On Thursday night, I entered the noisy, but wonderful world of live family musicals by taking my daughter to see Backyardigans at the McPherson Playhouse. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Backyardigans is about a group of 5 young animal friends who share the same backyard and use their imaginations to go on fantastic adventures. Their escapades are always set against a musical backdrop which is employed in musical numbers where they sing and dance. It rates as my daughter’s favourite TV show next to Yo Gabba Gabba, and passes all of my tests for wholesome watching.
It was a chaotic event that evoked a lot of nostalgia as far as my parents taking me to live events at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa when I was a wee lad, and while it wasn’t on the same scale, it was still an interesting experience. When you get down to the heart of it, it’s essentially a group dancers putting on costumes, pressing play on the soundtrack and dancing around for about an hour, but it certainly had an effect on all the kids in the crowd, even if most of them were making too much noise to really make out exactly what was going on. It was a little pricey, and the production values didn’t conjure up memories of Les Misérablesor anything, but I can still think of at least 3 reasons why checking out Backyardigans was better than going to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Rich on characters, light on racism
Racially diverse neighbours who explore their similarities rather than their differences: Good.
Despite that both these performances involve most of the characters being mere puppets for actors’ pre-recorded voice-tracks, I think I made a stronger connection with the archetypal anthropomorphized animals than I did with the barely fleshed out anthropomorphized robots. There’s also the added bonus that Backyardiganscharacters like Tyrone, Uniqua and Pablo didn’t emulate the kind of offensive racial stereotypes best left to gross-out comedies specializing in toilet humour. Transformers‘ alien robots from the ‘hood don’t manage to achieve that distinction – choosing to take the low road to somehow attract the audience they’re simultaneously ridiculing.
Illiterate slang-speaking robots with gold teeth who are always fighting: Bad.
Not being at the mercy of its own CG FX Sequences
Production where the props and effects are tailored to fit the story: Good.
While Transformers 2was written piecemeal due to the writers strike, Backyardigans is hamstrung in its own way by the constraints of being written for young children. In the end however, Transformersshould hang its head in shame for having its script being tailored to accommodate the special effects sequences that Michael Bay had been pre-rendering during the writers strike. Even George Lucas wouldn’t stoop that low.
Script written around effects sequences already completed by the director: Bad.
More than just a glorified toy commercial
Merchandise sold in support of an existing show to enhance children's enjoyment of the concept: Good
Despite both productions generating a lot of revenue from the inevitable merchandising tie-ins, Backyardigans edges Transformers 2in the fact that with the former, its merchandise followed the show, rather than vice-versa with the latter – meaning that no matter how grandiose the forum, Transformers will never be more than a toy commercial (and car commercial, and army recruitment propaganda). Suck on that, Michael Bay.
Intellectual property born out of the need to market toys to children: Bad.
I haven’t seen Transformers 2, but now I’m definitely in the mood to watch some Backyardigans.
You are completely entitled to your opinion. I actually enjoyed the action sequences. I have one question. Where does the propaganda come in? If anything the movie made the army look like complete idiots. I mean fighting gigantic robots with nothing but light infantry? What were they thinking?
Welcome to the Film Cynics, Loner!
If Transformers 2 didn’t have any action sequences, it wouldn’t have had anything to it’s name to qualify as a movie at all. In fact, my argument about how it was essentially a film built around it’s pre done special effects, could easily extend to include those action sequences of which you speak.
As for propaganda, Michael Bay’s strong relationship with the American military is no secret; it’s what gives him such great access to locations and vehicles that he puts to use in many of his films. For this particular outing, he included just about every piece of military hardware he could get his hands on, whether they merited being shown or not. That they were there at all was simply meant to demonstrate the power of the American war machine, regardless of how impotent they were meant to appear compared to the Decepticons. Whether Bay meant it as propaganda or not, it was definitely what the military saw it as when they agreed to rent out their gear to the production.
Does the absence of Megan Fox affect your interest in the next Transformers movie in any way? And what other differences would you be interested in seeing in the third film?