A Big Idea Come and Gone

Remember when VeggieTales was actually funny?

The brain child of Phil Vischer, VeggieTales is a computer-animated show about talking vegetables, like Bob the Tomato, Larry the Cucumber, and a few others, including a family of carrots, some grapes and a bunch of asparagus spears. It's goofy, in an off-beat and creative way; billing itself as "Sunday-morning values and Saturday morning fun" as it marketed itself toward a primarily Christian market.

Unfortunately, VeggieTales series went downhill since about a year before they did "Jonah," their feature-length adaptation of the book of Jonah, and has never made it back up. Their latest offerings like "Larry Boy and the Rumor Weed" and "The Wonderful World of Auto-Tainment!" -- not to mention "Larry Boy and the Angry Eyebrows" or "Duke and the Great Pie War" -- show signs of being rushed through production in order to make a quick buck.

These are videos that either needed more work, or that never should have been considered. The lessons are still there, but they're expressed too forcefully, the story is belabored and stilted, and the humor is forced. These are tapes and DVDs that were not worth buying. In the case of "Auto-Tainment," we actually wrote to Big Idea to say how awful it was.

It's a shame, because the company was producing some high-quality stuff for a while, like "Larry Boy and the Fib from Outer Space" and "Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen." Subpar videos cheapen the brand.

We have three episodes on DVD of their 3-2-1 Penguins series, but I have to say that I haven't been very impressed with that series as a whole. They're more sophisticated than the more recent Veggie Tales offerings, but even so, they're just not engaging. The series has a science fiction motif, but the lessons are more typical of Sunday school fare than what we were accustomed to with VeggieTales: the story is subordinated to making a point, rather than telling a good story and letting the moral come out.

Evangeline has asked a couple times to watch them, and it's better than some of the stuff she could be asking to watch, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

But I'm still really disappointed at the turn this show has taken.

Big trouble is brewing for Big Idea

Big Idea Productions has jumped the shark.

An article at Christianity Today makes a compelling case that the company overextended itself with its new "Jonah" movie, forcing themselves to lay off staff and make across-the-board pay cuts. They apparently even couldn't afford the wide distribution they've been touting for weeks on their web site. I was annoyed after all the hype about how Jonah was opening at theaters everywhere on Oct. 4, to find that it isn't opening here for another two weeks.

The article, which draws on interviews with former Big Idea staff, includes a comment about a policy shift away from high quality video to "make money quickly through inferior merchandise." That echoes my own thoughts rather eerily. The most recent "Larry Boy" cartoon we have stinks.

The concept started on a high note and went downhill fast. As tremendous as "The Fib from Outer Space" was -- it was one of the high-water marks of the entire Veggie Tales series -- "Rumor Weed" was a disappointment, and "Angry Eyebrows" was just awful.

By the end, the animation quality was substandard, and in writing the story, they tossed out what until then had been a defining characteristic of Big Idea products: that you can have children's videos with Christian themes that don't hit you on the head with their message.

I have two nephews in the "Angry Eyebrows"-targeted age group, and they both thought it was pathetic, even though they've loved just about every Veggie Tales tape they've seen.

Larry Boy gets left behind

I don't know how many Veggie Tales viewers would understand a parody of the Left Behind books, but I think it would be interesting.

"Left Behind" as a phenomenon is pretty much restricted to evangelical Christians, from my understanding. A lot of the mainstream Christians might not get the parody, and it would be even more lost on non-Christians.

I suppose it could be interesting if it's handled well. It begins when Junior Asparagus and Laura Carrot misunderstand a Sunday school lesson about 1 Thessalonians. That afternoon while they're at the Stuff-Mart, Junior becomes upset when his parents disappear and he can't find them anywhere. He tells Laura, who starts to worry because her brother Lenny is also missing.

Larry-Boy overhears the news and begins to leap to all sorts of wild conclusions when he notices Alfred is also missing. What's more, Mr. Nezzer has announced his candidacy for office, urging everyone to "Come Together Under Nezzer," promising seven years of happiness and prosperity, even as it seems everyone is coming down with something.

Shenanigans ensue.

Eventually, it turns out that all the missing people were in the bathroom.

VeggieTales: Ultimate Silly Song Countdown

We just bought the "Ultimate Silly Song Countdown" today.

As video tapes go, it's essentially the VeggieTales equivalent of a clips show, where they splice together unrelated clips from different episodes with some loose connecting material, and call it a new episode. This is their third go-around at this, and it largely works. The bridging material is clever and fun to watch, and the clips are all silly songs.

That said, I was disappointed by the choice for the No. 1 silly song. It was funny enough the first time I saw it, on "Are You My Neighbor?" but they did funnier silly songs before and after that.

I'd demand a recount, but that joke worked better last year.

Picking a favorite VeggieTales release

Got a favorite VeggieTales episode?

"VeggieTales" is the brain child of Phil Vischer, founder of Big Idea.  Like the classic Looney Tunes and various more recent cartoons, they rely on wit rather than the potty humor of Rug Rats or the banal talk-down-to-kids mentality of Barney, the Teletubbies and a few others. Amazingly it's aimed at the Christian market but doesn't suffer for it.

It took them until their third tape before they really caught their stride, and a couple others since then also were mediocre. But with those few exceptions, the VeggieTales tapes are excellent.

One of their finest episodes was "Fib from Outer Space," in which a tiny fib lands in Bumblyburg and encourages Junior Asparagus to get out of trouble with a lie, failing to mention that with every lie Junior tells, the fib will grow bigger. Everything about the story built steadily toward a dramatic climax, the humor was as witty as it's ever been, and everything just plain fit.

Junior's lies were a small thing, but steadily and subtly grew until suddenly it owned him -- and, appropriately, no one else could do anything to stop the monster. Only Junior could, by telling the truth and freeing himself from what he had got himself into.

This was their foray into superhero adventures, featuring Larry-Boy, a cucumber with a Batman complex. They revisited the concept in "Rumor Weed," which unfortunately was too much like a first draft. I was glad when they got things back on track with "King George and the Ducky": more original, more clever, funnier, subtler, and none of the obvious jokes or morals we had been seeing.

I thought "God wants me to Forgive THEM?" relied on too many of the stock, expected jokes about forgiveness, and should have had a silly song instead of the "forgive-o-matic" commercial. The spoof of Gilligan's Island was inspired, though.

The series began with "Where's God When I'm S-Scared?" which largely failed at storytelling by having host Bob the Tomato talk too endlessly about God, although it redeemed itself in part with music. My wife and I were singing this episode's catchy song, "God is Bigger than the Bogeyman," long before we were married, let alone had a daughter to watch the tape.

Similarly, I thought the "Oh no, What We Gonna Do?" song is unforgettable, but the Daniel story as they presented it was too Sunday school-ish.

The other episode that doesn't even get considered for favorite video include "Silly Sing-along 2: The End of Silliness?"

But a favorite? "Lyle, the Kindly Viking" is still amusing, and I really enjoyed "Madame Blueberry." And like I said, "Fib" is excellent. "Esther" is topnotch too.

Maybe Esther.