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Category:    Home > Reviews > Animation > Animals > Comedy > Music > TV > Care Bears: Share Bear Shines Movie (Lionsgate)/A Cinderella Story: Once Upon A Song (Warner Premiere)/Dora The Explorer: Dora’s Storybook Adventures (Box Set) + Dora’s Enchanted Forest Adv./Nickelode

Care Bears: Share Bear Shines Movie (Lionsgate)/A Cinderella Story: Once Upon A Song (Warner Premiere)/Dora The Explorer: Dora’s Storybook Adventures (Box Set) + Dora’s Enchanted Forest Adv./Nickelodeon)/SpongeBob Squarepants: Runaway Roadtrip (Nickelodeon/all 2011/all DVDs)

 

Picture: C+ (Upon: C)     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Main Programs: C+ (Upon: C-)

 

 

For the fall, the various home video majors keep the children’s titles coming as school starts and the market never takes a holiday…

 

Care Bears: Share Bear Shines Movie continues the new computer animated era of the Care Bears, as if it needed it, but it is not awful despite how purists and vintage fans (yes, they now exist) feel about this turn of events.  This runs 70 minutes, is more of the cutesy same as the previous DVD releases and you can find many of them on this site by putting the franchise name into our search engine.  A simple interactive game is the only extras.

 

Our one live action entry is the unusual but explicitly straight-to-DVD release A Cinderella Story: Once Upon A Song from Warner Premiere with Lucy Hale (from the TV show Pretty Little Liars) in a “can she become a pop star” story.  After watching this, I can see why the Chinese banned this kind of Pop Music nationwide (ha, ha).  Not that this is the worst of it and this is a work of fiction, but this is like a toned down version of what Disney has been doing for a while (until it all recently imploded over there, which is why Warner may be anxious to get this one out there), but it is everything we have seen before and the music is forgotten as quickly as the paper thin script.  Very young ladies might enjoy it, but might get bored quickly too.  Extras include a Music Video (surprise?) and four making of/behind the scenes featurettes.

 

 

Those who want a more able-bodied female figure can always turn to Dora The Explorer, but even she has been taking trips into the fantasy zone and for gals, that includes romantic interludes. Dora’s Storybook Adventures has three singles and we also get Dora’s Enchanted Forest Adventures (a trilogy with 3 Music Videos as bonus) oddly not included in the same set.  Some may find this a disturbing turn of events for the character, but it is not too bad and this set also includes these singles: Crystal Kingdom (includes a game), Fairytale Adventures (includes a game, Sing-Along and Photo Gallery) and one we covered before – Snow Princess and you can read about it here:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7573/Dora+The+Explorer+%E2%80%93+Do

 

 

That leaves SpongeBob Squarepants: SpongeBob’s Runaway Roadtrip which debuts here on DVD months before it hits the network.  Gotta love his unique still camera on the DVD cover!  This runs 66 minutes with its main five episodes and the show rightly continues to be one of their best series.  Extras include two bonus SpongeBob episodes.

 

 

The 1.33 X 1 image on the Nickelodeon releases is the equal of the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 presentations on the other DVDs, all being soft with either aliasing errors, limited detail, color limits in most cases and fine for what they are.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 on Upon and Bears are really stretching the regular stereo that is like the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on the rest of these releases.  These are all clearly recorded, but not beyond professionally competent.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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