There are two movies I've watched while babysitting my nieces that fall under the requirements of my writing a review (I'd never seen them before or saw them but don't remember them) but, even though I've ended up seeing them repeatedly I never did write reviews of them. So I'll do that now.
The Adventures Of Elmo In Grouchland is about Elmo's epic quest to get his blanket back from Grouchland, where it ended up after a series of wacky events. As soon as Elmo gets to Grouchland, though, a big-eyebrowed Mandy Patinkin (as Huxley) steals Elmo's blanket and Elmo has to trek to Huxley's castle to get it back. Huxley tries to stop him at every turn because Huxley is selfish, steals and hoards everything.
For a movie that isn't very long (about seventy minutes) it feels like it goes on for ages. It's not really a bad movie, I usually welcome it when Izzy requests it 'cause I like it better than some of the other stuff she watches. But it ... I don't know. There are only two songs in it that I like (Welcome To Grouchland and, of course, the villain's song, Mine) but neither of them get stuck in my head. My head prefers to latch onto my least favorite song in the movie, where Vanessa Williams sings about how even trash can be beautiful if you look at it from the right point of view.
My main problem with Elmo In Grouchland is that it's trying very hard to have a message about not being selfish (Huxley is the villain because he refuses to share) but the whole plot hinges on Elmo being selfish about his blanket. Sure, they establish at the beginning of the movie that the blanket is Elmo's best friend in an attempt to justify his possessiveness over the blanket (and don't read too much into that or it'll start seeming creepy) but that doesn't change the fact that, in this case, Elmo is fighting greed with greed.
Pippi Longstocking is very hard to watch because the plot is minimal and the dubbing is painful. The woman (and it's clearly an adult, not a kid) voicing Pippi either doesn't know how to read or barely speaks English. Every time I hear the line "Raw egg is good for the hair, that's what I've heard," I want to throw something at the TV and yell at it to hire better actors.
In spite of all of that, though, it has a charmingness to it and I do kind of enjoy it. I think I would have liked it a lot when I was a kid.
End of line.
-Sally
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