The Wacky World of Mother Goose (1966)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Written by Romeo Muller
Original Lyrics & Music by George Wilkins and Jules Bass
Directed by Jules Bass
Starring Margaret Rutherford

Features:

• Poster and Still Gallery
  

My Advice: Skip it

This is the tale of the time when Mother Goose (Rutherford) left Mother Goose Land. Anyway, while she was gone, the evil Count Warptwist takes over the kingdom from Old King Cole by holding his daughter, Melodium, hostage. So, it's up to Jack Sprat to get the message to Mother Goose so that she can come back to Mother Goose Land and save the day. Hurrah.

This is absolutely horrible. The story is contrived and its inclusion of the Mother Goose stories is worse. Every time one of the Mother Goose characters shows up in the story (and I mean, shows up, because there is no plot device that helps them out), their fairy tales are sung in horribly harmonized 1960s scat numbers. The animation is mediocre at best, and most of the time, the animation does not match at all with the voice and soundtrack. Still, these are pieces of Americana. Generations of us have grown up on the "classic" Rankin/Bass animation productions, but they hit their peak with their Christmas and Easter shows. There at least you were dealing with stop motion and not flat out cel animation. Anyway, this has to represent the lowest of the low for the Rankin/Bass collaboration.

The DVD is about as good as you can expect from this show. The only bonus material that you get are about fifteen or so still shots of the promotional material that was created for the show. And, while it's good to have these saved for posterity, there had to have been something else that could have been put on the disc. How about text versions of the original Mother Goose fairy tales? Perhaps some kind of interactive something to go along with the stories? Alas, we get nothing.

If you loved the Rankin/Bass shows as a kid and are a completist, then you probably already have this one in your collection. Anyone else will definitely want to just skip on these. They just really aren't that good.