Birds Of Paradise: Meet The Flockers (2014)/Dog Who Saved Easter (2014/Lionsgate DVDs)/Guardian Of The Highlands (2012)/Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5 - Fused, Season 2, Vol. 1 + Vol. 2 (2009/Cinedigm DVDs)/Lalaloopsy Ponies: The Big Show (2014/Lionsgate DVD)/The Pirate Fairy (2014/Disney Blu-ray w/DVD)

Picture: C/C/C+/C/C+/B & C+ Sound: C+ (Pirates Blu-ray: B) Extras: C-/D/D/D/C/C Main Programs: C/D/C+/C-/C+/C

The latest round of children's titles are mixed at best.

Birds Of Paradise: Meet The Flockers (2014) is not as funny as the title would suggest and for that matter, has a somewhat objectionable title, referentially or not. A sparrow named Jack (not Johnny Depp, but voiced by Jake Bell) get some patches of various colors of paint on him accidentally (not as funny as in Warner's cartoons) that make him suddenly seem like an exotic breed of bird. He has always wanted that and now he gets to see what it is like, until a villainous corporation named after it founder (a point for the name being Potter) is going to ruin his dreams.

Jon Lovitz is among the supporting voice cast for this very ordinary good bird/bad bird tale with passable CG animation, making it not the worst thing we've seen of late, but one not very memorable that had more potential that is never met.

Extras include Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes capable devices, while the DVD adds a Making Of featurette and Minuscule Bonus Episodes.

Sean Robert Olsen's Dog Who Saved Easter (2014) is out only live action entry here and a the big dud in a telefilm that never looks like it is taking place in Easter season, bringing back Zeus the Dog (who I don't have any recollection of to begin with like most of us) left behind at a dog kennel in trouble during the holiday as his family vacations. Unfortunately, the script is void of anything memorable, playing like the writers vacationed and forgot to write one. Patrick Muldoon, Dean Cain, Catherine Hicks and the voices of Nicole Eggert and Mario Lopez are somehow here in this ultra-lite fluff. If only it had any real signs of Easter in it, because it is a package deal and no holiday classic.

There are fortunately no extras.

Sascha Hartmann's Guardian Of The Highlands (2012) is a CGI release made in Scotland with no less than Sean Connery (in his first work in years) voicing the title character in a world where talking animals co-exist with people. Sending up his James Bond persona often (including a theme song sung by Shirley Bassey) in a friends/animals-in-trouble tale that often has the latter overdone and the two never quite mesh. However, there are enough amusing moments, in-jokes and nice animated touches that this is still more watchable than many similar releases (including on this list) that we have seen in recent years.

There are unfortunately no extras.

Back in the late 1960s, an animated TV show based on Hot Wheels cars arrived in color, but government regulators said it was just a set of half-hour TV ads for the popular die cast cars and the show was pulled. Then the 1980s happened and too many shows that were just that were made and keep getting made. Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5 - Fused, Season 2, Vol. 1 + Vol. 2 (2009) is an angry, wacky, action show where people yell, scream, fight, scream and fight all the time with little plot or story in a storyline that is angry, regressive, far away from the fun of car racing and throws in anything loud just to distract... I mean get the attention of young consumers... I mean viewers.

Is this an ad, bad superhero show, bad video game, very bad science fiction or just bad everything? We get aliens, mutants and more angry yelling, as even the talk-at dialogue is yelled at each other and the audience, meaning no one really talks to anyone. Bet those regulators did not know how much worse this could get.

There are no extras, not even any free cars or weapons.

Lalaloopsy Ponies: The Big Show (2014) runs only 45 minutes, but is far more child-friendly, adds ponies that look suspiciously like some other famous ponies and tries to expand said franchise. At least here, the makers act like they have an intelligent audience they can care about. It did nothing new for this critic and though I am not the intended audience, it has little more to add to the franchise or the genre of fun child fantasy it plays to.

Extras include Sing-A-Longs, Meet The Ponies text section and Lalaloopsy Mini-Adventures.

The new big-event straight-to-video Disney release The Pirate Fairy (2014) goes for that audience too with more money, the new CGI Tinker Bell (she has two capital letters now!), also takes place in a side-world of Peter Pan mythology (not very strongly, but then many so-called adult interpretations of late have been very lame, so...) as magic dust keeper Zarina keeps getting herself into trouble, made worse when an evil head pirate (the terrific Tom Hiddleston, Loki in Disney/Marvel's Avengers and Thor films) catches all the fairy gals off guard in the worst way.

Despite the hype, money and talent, I found this one a bit flat, safe, predictable and not very memorable as a result. Again, I may not be the target audience, but I cannot imagine this working for more than very, very young ladies at best.

Extras include Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes capable devices, while the discs add Sing-A-Longs, a Cock-u-mentary, Making Of featurette, Deleted Scenes and third featurette: Second Star To The Right: The Legacy Of Never Land.

The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Pirate is easily the best transfer here and not just because it is the only HD format presentation here, but despite a soft style, I was surprised by the detail and depth throughout that I am not always seeing in the CGI productions we cover. Its DVD versions and all the other DVDs here ties for second place with their anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image presentations on Highlands and Show, leaving the rest much softer than I would have liked and than they should be and at the bottom of the list.

As for sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 7.1 lossless mix on Pirate is easily the best mix on the list and is a little more well, recorded, mixed and presented than I expected, but its lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 DVD version is weaker than you would think by comparison. The rest of the DVDs are also in lossy Dolby Digital mixes, all 5.1 save the obnoxious two Hot Wheels DVDs that somehow are only lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and still seem louder than they should be, all tying for second and last place.

- Nicholas Sheffo