Welcome To Lazy Town (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	A serious message delivered in a way children will love
Disadvantages:	Cheesy music which stays in your head all day !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Anyone who doesn't have small children and isn't subjected to kids TV at regular intervals probably isn't familiar with recent Icelandic import, LazyTown. But if you haven't heard of it yet, you soon will! This kids programme is set to be The Next Big Thing, jumping on the Jamie Oliver bandwagon of promoting health and fitness at an early age. And why not - with our ever increasing levels of childhood obesity, someone's got to do it.

And in Lazy Town, that someone is superhero Sportacus. But I'm getting ahead of myself! This series of programmes is a strange blend of puppetry (only the 3 main characters are human!), garishly coloured scenery and annoyingly catchy Europop-style music.

This new DVD tells the story of 8 year old Stephanie, our vivacious pink haired heroine, who comes to live in Lazy Town with her uncle, the rather scary looking Mayor. There she makes friends with a number of other weird looking residents - such as Ziggy, who loves his sweets, Stingy who won't share and Pixel who can't stop playing video games. Stephanie soon encounters the dastardly Robbie Rotten, who's mission is to keep the town people lazy.

Robbie - a bizarre character with a worrying taste in skin tight stripy leggings, a shiny black plastic quiff and a rather unfortunate chin, spies on the townspeople from his underground lair, where he scoffs unhealthy food and watches TV. He's a great villain, being a master of disguise, and often inventing ever more ludicrous traps to get rid of our hero, Sportacus, once and for all.

Sportacus, by contrast is everything a hero should be - a picture of health and fitness - and also a bloody nice bloke! The really interesting thing about Sportacus is that he is played by Magnus Sheving, the creator of Lazy Town, who is apparently Iceland's answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger. In real life, Magnus is a world class award winning athlete - and his skills are certainly put to good use in his acting career as he somersaults into the town from his aerial home, looking fit and - it has to be said - absolutely gorgeous! Anyway, I digress - Sportacus is a real health freak, eating more fruit (which he calls "sports candy"!) in one episode than I do in a week, and leading the town people towards a healthy lifestyle - much to the disgust of Robbie Rotten.

The DVD's 5 episodes all have a similar theme, as children's programmes tend to, which is Robbie Rotten trying to undermine Sportacus and sabotage his efforts to improve the lifestyles and health of the people of Lazy Town, to a background soundtrack of irritatingly infectious Europop.

Obviously, this pro-health and fitness message is a great one to put across to kids, and Lazy Town delivers it in an entertaining and non-violent way, pitching it perfectly. It's one of those rare kid's programmes that works on all sorts of levels - sometimes it's very funny and there are certain subtle references that will have the grown ups chuckling too.

Lazy Town's philosophy is stated as being to motivate children and inspire them to live a healthy life. By using humour, catchy music, high-quality production and strong values, the programme aims to help children to make positive choices for their physical and social well being. It has to be said that this is what sets Lazy Town apart from other contemporary children's TV.

DVD Extras:

"Let's Get Active" menu - which is great as long as you don't mind small people leaping around your living room. I mean, I would join in obviously, but I wouldn't want to show them up would I?

"Sing-a-long" menu - did I mention the annoying Europop tunes?

Available in most DVD retailers priced at around £12.99 or on Amazon at £8.99

Released September 2006.