DVD RACK: 80's KID SHOW SHOWDOWN

BUY
IT AT AMAZON: CLICK
HERE
STUDIO: Warner Home Video
MSRP:
$14.98
RATING: Unrated
RUNNING TIME: 101 minutes
SPECIAL
FEATURES:
Meet the Smurfs

The Pitch

Smurfs smurf all over your smurf

The Humans

Raul Aldana, Francisco Colmenero, Lucille Bliss, Michael Bell

The
Nutshell

Imagine if the Seven Dwarfs got their own show, but with all blue characters to avoid those pesky royalties.

I hate one-note characters.

The
Lowdown

The Smurfs occurred early enough in my childhood that I distinctly remember watching the show, but with no associated emotional response. I would like to pretend that my childhood self had detected how unremarkable the show was, but that is unlikely. At the very least, I was able to watch it on a regular basis, whereas now it was a struggle to sit through only five episodes. Now if you are still a fan of the show (shame on you), I could see how this would be upsetting. Apparently the DVD sets released for the first season have around three times as many episodes as those released for the second season.

Cutest grave ever.

Unless these are your very favorite five episodes of the Smurfs, I cannot imagine paying retail for this set. There was one episode that I actually liked and it was about Smurfette finding a sick mouse, Squeaky, and nursing it back to health. After it recovers, it becomes the favorite pet of the village and it even alerts the village to a fire before it is able to do any real damage. While riding high from this event, Squeaky dies suddenly. I was surprised that a show like The Smurfs attempted to tackle the issue of death. Not only this, but Smurfette becomes emotionally closed off and runs away because she is afraid to lose anyone else close to her. Shockingly, The Smurfs is able to tackle death and loss in a way that feels genuine. When taken in context of the corny jokes and annoying one-note characters of the other episodes, it is miraculous.

Coming this fall: Breaking Smurf

For all I know, a larger set of episodes could have had more episodes of this caliber, which might make me reconsider my opinion of the show. But as it stands, this show is a Smurfing pile of Smurf. If you thought that the live-action film sounded horrible before, rewatching the original show will make you even more wary of the project.

The
Package
Meet the Smurfs is a handful of video profiles of individual Smurfs. It is practically valueless, but their short length is an asset in this case. There are also various trailers for other DVDs targeted towards children, which is kind of an insult given the minimal episode set. There is also an Easter egg, which is a trailer for a Smurfs’ episode done in the style of a 50’s horror film. It is actually mildly amusing and a bright spot for the DVD.

BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK
HERE
STUDIO: Jim Henson Company
MSRP:  $14.98
RATING: 
Not Rated
RUNNING
TIME: 74 minutes
SPECIAL
FEATURES:
•Animated Episode: “The Great Fraggle Freeze”
•Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas Sing-Along
•A Look at Jim Henson’s The Christmas Toy
•Traveling Matt’s Holiday Trivia
•Holiday Game

The Pitch

If we group the holiday episodes together, we can sell them as a set!

The Humans

Gerald Parkes, Steven Whitmire, Dave Goelz, Terry Angus, Jerry Nelson, Karen Prell

The Nutshell

Jim Henson tries to work his puppet wizardry on a show for children that have gotten too old for Sesame Street.

America wasn’t ready for the episode about Gobo’s suicide.

The Lowdown

If you enjoyed hearing me complain about the Smurf set only having five episodes, then you are in luck, this set has a whopping three episodes. And it is not as if this is the only way that you can get these episodes, you can buy a full season, which will have at least one of these episodes in addition to dozens more. Of the three episodes you do get, none of them are particularly remarkable. I found myself to be quite bored with the show, especially with the two episodes that are about sharing.

If you don’t have faith, your friends will freeze to death.

The third episode was incredibly ambitious, but I
imagine the result left more than a few adults scratching their
heads. In this episode, Gobo challenges the commonly held beliefs of the
Fraggles and searches for proof using an old map he found. He
ultimately ends up empty handed and the Fraggles are frozen solid until
Gobo realizes that the power of their holiday was not in some mythical
being, but in the Fraggles themselves. I applaud the effort, but the execution falls flat and is even a bit depressing at times.

The
Package

The disc actually comes with a bonus episode of the Fraggle Rock cartoon, which is not enough to make up for only having three episodes of the original series.

The
Scores