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THE MOVIE
This is the first of three Kid's films reviewed in Uncle Al's Movie Marathon with my two consultants Bessie (8) and Bob (6).
Bratz are a line of dolls currently available in toy shops, in the same vein as Barbie. This video is a spin off from that line. The movie on the disc tells the story of Chloe, Sasha, Yasmine and Jade, four young ladies at high school. They are into Fashion (surprise!), Music, Popularity and strangely enough, creative writing. When the Bratz are given a homework assignment that clashes with their prom preparations, they decide to make a video movie about the prom planning as the assignment itself. But a mystery writer in the school paper soon undermines their self confidence by revealing their flaws and failings!
According to Bessie, Bratz is the latest thing at primary school. This DVD is being keenly awaited by hordes of 8-10 year old girls apparently. Certainly it is definately aimed at the that market and I don't imagine it will go down well anywhere else.
Now for the surprise. Bessie only gave this 1/5. On enquiring why, I was promptly informed that she "wasn't into fashion". Bob on the other hand, thought it was pretty good and gave it 3/5.
Me? I can't say I was enthralled, but what do I know? We'll compromise and give it 2...
THE TRANSFER
Video:
Well, it's obviously made for TV, in its native 4:3 format. I suspect it's a direct transfer from video, so there are no film artefacts or film to video artefacts.
Bessie gave the picture 3/5, Bob gave it 5/5.
I thought the colours could have been stronger and we could have had a 16:9 release for new movie, so I'm going with Bessie and giving it 3/5
Audio:
The sound is better. There is a Dolby 2.0 soundtrack on the disc, and it's surround encoded to some degree, so we get a little bit of play on the surrounds and the sub thumps a bit during the music. I gave it 3/5
Bessie and Bob though that the music was great and both gave it 5/5
We'll split the difference shall we?
THE EXTRAS
As befits a childrens DVD, there are a mass of extras. We get:
Deleted Scene: Just like a grown up DVD, we get stuff that the director filmed and then decided to cut....in this case, a 60 second bit lopped out of the forest scene. In a similar vein, we get Bloopers. I'm not sure how imaginary characters in an animated film can make mistakes, I expect it's another attempt to emulate the grownups.
There is a Jukebox/Karaoke segment, where the kids can listen to and then sing along to some of the songs from the film before moving on to the Bratz Love Horoscope where they can find out their fortunes and discover which Bratz character they are most like.
Similar to the old cut-out paper dolls that ypu put cut out paper clothes on is the Bratz Fashion Mall where you can fit out your favourite Bratz character with a vraiety of outfits. Then there is a Bratz Trivia Game where you can answer questions about the movie. Bringing up the rear is a music video Summertime Girl from the film, and yet another advert for Bratz dolls.
A generous package indeed, that results in the need for a dual layer disc. All of the extras can be played on the DVD player (i.e. you don't need a computer). Bessie gave the extras 4/5 and Bob gave them 5/5
I have to agree with the experts. It's a great extras package for a kids DVD.
SUMMARY
If you have a Bratz fan in your household, you have probably been reminded (to put it politely) that this DVD is coming out fairly regularly anyway.
If there is no Bratz fanatic at home, then I can't imagine anyone wanting to see this on it's own. It imagine it has a fairly small market window and will probably sell well within that window. A year from now, no-one will even know it exists...
But, to be fair, there is no more commercialism here than in Barbie, Action Man or the Transformers. The story is fairly harmless, the characters are politically correct (observe the wearing of seatbelts, for instance) and the motivation behind it is timeless.
Ten year old girls will always like playing dress-up...
Overall, the show is average, but the kids thought that the extras made up for it. They both gave it 5/5. I'll meet them half way and give it 4 |
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