Customer Reviews

LazyTown - New Superhero

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"LazyTown" is a show marrying live-action and animation, a fairly recent port to the United States from Iceland. It's part of the new breed of children's animated programs these days --- programming especially focused on making viewers "get up and go" and as far as this goes, it's at the top of its game.

"LazyTown" features a human girl, Stephanie, a human hero, Sportacus and his human nemesis, Robbie Rotten. The rest of the characters are CGI animated and quite well too. The setup is this --- generally in each episode, Sportacus (advocate of getting up and going) battles the plots and schemes of Robbie Rotten (trying and endlessly failing to make those in LazyTown lazy, also a master of disguise.) He just can't stand all the activity in LazyTown, but usually ends up expending a lot of energy himself trying to stop it. The simple fact is, no one's lazy in LazyTown anymore, largely thanks to Stephanie, an energetic girl with bubble-gum pink hair. She's still fairly new in town and living with her Uncle, Mayor Meanswell. Her group of friends is Ziggy, Pixel, Trixie and Stingy.

"LazyTown" is loaded with high energy, fun songs. The opening theme and "funny words" songs can be heard in every episode and there's also at least one other new song in each one.

This DVD features three episodes of the show, including a special double-length episode --- "LazyTown's New Superhero." This one plays around with the format a bit, as the kids decide to give Sportacus a vacation. While Sportacus struggles to relax and take it easy, Stephanie does her best to become the new town superhero. Also included in this DVD are "Cry Dinosaur," in which Robbie Rotten dresses up as a dinosaur to scare "Sporta-Crybaby" and "Dr. Rottenstein," in which he tricks the kids into believing they have spotty vegetitis and must swear off vegetables and eat nothing but junk food. Not only that, but under the guise of Rottenstein, he bans Sportacus from LazyTown "forever," another one of his old tricks.


In case you're wondering why I gave this four stars instead of five, it's because of the special features. I truly believe that DVD releases these days must have great special features in order to receive a five-star rating. Unfortunately, this DVD just doesn't measure up. All you get are written character profiles that you can browse through, a couple of pages of "Nicktrition" tips and some short previews for Dora and Blue's Room DVD releases as well as "My Little Pony: A Very Minty Christmas." These are okay, there's definitely nothing wrong with them, but it only takes about five minutes to go through at most. It couldn't have hurt to put at least a bit more effort into some nice special features.

For those not familiar with the popular kid's show, Lazytown is a place where the citizens preferred not to do any kind of strenuous activity until the arrival of Stephanie, an energetic young girl with bright pink hair, and Sportacus, the super fit, super strong, weirdly mustached superhero who lives in a sort of blimp-like airship.

Soon Stephanie and Sportacus have the residents on the right track to good health, exercise, and fruit and vegetable consumption, punctuated by upbeat pep rally type songs and spine bending dance steps.

This does not meet the approval of the town bad guy, Robbie Rotten, who spends his days plotting the undoing of Sportacus, with various ingenious and despicable schemes.

Previously only viewable on television, this DVD allows kids to watch favorite episodes over and over again, and introduces a double-length episode where Sportacus is given a forced vacation while Stephanie takes on the Superhero role. There are two previously aired episodes on the DVD - one where Robbie dons a dinosaur disguise to scare Sportacus, and one where he disguises himself as a doctor and makes them stop eating vegetables.

With a combination of real actors and puppets, this is a very positive family oriented show, advocating good living habits, mixed with song, dance and humor. Highly recommended for anyone with kids between 2 and 6 years old, even though many adults may find it a little cheesy.


Amanda Richards, September 2, 2005

Well I didn't think it was possible but I believe Sportacus has replaced Dora on the top of my 23 month old daughter's favorites list.

She has to watch this DVD at least once a day. I really enjoy this program too since it promotes healthy habits and has very charming characters.

It helps that Magnus Scheving is easy on the eyes too!

I highly recommend this DVD.

To be honest, I am actually 13 years old and I'm a HUGE Lazy Town fan. No, I don't have any younger brothers, sisters, cousins, anything like that. And I don't babysit either. I started watching the show on my own free will.

Now that that's out of the way...Lazy Town is an amazing show. The songs are so catchy and upbeat, it has a great message, Stephanie's such a cute character, Robbie Rotten can really make me laugh. There's so many great things about it.

In fact I started a Lazy Town fan club, the youngest member is 13 and the oldest is 15. So if you're wondering if you're kid is too old for this video, I wouldn't worry about it : )

One day, as she was watching Lazytown, my 4 year old, ran in the kitchen to grab a bag of mini carrots. She proceeded to eat them as a result of the "healthy eating" lesson from Lazytown.

In addition, she is always active (cartwheels, jumping, etc.) during Lazytown. For Halloween, she wants to be beautiful pink-haired Stephanie.

