LazyTown - New Superhero
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Movie Reviews of LazyTown - New Superhero
Movie Review: Lazytown: Great for Kids
Summary: 4 Stars
Lazytown, takes a high action crack at Children and healthy lifestyle, and makes a new market in educational children's media! Finally a show that's tackling the issues!
Lazytown, is a children's television show adapted from a successful play from Iceland. Icelandic gymnast and role model Magnús Scheving, conceived Lazytown as an effort to combat obesity, and inactivity in kids. The show has been globally sucessful; in the Uniyed States it has landed primary slots on Nickelodeon channels, and CBS Saturday morning programming. The themes of the show are very positive and attractive to children. The shows target audience age is 4-7.
The plot involves main character Stephanie visiting her uncle in Lazytown. Upon arrived she displeased with laziness and negativity of the town and tries to encourage change. Stephanie is a very attractive character for young girls. She promotes gender stereotypes with her pink hair and matching feminie accessories. She also has many singing breaks, and dance modeled like a pop star music video. Her dance moves resemble aerobics and often start to involve the whole town in exercise fashion. The superhero of Lazytown, is Sportacus (played by Magnús Scheving). He immediately agrees with Stephanie about making a change. Sportacus is naturally the admirable character for boys. He wears a blue jumpsuit, and is excellent in every sport. He uses gymnastics to get from place to place. The antagonist is Robbie Rotten, who employs all the schema of cartoon villany, right down to the evil laugh. Robbie uses temptation to align the townpeople to his side of laziness, selfishness, junkfood, and trouble. The townspeople are of diverse gender and ethnicity. Each have their vices, which make up most of their personality. The ones with most appearances are Stingy (selfish), Ziggy (candy), Trixie (mischeif), Pixel (Video Games). Through misadventures all the townspeople overcome Robbie Rotten's temptation and learn moderation and healthy lifestyle tips from Stephanie and Sportacus. Parents can use the townspeople and their lessons in moderation as an example for their own children. I witness my own cousin turn off video games saying he played too long, and referenced a plot from the show.
The only live action characters in the show are Stephanie, Sportacus, and Robbie Rotten, which give them grave importance in a show with CGI background and puppet supporting characters. The show uses lighiting fast jump cuts, and speed up motion speeds, sublimnally expressing high activity. The shows techno music and bright colors, seemingly raises pulses in kids. Watching this program with my younger cousins, it wasn't long before they were jumping along with the program. The uses of editing to evoke this reaction helps with the overall goal of the program. The catchy pop songs in every show usually have lyrics that push the shows moral.
There isnt any commercialism in the show, which is a breath of fresh-air. The only thing show seems to endorse is "Sport Candy", which is just fruits and vegetables. The continue use of the "Sport Candy" phrases makes me think that they could use it to appear on a brand of fruit and vegetables, however there is no blantant brand marketing. For a show, with a classic good vs. evil theme, there is no violence whatsoever. Robbie Rotten is usually defeated after losing in some physical game or activity. He often gets tired and retreats home. I enjoyed the lack of pain, and humilation in the show. The viewer still understand the Good has conquered evil without anyone getting hurt emotionally or physically. The cicrumstances are usually realistic, with common consequences. However, Sportacus numerous acrobatics don't frequently come with a "Im a professional, don't try this at home" disclaimer.
I enjoyed my viewing of Lazytown, and find the use of plot, characters, and setting a lot more effective in encourage activity, than the surrealism of Boohbah. I think as long as Lazytown, stays true to mission, and doesn't surrender to branding and heavy merchandising, it will do a lot of good. I commend Magnús Scheving for his endeavors. The show is needed, as physical education slowly declines in schools.
Movie Review: Where's Sportakook?! Oh, I'll Find Him...
Summary: 4 Stars
"LazyTown" is a show marrying live-action and animation, a fairly recent port to the United States from Iceland. It's part of the new breed of children's animated programs these days --- programming especially focused on making viewers "get up and go" and as far as this goes, it's at the top of its game.
"LazyTown" features a human girl, Stephanie, a human hero, Sportacus and his human nemesis, Robbie Rotten. The rest of the characters are CGI animated and quite well too. The setup is this --- generally in each episode, Sportacus (advocate of getting up and going) battles the plots and schemes of Robbie Rotten (trying and endlessly failing to make those in LazyTown lazy, also a master of disguise.) He just can't stand all the activity in LazyTown, but usually ends up expending a lot of energy himself trying to stop it. The simple fact is, no one's lazy in LazyTown anymore, largely thanks to Stephanie, an energetic girl with bubble-gum pink hair. She's still fairly new in town and living with her Uncle, Mayor Meanswell. Her group of friends is Ziggy, Pixel, Trixie and Stingy.
