Adventures In Lalaloopy Land: The Search For Pillow (Lionsgate DVD)/Pound Puppies: Homemade Pound (Shout! Factory DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C/C-     Episodes: C+

 

 

Here are two more lite, child safe releases we have not seen before, but are intended as franchise releases, including one very familiar one.

 

 

New to us is Adventures In Lalaloopy Land: The Search For Pillow reminds one of Raggedy Ann & Annie in that the characters are somewhat clothes based including buttons for eyes and a general (almost surreal) sense of their build including the way they are somewhat stitched together, yet this “first movie” also has animal characters with the three female human leads.  This runs a short but comfortable 70 minutes and is somewhat colorful, as well as watchable enough and just different enough to not be as boring as it might have been.  Five mini adventures and a sing-along are also included and I’ll be curious to see if this catches on.

 

Pound Puppies: Homemade Pound is also watchable and longer at 2 hours, but it is nothing we have not seen before and those used top the original stuffed versions of the various characters might not like their revised versions here to make the animation simpler.  The original characters did not have a popular narrative that I can remember and the five episodes here are quality presentations, but this did not stick with me either, so only older fans or young children are likely to want this disc.  The only extra is a piece on how to learn to draw the characters.

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on both are simple computer animation, but they are also soft and somewhat limited overall.  Maybe Blu-ray versions would make this look better, but not by much.  At least it is easy on a child’s eyes for the most part.  The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on both releases are also simple enough, with Puppies adding a Dolby Digital 5.1 option that just spreads out the sound and never has a convincing soundfield.  This is all on par with single DVDs issued in this genre for this market.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo