tape or having to have mom or dad schlep back over to the DVD player to start it over again.

The trailers that are on here are almost a waste of space. The kids will never watch them and the parents are only going to buy what they know their kids will enjoy anyway, so it really doesn't make sense to have them on here, but I guess having the advertising space justifies making the DVD somehow, right?

So, anyway, if you've got kids, this is a great DVD to have. It does teach a really good lesson and it's entertaining at the same time...which is always a plus!