Angry
Bird Toons Sony DVDs: Season Two, Volume One
(original series) + Piggy
Tales: The Complete First Season
+ Stella: The Complete
First Season (all
2015)/Dora and Friends:
Season One (2014 -
2015/Nickelodeon DVD Set)/Huevos:
Little Rooster's
Egg-cellent Adventure
(2015/Lionsgate DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C/C/C/D/C- Main Programs:
C+/C+/C+/B/C+
Now
for our latest children's releases, all animated this time....
First
we have a cycle of three series from the same fun new franchise: the
original Angry
Bird Toons Sony DVDs: Season Two, Volume One
series, related Piggy
Tales: The Complete First Season
and also-related Stella:
The Complete First Season.
For more on the initial series, here's our coverage of the first two
halves of the debut seasons of the quickly popular birds in Season
One...
Volume
One
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12502/Angry+Birds+Toons:+Season+One+-+Volume+One
Volume
Two
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12750/Angry+Birds+Toons:+Season+One,+Volume+Two
This
is more of the same, but has the same fun energy that made the show,
plus you can see Stella on the cover of the first Blu-ray and Piggy
on the second, so the expanded spin-off shows are also just fine if
not quite like the original series. The idea is to do something a
little different in each and the result is a quietly expanding
universe. Run times are 36, 51 and 78 minutes respectively, though
in the Birds
case, that is quite a rollback versus the Blu-rays. Two episodes of
each others shows appear on the other's release and Piggy has two
Behind The Scenes pieces, while the other two have twice that. These
are just in time for the holiday and we'll see if the makers can
expand these child-friendly shows further. Not bad.
Dora
and Friends: Season One
(2014 - 2015) is the (rare for Nickelodeon) full debut season set of
the new version of Dora where she hangs with friends and is older, a
little more grown up and ready for more fun and adventures. This
4-DVD set runs 7-hours long and is now the place to start, though we
covered a basic DVD of the show with my initial comments on it at
this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13654/Alpha+&+Omega:+Family+Vacation+(2015/Lionsg
This
is done well enough that this will remain a permanent part of the
Dora universe, but whether it can be the phenomenon the original show
was is another story. Still, it is a quality production with 18
adventures (two double in length) and is a welcome release for fans.
There
are no extras.
Finally
we have the theatrical feature CGI film Huevos:
Little Rooster's Egg-cellent Adventure
(2015, originally also in 3D, but not in this version), Melanie
Simka's Spanish-language comedy (also here in English) about the
title character protecting eggs, animals and his farm from an evil
villain who wants to steal and take it over. Some of this is
amusing, but sometimes it is a bit more silly than I would have
liked. Oddly, I thought it played better in Spanish, as the English
dub lacks the energy that matches the animation. Still, you know
most will watch it in the U.S. that way.
The
animation is not bad for a non-PIXAR/DreamWorks/Sony production and I
liked the use of color. It runs a slightly long 98 minutes, but is
not bad an a nice alternative to the usual over-promoted CGI
Hollywood releases.
Extras
include Digital Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and similar
capable devices, while the DVD adds a brief
Behind
The Scenes
featurette.
All
the DVDs here have colorful, decent, anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1
image presentations that would obviously benefit from Blu-ray
releases as Birds already has, but are just fine for the
format, while the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on all DVDs sound fine with
fairly good surrounds. The Spanish track on Huevos is very slightly
the best and I expect would really impress in lossless form.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
