School House Rock! Earth
School House Rock! is back with a new edition Earth helping to remind us to do our part for the environment that we all must share.
Film making 15/25
Cinematography 15/25
Audio 13/25
Bonus Features 10/25
Total 53/100
School House Rock! Earth is from the original ABC series of educational and informational catchy songs that promote education and learning in a fun way for kids. If you do not remember these songs that played often during kids programming times in the 1970 to the 1980’s you did not watch much television.
I can clearly remember “conjunction junction what’s your function” and “when a bill becomes a law” which goes to show just how much the ad campaign worked. Yes, I did say ad campaign, guess you didn’t realize that an ad agency devised the scheme back in 1971.
Advertising executive David McCall noticed his son could sing songs from memory but could not do his multiplication tables. He wanted a way for kids to be able to learn important things the same way they could remember songs they heard on the radio so easily.
When the advertising agency came up with the songs from a Texas jazz musician and then put a story boarded cartoon together events conspired to open up a market for them. When they tried to market the songs on their own even with a workbook they did not really take off but ABC was hurting for commercials that had some socially redeeming value on the Saturday morning lineup.
Enter McCaffrey & McCall and their new educational short cartoons that taught simple education using catchy songs and simple cartoons. Michael Eisner, yes the Disney one, was currently in charge of the children’s programming for ABC and Chuck Jones, noted cartoonist, who was his animation advisor gave the go ahead for the agency to produce more School House Rock hits.
In all there are 41 School House Rock! cartoons with catchy songs that appeared Saturday mornings on ABC that helped kids with arithmetic, spelling, speech, history and government. Enter the next generation of School House Rock! Earth with a few catchy tunes, a music video and the same educational information about our planet.
The School House Rock! Earth DVD is focused on our planet and how to reduce reuse recycle and help save the environment. But this time around the same catchy tunes that made the shorts a hit in the 70’s and 80’s are not quite up to the same standard.
While there are 11 new songs and two old ones on the DVD only a few are the catchy tunes that fit the same School House Rock! Theme of the past. All the songs give great messages of recycling, saving the environment and more but many are missing that catchy song that really gets you to remember them.
The older cartoons and songs of School House Rock had a really catchy music theme and the words were easy to remember so you could easily have kids using them in their school work when they had the need. Many of these songs lack that catchy tune to get them stuck in your head but all give a great message anyway.
The DVD is hosted by several polar bears and one of the main themes is global warming but they also cover recycling, water conservation, saving the rain forests, saving the oceans, using solar and wind power and reducing your carbon footprint. The songs do give a great message and I am not sure if they are quite catchy enough for kids to get hooked on them with all these songs but things are looking up.
School House Rock! Is back on ABC after several years absent and these new songs will also become part of a new generations education during their Saturday morning television viewing. While this DVD does not have a whole series of easily remembered songs they do give the right messages of helping the environment and making things better for future generations.
The entire School House Rock! Collection is available on DVD in several different sets and the new School House Rock! Earth is a decent addition but does not quite live up to the example set in the past.