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Spongebob Squarepants: Atlantis Squarepantis (DVD)
by cornishchic
Me and my three year old are massive fans of Spongebob Squarepants and have a huge bundle of DVD's. One of these is Spongebob Squarepants - Atlantis Squarepantis.
Spongebob Squarepants is exactly that, a sponge that wears square pants. He lives deep down in Bikini Bottom in a pineapple with his best friend Patrick Star and his ... work colleague/friend Squidward as neighbours. He is a fry cook for Mr Krabs and spends his working days making Krabbie Patties. The programme follows Spongebob on his many different adventures in and around Bikini Bottom.
The DVD features seven different episodes from Spongebob Squarepants fifth season. The epsiodes are as follows: Atlantis Squarepantis, The krusty plate, Pat no pay, The inmates of summer, To save a squirrel, 20,000 patties under the sea and the battle of Bikini Bottom. The DVD also has two bonus features, a glimpse into the Spongebob animation studios and behind the pantis which looks at the behind the scenes of the Atlantis Squarepantis episode. I can't comment on these as I haven't watched them but they are there if anyone really needs to see them. The running time is 99 minutes and it has a U rating.
I won't go into detail on each of the episodes but will explain the first so you get the gist, I don't want to spoil everything! Atlantis Squarepantis starts with Spongebob and his best friend Patrick trying to take photos of bubbles but every time they click the button the bubble bursts. Eventually, Spongebob blows a huge bubble that then takes them to a cave where they find half of an ancient coin. They take it to the museum and bump into Mr Krabs, Squidward and Sandy and after matching their half of the coin to the museums half, a magic bus appears and takes them to Atlantis. There they come across the oldest living bubble; of course Spongebob and Patrick get the camera out and burst this one too! This doesn't go down well with the Lord of Atlantis so they make a huge getaway. The episode is full of laughs and my daughter watches it glued to the screen, as do I. It's definitely our favourite episode on this disc.
Another thing I like about this Spongebob DVD (and the rest of the Spongebob DVD's we have) is that it doesn't show the end credits after each episode. It shows the title of the episode about to be shown, then the episode and then jumps straight to the next episodes title. This means we don't have to sit through the credits after every single episode. Instead, it shows the credits to all of the episodes shown at the end.
This DVD can be picked up from Amazon for £5 and used copies are also available to purchase slightly cheaper. I'd definitely recommend it to any Spongebob fan.
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Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (DVD)
by cha97mw
Madagascar 2 is an animated film from the Dreamworks studio released in 2008, three years after the original film was released. The original film is something we have watched many times. I then watched the third film in the cinema but then we somehow missed out film 2. We had a voucher for HMV which had to be spent thanks to them going ... into difficulties, so we decided that we would buy Madagascar 2 at a cost of £6.
The film starts with a montage of a family of lions in Africa. Poachers steal baby Alex from his father, and we see how he ended up in the Zoo in New York in the first place. We then cut to the present in Madagascar where the animals were at the end of the original film. They are preparing to leave the island. The penguins have repaired a plane they found on the island, and plan to fly back to New York. However, on the way they run out of fuel and crash land in Africa.
By some co-incidence, they crash land in the same reserve that Alex was taking from as a child and he is reunited with his parents. He gets chance to see how they live in the wild, and the animals do enjoy seeing their heritage and getting to know Alex's family. However, Alex needs to adapt to fit in as he may have been the King of the New York jungle, but he is a bit of a misfit amongst a pride of lions. He finds a way to use his skills to help the animals and make his parents proud of him.
For me, this film was perhaps the weakest in the franchise. The plot of the animals going back to their homeland and landing back in the nature reserve is a little bit too contrived for me, and it felt a bit forced in places. I think there was a lot of repetition of action sequences from film one, and one small gag from film one was made into quite a major part of this film. We saw a little old lady in Grand Central Station attacking Alex with her handbag. This same little old lady is now on a wildlife safari, and again has a thing about being violent towards the animals, and it just didn't sit right with me.
Most of my interest lay in watching how the animals reacted to finding other animals in Africa. Previously we have seen the four central characters, Alex the lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe, and Gloria the hippo, all happy in each others company. Here we see what happens when they meet their own kind, and it causes conflict for them.
While this was worth a watch, for me, I find it is not something that I could watch over and over again like film one and three. The plot just does not stand up to it. Musically, it is also quite similar to film one featuring songs like 'I like to Move it' and 'Born Free' though I did like songs like 'More than a Feeling' and 'Copacabana'.
The new relationships were interesting enough to keep me engaged, but not as strong as the relationships we see in film three. I also had made the assumption that film three must have started pretty much where film two ended, but I find that it really didn't. Yes, it was set in Africa, but there was no farewell to Alex's parents, and we also saw two characters start a relationship in this film that was not mentioned again at all in series three which I find disappointing as I like to see a bit of continuity. I find it spoils it for me when things are obviously not mentioned.
The humour isn't so much laugh your socks off humour, just silly things like Marty has always thought he was really unique, so it is traumatic for him when he realises that he is identical in looks and sound to every other zebra in the herd and none of his friends can recognise him any more.
It also has a touch of lion king about it for me with an evil Uncle character wanting to take over as leader within the Pride and causing the baby Alex to be stolen and then deliberately confusing the adult Alex.
If I'd watched this in the cinema, I don't think I would have purchased it on DVD as we won't want to keep watching this. Some trilogy's do have a weak point, and in this case, this is it.
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Mike The Knight - Galahad The Great (DVD)
by cornishchic
My mum took my daughter out for the day and told her she could pick a DVD to buy, the one she chose was this Mike the Knight - Galahad the Great. I was quite surprised as she has never seemed that keen on Mike the Knight when it's been on Cbeebies.
Mike the Knight is a relatively new program that has only started to be shown ... on Cbeebies just recently. It's all about Mike, a knight in training who wants to 'be a knight, and do things right', he has three trusty companions that follow him everywhere, Squirt, a water dragon, Sparky, a fire dragon and Galahad, his horse. He tries to do things right but quite often gets it wrong as he doesn't think about others or think things through properly. There are other characters that feature quite often including his sister Evie, Evie's friend Mr Cuddles the toad, Mike's mum the queen, the Viking 'baddies' and Trollie the troll.
Episodes usually last between 10 and 15 minutes long. This DVD features five epsiodes and the running time is 62 minutes. The episodes shown on this disc are: Galahad the Great, the great gallop, Sir Trollie, knight hider and Trollie in trouble. The DVD also contains a bonus feature where there are small clips and songs introducing Mike the Knight and all of his friends.
Galahad the Great is an episode where Mike the Knight wants to be the best horse trainer in their village Glendragon. He wants Galahad to look like the perfect knightly horse and dresses him with bells on his hooves and a brand new heavy saddle but things go terribly wrong and he realises he likes his trusty stead just the way he was.
The animation for Mike the Knight is fantastic and has a real clarity to it. The backgrounds are full of detail and nothing has been forgotten. You can tell it's from medieval times from the details that are added. Mike's catchphrases are funny and catchy and there is normally an underlying message to each episode.
My three year old loves her Mike the Knight DVD and likes using her hobby horse and pretending she's galloping around on Galahad! You can pick the DVD up for around £5. I'd definitely recommend it as the animation is great and the stories are good to watch too.
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