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School House Rock Special 30th Anniversary Edition
DVD Review by Yanman |
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"Woof! You sure gotta climb a lotta steps to get to this Capital Building here in Washington! But I wonder who that sad little scrap of paper is?” “I’m just a bill, Yes, I’m only a bill, And I’m sitting here on Capital Hill.” School House Rock is an infectious collection of Saturday morning cartoons that first aired in 1972 and continued thru the mid 1980’s. It is hard to believe that there is an entire generation of children (From age 15 on down) that have never experienced the toe-taping, mesmerizing, and always fun short educational cartoons. If you have children of any age, or are between the ages of 27 – 30 and feeling nostalgic for your youth now gone, RUN!, don’t walk, and buy this DVD today. Don’t make me open up a case of interjections – WOW! This DVD is great. HURRAY! Finally a DVD that is great for the whole family. RATS! Why did they wait so long? School house rock is the brain child of David McCall who, in 1972 on a horseback ride with his young son in Wyoming, came up with the concept of setting the multiplication tables to rock music. With the help of Radford Stone, George Newall and Tom Yohe, they crated “Three is a Magic Number”, and met with then Vice President of ABC’s children’s programming Michael Eisner. Eisner, on the recommendation of animator Chuck Jones, bought it on the spot. The rest as the say is history. If you grew up in the 70’s or early 80’s, you will surely remember some if not all of these catchy tunes – “Conjunction Junction”, “I’m Just a Bill”, “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get your Adverbs Here”, and many more. How many you ask? There are 47 in all including an all-new song “I’m Going to Send You to College”. The only challenge here is to try to get through the entire DVD without getting these songs stuck in your head for hours or even days to come. It is hard to write a review of the sound and video quality of a DVD like this one, while the disc is incredibly enjoyable, the video and audio quality have not withstood the tests of time nearly as well as the concepts, the songs, and the animation. The full-screen (1.33:1) video is what you would expect from a 70’s TV show, exhibiting a plethora of artifacting and color-shifting issues. The sound, also a throwback to the 70s, is only offered in Dolby Digital 2-channel stereo. Don’t let any of this deter you however, some discs are just about content – that is the case here. To describe all the extras here, you would have to unpack all your adjectives. These are enormous extras. These are stupendous extras. Extras include Behind-The-Scenes footage, a Trivia Game, Puzzles, 4 Music Videos, Commentaries, a Nike Commercial of “Three is a Magic Number”, and much, much, more. Any family with children from ages 6-16 (and even those older children age 25-70) and a DVD player should add this disc to their permanent collection, we can’t think of a reason not to. For the parents of those children, this disc will surly bring back childhood memories. Now can any one help me explain to my co-workers why I keep humming these songs over-and-over again? “Interjection it’s an emotion…”
This DVD was reviewed on Yanman.com's Reference Theater #1, using a Toshiba SD-4700 DVD player, Toshiba TW56X81, and M&K 750 THX Speakers. Panamax protects all systems at Yanman.com. |
School House Rock "... keep humming these songs over-and- over again ..." Running time: 283 Min. Bonus Materials
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