"LazyTown" is loaded with high energy, fun songs. The opening theme and "funny words" songs can be heard in every episode and there's also at least one other new song in each one.
This DVD features three episodes of the show, including a special double-length episode --- "LazyTown's New Superhero." This one plays around with the format a bit, as the kids decide to give Sportacus a vacation. While Sportacus struggles to relax and take it easy, Stephanie does her best to become the new town superhero. Also included in this DVD are "Cry Dinosaur," in which Robbie Rotten dresses up as a dinosaur to scare "Sporta-Crybaby" and "Dr. Rottenstein," in which he tricks the kids into believing they have spotty vegetitis and must swear off vegetables and eat nothing but junk food. Not only that, but under the guise of Rottenstein, he bans Sportacus from LazyTown "forever," another one of his old tricks.
In case you're wondering why I gave this four stars instead of five, it's because of the special features. I truly believe that DVD releases these days must have great special features in order to receive a five-star rating. Unfortunately, this DVD just doesn't measure up. All you get are written character profiles that you can browse through, a couple of pages of "Nicktrition" tips and some short previews for Dora and Blue's Room DVD releases as well as "My Little Pony: A Very Minty Christmas." These are okay, there's definitely nothing wrong with them, but it only takes about five minutes to go through at most. It couldn't have hurt to put at least a bit more effort into some nice special features.
Movie Review: Lazytown
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm not sure where my toddlers first learned about Lazytown, but it's a nice swith from the normal pre-school cartoons they normally watch. I wasn't sure they'd really follow the story, but now they totally do push-ups like "Sportacus" and sing and dance like Stephanie. Lazytown has 3 real people on an animated sets with puppets. I honestly didn't think the DVDs would motivate kids to exercise like other people say they will, but apparently they really do and they're entertaining to watch!Movie Review: Loved It!
Summary: 4 Stars
This DVD is great! The first episode is the longest with two shorter ones to follow and they are great entertainment for my son. Both episodes have great tunes that my 2 year old has completely memorized. It is actually entertaining for the whole family!Movie Review: If I were king of the forest...
Summary: 3 Stars
This show is okay for little kids I guess. But it's really stupid when you get a little older. Why would anyone want to do 5,000,000 flips instead of taking one little step? Why does Robby Rotten care if they are active? I f he doesn't want to hear the noise he can just move to a quiet town or move to a house in the middle of nowhere. And Stephanie is so perfect. And she acts so stupid and she's always so happy. Why are little kid shows always in a perfect land where nothing bad ever happens? They should have at least one show in the real world. I know that that wouldn't be a very good show for little kids or maybe basically everyone but that's probobly making little kids think that we live in a wonderfuly perfect world where nothing bad ever happens. And in some shows they have talking animals which can make little kids think that animals really do talk. So in Dora the Explorer parents may think it's a good show for their kids to watch because you learn shapes, spanish, and counting but it can also be bad because it might make little kids think that animals can talk like humans. Who knows? Next time you go to the zoo your kid might try to put a pair of red boots on a monkey then starts talking to it, and refuse to leave. Then the next thing you know you get kicked out and can never go back. Okay so that probobly will never happen but I'm just trying to make a point. Back to Lazy Town. I think that sometimes Robby Rotten gets to scary. I would think that little kids would be afraid of him. Trixie is the most pointless character. She's hardly ever in the show. They probobly just have her in the show because they thought little kids would complain if Stephanie was the only girl in the whole show. Why does Sportacaus's thing that tells him when someone is in trouble only go off every once in a while? If it was in the real world it would never stop going off. And in the episode where Robby Rotten swiches Sportacaus's shoes with ones that he controls wouldn't they notice that the shoes are blinking? And if they really had eyes then they would see that Robby Rotten's discuises are really just him. It's sooooo obvious. You can see his face! Why don't they see that? They sing songs about everything. It's really annoying. And they dance so stupidly. Why does Robby Rotten want to get rid of Sportacaus? Who cares if the kids are active? If it's to loud then get used to it or move! It's not that big of a deal! Who cares!