Customer Reviews

Brambly Hedge: Autumn & Winter Story [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Good tape, but one problem: previews for Brambly Hedge contained on my child's other "Crayola Presents" kids' videos show the Brambly Hedge characters talking in quiet, attractive British accents - indeed, this Brambly Hedge tape itself includes such a preview. Yet the actual tape is in fact dubbed into American. That itself is not so much the problem: the real problem is that the voices and accents used are about as loud and grating as they could be. A far cry from the original, or indeed, the quiet, calm spirit of the books (and George Carlin's Thomas the Tank Engine voice shows how well a UK show can be rendered into American if any care is taken). My 4 year-old still watches it, though, and I feel the show is better value than so much of the Satuday morning junk.

There are two episodes on this tape, about a half-hour each. In the first, two young mice get lost in an autumn storm and have several adventures before being rescued. In the second, a winter snow storm allows all the Brambly Hedge mice to build an ice palace and have a dance before rescuing a couple more mice snowed in. There follows a third section, a long digression on the whole world of Brambly Hedge; who the mice are, where they live. This seems to be thrown together a little too quickly, with very flat narration (at least in the American version) - my child loses interest here. The books are a better bet for this part.

Other fine British kids' shows that have not been altered or duubbed in any way include Mouse and Mole, William's Wish Wellingtons, Old Bear Stories, Brum and the Baby Carriage, The Secret of Roan Inish, The Sand Fairy (AKA Five Children and It), Postman Pat, The Princess and the Goblin. With a multiplayer VCR (such as Samsung's model) you can play British PAL system videos on your American NTSC television, opening a whole new world of childrens' and adults' entertainment (get the tapes through Amazon's UK site).

This is a British production of two of the Brambly Hedge books which were very popular among little girls between the ages of about 5 and 10 several years ago (and would likely continue to be very popular if they were only in print in the United States!)

The stop action animation has attempted to realize the same attention to detail as the illustrations in the books, and has succeeded fairly well. The stories are also crammed with dialogue, and offer a really pleasant alternative to the awful and nasty vocabulary used in the most "with it" animated children's videos in the U.S., (although you need to have a certain taste for the British worship of "country life cute" which permeates the tales, or at least be able to tolerate it).

The Brambly Hedge mice live in the English countryside in very cute and cozily decorated tunnels and tree stumps, and girls who favor country quaint/Laura Ashley/Martha Stewart types of interiors will be particularly fond of the decor--which is a significant part of the attraction of these tales. Like the Peter Rabbit tales, the video is animated by the belief that tiny and cute animals live much like the British landed aristocracy would like outsiders to believe they behave. However, these tales are more complex than Peter Rabbit, and are aimed at slightly older children. Even 10 year olds will be drawn by the intricate interiors that hide behind tree stumps and in tunnels underground, as well as the very imaginative details such as the Wedding Barge and Ice Palace which the mice construct for their feasts.

This particular production has versions of the Autumn and Winter stories, but also includes a sort of "review" of the major (Mouse) characters at the end of the film, along with a capsulized version of the major Brambly Hedge tales that must have been dramatized in a longer series in the U.K. These include the "Spring and Summer Stories", (Wilfred's birthday and Poppy and Dusty's Wedding), as well as Poppy's Babies' "Naming Day", none of which are part of the "Autumn and Winter stories" which are dramatized here in full.

If you are familiar with the books you will LOVE these stories and want to have more of them, as we do. If you don't know the books, try to get copies of them at the library--or order them online with Amazon.UK since they are still in print in England and are really ideal for little girls in the 5-10 yr old age range. Best of all, having a video like this brings kids back to books where they are always better off in the first place. I always find that movie versions of good storybooks allow me to give in to something my daughter wants--TV--while preparing us easily for the transition back to what I want--to emphasize books as a form of enjoyment and relaxation.

For lovers of fantasy. The world of tiny mice enjoying the activities of the harvest and winter seasons comes alive. All the tiny details of the books are faithfully reproduced. The characters are believable and the story is filled with gentle touches of humor. For lovers of Beatrix Potter this is a must. I watch it all the time with my 2 year old grandson. Now where is the Sequel!

My 5 children thoroughly enjoyed this tape. So much of viewing for children today does not portray childhood innocence and simplicity---Brambly Hedge is a "breath of fresh air". Highly recommended.

This video enchanted my 4-year old daughter, and I was so pleased that it did. The world of Brambly Hedge is full of all sorts of mouse-people of all ages, and the sense of community and respect for elders is something to take special note of. The young mice have not-too-scary adventures out in nature, and learn valuable lessons from both the adventures and from the grown up mice who help them out. The look of the animation is also lovely, and the English countryside is a pleasure to look at.This is a really positive video for family viewing, and I wish that the other adventures that are shown in clips at the end were widely available as well.

My 3-year-old daughter was enchanted with the characters, yes, but has refused to view this video a second time. Why? Both segments contain scenes she finds alarming and scary. In the first, the young heroine-mouse quakes in terror of an imaginary weasel. In the second, the protagonists are trapped, shivering, in a collapsing ice tunnel. My kid is not particularly sensitive to dangers she can see, such as the monsters in "The Dark Crystal." What troubles her are imagined terrors, like the unseen, undescribed weasel of Brambly Hedge.

This video is really a cut above the average. The production values are super and my just-turned four-year-old daughter likes it a lot. I was dismayed, however, to find the mice of Brambly Hedge speaking with American accents, badly tinged here and there with something not quite British. It sounds like the producers ransacked the high school drama club for some cheap talent. The U.S. licensee apparently decided that our American kids couldn't follow an English accent. Wrong. Result: the video looks lots better than it sounds. I was disappointed.

I recently rented this video from Blockbuster, and my 3 3/4 year old daughter and I so enjoyed it that I have ordered it from Amazon. This beautifully paced video is perfect for young children, and an antidote to the so-called G movies being offered these days. A Bug's Life and the Rugrats movie were just too intense for my daughter--how in the world did they get G ratings? After seeing those two, I screened the Babe sequel and couldn't believe this was being presented as a children's movie. Brambley Hedge, however, fits the bill. The mice of this enchanting world are delightfully presented, the stories, well, cozy. Perfect snuggle-up on the couch fare. Too bad the books are out of print in this country. What a sorry commentary . . .

My three year old granddaughter was drawn into the world of Brambly Hedge in an instant. The characters, delightful mice, are fun and interesting to a young child. Brambly hedge is a charming place. Our only disappointment was to discover that this is the only Brambly Hedge video.

I thought that the characters would have a British accent, since the book derived from there. It doesn't do much justice to the book.