Disney's Sing Along Songs:
Brother Bear & Home on the Range (2004)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Narrated by Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas and Roseanne Barr

Features:

• 3 Vocabulary Activities: "Find It!", "Letter Puzzle," "What's This?"
• Repeat play and random play options
  

My Advice: Own them if you've got kids...

These DVDs are put together to be promotional material for the Disney movies as they are released to cinemas and home video. What you have is a collection of some of the songs from the movie together with some classic animation and other songs, with some very loose narration thrown in between the numbers. There is nothing that even remotely resembles a plot, but that's not what it's about. These discs are all about the karaoke. Each of the numbers is complete with the lyrics flashed at the bottom of the screen. Then, after you've been through all of the numbers once, you go through all of the numbers again with the same animation, but edited together with a group of children doing very simple choreography to the numbers.

Brother Bear is narrated by Rutt & Tuke, played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. Check out my review of the Brother Bear DVD for more info about their characters. Anyway, these two moose are following other characters Kenai and Koda to the salmon run, but they get lost along the way. So, they have to rely on clues--which are cave drawings--to guide them along their way. Each of the drawings is from a different Disney movie and magically comes alive and plays one of the songs from the other movie. These songs relate to Brother Bear in some way, but in most cases, you have to really stretch your mind to find the analogy. My only comment is that they cheated on the animation. While they are on their lost journey to the salmon run, you never see Rutt & Tuke's faces. They are always facing "upstage" with the backs of their heads to the "camera." They took a very simple animation of them walking along looking away and looped it over and over again. The action of the characters' bodies never even match up with the action of their words. I know that's a very nitpicky thing, but it just bugs me.

Home on the Range is narrated by Maggie the cow, voiced by Roseanne Barr. She tells of the day she arrived at the dairy farm called "Patch of Heaven" and has to work with her fellow cows to help save the day. The "storyline" (if you can call it that) for this one is a little more loose, but the songs tie in much better with the theme of the movie. Most of the songs are western in nature and are well done. There are also some classic children's songs like "Oh, Susannah" and "Old MacDonald" thrown in there, too. I have a problem with their arrangement of "Old MacDonald": Every time you get to a new animal you have to work your way back through the entire list of animals that you've already been through before you get to the completion of the musical phrase. Since the "moo moos" and "neigh neighs" are all sung on the same note, this becomes tedious pretty quicky. They didn't try anything tricky with the animation on this one. Instead, they just let the voiceover carry it through without feeling like they had to work up some animation for it at all. All they did was cut some clips of the movie together where the characters weren't talking and it worked out fine.

The bonus features on both DVDs are the same, but they follow the themes of the primary material. The bonus material really only amounts to three games that your kids can play. Let me emphasize: that your kids can play. These games are mind-numblingly boring to adults, but they are somewhat educational in nature and are designed to help along reading skills and, for that, I applaud them. The first game is called "Find It". This is basically a group of pictures on the screen. When the narrator tells you to find something, you move the cursor around on the screen until you find the item he's looking for. After you find it, you are rewarded with the spelling of the word both on the screen and spelled out loud for you. The "Letter Puzzle" game is where you are given a word and you have to spell the word on the screen. You are given a group of letters from which to choose. The words are between three and five letters long. The final game is called "What's This". This is really the opposite of "Find It". You are presented with a series of pictures and you have to choose the word that describes it. Again, you are rewarded with the spelling of the word. All in all, these are great games to play with your kids to help them along with their vocabulary and reading skills.

The main material is not the most entertaining for adults, but the kids certainly do love the sing alongs. As always, you might want to rent them first (if you can find them) to see if your kids will really like them. Or, you could just buy the ones that go with the movies you know your kids already like. Either way, add these to your collection for the kiddos. You won't be sorry.