Pros: great message presented in typical entertaining Veggie style
Cons: I found the angel Hope a bit irritating
The Bottom Line: While I probably wouldn't count it among my favorite Veggie videos, it's nonetheless a worthy addition to the series that finally tackles the Easter holiday.
bilbopooh's Full Review: VeggieTales - An Easter Carol
When I returned to work in Waldenbooks last month, one of the first things I noticed was a prominently displayed storybook based on the latest VeggieTales offering, An Easter Carol. I’d never heard about this video, but I knew I’d have to pick it up soon. So yesterday I went out and purchased the latest addition to my VeggieTales library, along with The Wonderful World of Auto-Tainment, which I somehow never picked up when it was released last year. My VeggieTales collecting has been somewhat lacking lately; I also failed to buy The Star of Christmas, the precursor to this video, when it first came out, and have since only been able to find it at Tops, inexplicably packaged with an AOL free trial CD. I did, however, see it on PBS on Christmas Eve the year it came out, so I had been introduced to the characters and setting which were revisited in An Easter Carol.
Like its companion Christmas special, this latest offering clocks in at about 45 minutes and features a cast of Victorian characters including Millward Phelps (Larry the Cucumber) and Cavis Appythart (Bob the Tomato), Pastor Gilbert and his wife and son Edmund (Dad, Mom, and Junior Asparagus), and featured character, Mr. Ebenezer Nezzer. The first time Mr. Nezzer showed up in a VeggieTales video, it was as the crazed boss of a chocolate bunny-making factory. His role here is similar, but this time it’s plastic eggs that he produces – though chocolate bunnies do figure into his plan for Easterland, a grand attraction which will replace the old church that has been a town fixture since before he was born. Although Mr. Nezzer’s beloved grandmother tried to teach him about the joy of Easter, he missed the point. Now it’s up to an angel named Hope (voiced by Grammy award-winning singer Rebecca St. James) to enlighten him.
The story is based on Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol, with Nezzer occupying the role of Scrooge and little Edmund becoming Tiny Tim. Nezzer is not quite so misanthropic as that other Ebenezer; everything he does is out of a desire to carry out the wishes of his dearly departed grandmother. Still, he is rather self-serving and egotistical, and certainly not too bright. His grandmother informs him of the error of his ways in a vision, leaping eerily out of her portrait on the wall to chide him for his Caesar-like failure to listen to her warnings. But she leaves the bulk of the instruction to Hope, a sprightly, sarcastic entity whose frustration with the old miser knows no bounds. She shows him an Easter service from his childhood, a recent meeting with an oddball inventor (Pa Grape) regarding his grand Easter ambitions (expressed through an entertaining ditty parodying The Music Man’s Rock Island), the current day at the Gilbert household, and, after a song chronicling the life of Jesus, a glimpse of the future without the hope of Easter. Like Scrooge, he is left profoundly changed by the vision, and the rest of the video involves his efforts to save the church from the construction crews under his command and avert a disaster back at the factory.
The VeggieTales gang has been venturing lately into different formats, abandoning such standbys as the countertop lessons and Silly Songs with Larry in favor of a more cinematic approach. While I enjoy the efforts and the massive attention to detail found in the costumes and settings, I think my favorite videos will always be the ones that contain these elements. There’s plenty of music here, but most of the songs are rather serious and the closest thing to a Silly Song, Nezzer’s rhythmic banter with the inventor, seems pretty hard to sing along with. I didn’t walk away from the video humming anything, as I often do with VeggieTales. The overall tone was more serious than most, and it was definitely more preachy than videos in this series generally are. In addition, I confess I found the much-hyped Hope rather annoying; her attitude seemed a bit caustic to me, and her accent struck me as inconsistent at times. (Interestingly, although this takes place in London, only about half of the characters have British voices; I guess it’s too complicated to give an already invented voice an accent.) Those quibbles aside, this is nonetheless a solid production and a welcome addition to the VeggieTales line. It’s about time they had an Easter video, and the silly antics of Cavis and Millward provide plenty of levity to balance the serious message. Although it isn’t necessary to see The Star of Christmas prior to this, I would recommend it, as that video provides an introduction to the characters and contains events which are referred to in An Easter Carol. It’s a little late to stick this in an Easter basket this year, but the story is one to be appreciated all year long.
Ebenezer Nezzer is out of control! Filling London with plastic Easter eggs, hes on a rampage to make Easter \bigger than ever!\ But just how hard can ...More at Christianbook.com
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