”AMAZING PLANET”
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They open with that dignified National Geographic theme song. But when the music quickly changes into a funk tune about alien explorers, it’s clear these videos aren’t your father’s National Geographic.
Actually, they’re your kids’ National Geographic. Designed to educate and entertain, National Geographic’s new “Amazing Planet” videos showcase kid-friendly scientific subjects. The first titles in this delightful comedy-adventure series (Warner Home Video, $12.95 each) spotlight volcanoes (“Lava Blast!”) and sharks (“Shark-AThon!”).
Not surprisingly, National Geographic does an amazing job creating an informative, yet engaging, children’s show.
The live-action series wraps a charming, goofy sitcom around its stunning film footage. As the story goes, a group of alien janitors accidentally blasts off in the spaceship they are cleaning. The hapless crew is ordered to search planet Earth for information and report the findings to their superiors on their home planet of Miptor.
Square-jawed Capt. Rip Rayon’s voice is far more booming then his intellect. Rayon’s sidekicks are Squeegee, his wacky rubber-faced assistant, Kidogo, the fix-it woman, and Orb, the omniscient computer.
The crew’s silly shenanigans are engaging enough to enrapture children, but they never overshadow the videos’ true purpose — to teach young viewers about some really cool stuff. For example, in “Lava Blast!,” a commercial spoof for Bubba Zipple soda quickly segues into a demonstration on how a volcanic eruption is like a bottle of shaken pop.
The videos should appeal to children of varying ages. Older kids will get the jokes, such as when the Jerry Lewis-esque Squeegee searches for the perfect term to describe an eruption: “(It) tosses its cookies?” “Blows chunks?” “Hurls?” “Barfs its guts out?” Younger children will delight in such slapstick silliness as Rayon and Squeegee leaving the spacecraft to swim with rays — cousins of the shark–or walk on a searing hot volcano.
Yes, the jokes often are corny. But they’re the kind that illicit forgiving smiles, not annoyed grimaces. Rayon, for example, tells Squeegee that one should “never rub a shark the wrong way” after learning that the sea creatures sport teeth on their skin.
The flying Orb makes an outstanding tour guide. Orb doesn’t talk down to her audience. Yet, her explanations are clear and concise enough for all to understand. And although the 30-minute videos present tons of facts and show scores of thrilling closeups of sharks and volcanoes, viewers aren’t put on sensory overload.
Quite wisely, the series’ writers use colorful descriptions to make potentially complex material totally comprehensible. The immense whale shark, we learn, is longer than a school bus and heavier than two African elephants. The nurse shark has the sucking power of 12 vacuum cleaners. And a great white shark can sense a struggling fish from a distance greater than six football fields.
Additionally, Orb and company, without being too obvious, repeat difficult words — take “pyroclastic,” for example — several times, so youngsters can learn them.
The series also admirably shows the positive aspects of nature’s scariest phenomena. Volcanoes destroy, but they also create land. Sharks kill 10 people per year, but humans kill 100 million sharks annually.
Now if the costumes and special effects were only as good as “Amazing Planet’s” writing and action footage. For one, the aliens look like they rented rubber head gear from a costume shop and used burnt cork for makeup. And they appear pasted into the scenes where they venture outside the spaceship.
Yet, somehow these low-budget effects add another wacky touch to this already rollicking series. Once again, “Amazing Planet” doesn’t cease to amaze.
