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Movies on DVD for kids
November 2008
Margaret Bream
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| WALL-E | WALL-E, the little trash compactor who could, this month rolls his rusty treads over everything in his path — including cash registers. Using brilliant animation, spectacular sound design and genius inventiveness, the film tells the story of lonely WALL-E, the last robot on Earth. WALL-E, left to clean up the mess after the humans were forced to leave, meets EVE, a flying robot who sparks his circuits. Despite its near complete absence of dialogue, WALL-E is a movie even young children love. Pixar piles on the DVD extras: Highlights include a short film about another robot named BURN-E, multiple featurettes and deleted scenes.
Kung Fu Panda is pretty much everything WALL-E isn’t. Bright, noisy, cartoonishly violent and ultimately bamboo hollow, this latest issue from the DreamWorks Animation factory is the predictable story of gluttonous young panda Po (Jack Black) who dreams of becoming a kung fu master. The movie assaults the senses, but it provides a few laughs and some fabulous choreography that make it worth grinning and bearing. The DVD is packaged with a new animation about Po’s animal kingdom idols, called Secrets of the Furious Five.
Offer the kids a walk on the gentle side with Little House on the Prairie – The Complete TV Series. The 60-disc set contains all nine seasons of the popular TV show based on the semi-autobiographical books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The series tells the story of the plucky Ingalls family as they pioneered in the Midwest in the 1870s. The good stories and rich characterizations that made Little House successful from 1974 to 1983 retain their charm. The box contains post-season telefilms and three new discs of bonus material, including interviews with the series’ stars (including Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura), audio commentaries and featurettes.
Here’s some in-the-know ho-ho: Skip Fred Claus, a dismal pairing of Vince Vaughan and Paul Giamatti as Saint Nick siblings that has no sanity clause. Check out instead Christmas Is Here Again, an animated musical about a little orphan girl who teams up with a cast of critters to search for Santa’s lost gift bag. This gentle film, suitable for young children and agreeable adults, draws its take-home message from Dr. Seuss’s Grinch: You can steal a roast beast, or even Santa’s sack, but you can’t steal Christmas — unless you force somebody to watch Fred Claus.
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