She can't wait for the Santa DVD that's coming out October 11th, 2005!! I strongly recommend this DVD.

Lazytown is an amazing mix of animation, computers, puppets and real people all pulled together in a colorful creative way! My five year old is in awe and jumps up to dance and move around with them in all their routines.
I laugh, my husband laughs, my teenager laughs.
Very creative and energetic show.
This particular episode aired on 8/15/05 in the afternoon/evening and is now available to bring home on DVD.
Promotes healthy living and active lifestyles - very positive!

An awesome show just in theory, now you and your child can exercise with Sportacus, Stephanie, Robbie Rotten, and the LazyTown crew at home! The story plot is that Stephanie and the gang want to give Sportacus a day off since he always helps everyone in LazyTown when they need it. Stephanie takes over for a day, and Robbie Rotten concieves a dastardly plan to rid LazyTown of Sportacus forever. He makes a robotic dog to cause mayhem in LazyTown and in turn, it makes Sportacus and "Sportasteph" team together to save the day!
The show revolves around the importance of health, hygiene, and manners.

You can get the entire Lazytown on iTunes under television shows. It's for sale as volume one and two, so you have to buy them grouped. It's a great deal when you see how many episodes are in the two volumes, basically the entire collection for about [...] bucks. The nicest part about iTunes is once you buy it there, it's on your account forever, even if you lose it. You never have to worry about another scratched dvd or hard drive crash, yours forever :D
I think it's great to get the dvds if you don't like iTunes.

The lazytown dot com website sells the physical dvds new but in PAL format (England)

I noticed some idiots selling these dvds for insane prices, don't let it get you down. New dvds can still be purchased, just no longer in the US. The iTunes versions are about 300+ mb per episode. You can always use an external hard drive or one 8Gb thumb drive will hold volume one, about 15Gb for both volumes.

You could download volume one to an 8Gb iPod or iPhone or iPad, or just download to an 8Gb flash drive. Be sure and format your flash drive in Fat32 so it works on your HDTV Usb port. Crazy hunh?, you can have the entire lazytown collection on a flash drive the size of your finger and your kids can't scratch it. If you're really cool you can connect your HDTV via Wifi and stream lazytown from your reclining easy chair from a router hub with Wifi. Have your kids grab you a Coke from the fridge and wah lah , you are lazily watching lazytown drinking and eating sweets. Be sure and make the kids eat fruits and vegetables so they stay healthy.

I'm not sure where my toddlers first learned about Lazytown, but it's a nice swith from the normal pre-school cartoons they normally watch. I wasn't sure they'd really follow the story, but now they totally do push-ups like "Sportacus" and sing and dance like Stephanie. Lazytown has 3 real people on an animated sets with puppets. I honestly didn't think the DVDs would motivate kids to exercise like other people say they will, but apparently they really do and they're entertaining to watch!

Lazytown, takes a high action crack at Children and healthy lifestyle, and makes a new market in educational children's media! Finally a show that's tackling the issues!
Lazytown, is a children's television show adapted from a successful play from Iceland. Icelandic gymnast and role model Magnús Scheving, conceived Lazytown as an effort to combat obesity, and inactivity in kids. The show has been globally sucessful; in the Uniyed States it has landed primary slots on Nickelodeon channels, and CBS Saturday morning programming. The themes of the show are very positive and attractive to children. The shows target audience age is 4-7.
The plot involves main character Stephanie visiting her uncle in Lazytown. Upon arrived she displeased with laziness and negativity of the town and tries to encourage change. Stephanie is a very attractive character for young girls. She promotes gender stereotypes with her pink hair and matching feminie accessories. She also has many singing breaks, and dance modeled like a pop star music video. Her dance moves resemble aerobics and often start to involve the whole town in exercise fashion. The superhero of Lazytown, is Sportacus (played by Magnús Scheving). He immediately agrees with Stephanie about making a change. Sportacus is naturally the admirable character for boys. He wears a blue jumpsuit, and is excellent in every sport. He uses gymnastics to get from place to place. The antagonist is Robbie Rotten, who employs all the schema of cartoon villany, right down to the evil laugh. Robbie uses temptation to align the townpeople to his side of laziness, selfishness, junkfood, and trouble. The townspeople are of diverse gender and ethnicity. Each have their vices, which make up most of their personality. The ones with most appearances are Stingy (selfish), Ziggy (candy), Trixie (mischeif), Pixel (Video Games). Through misadventures all the townspeople overcome Robbie Rotten's temptation and learn moderation and healthy lifestyle tips from Stephanie and Sportacus. Parents can use the townspeople and their lessons in moderation as an example for their own children. I witness my own cousin turn off video games saying he played too long, and referenced a plot from the show.
The only live action characters in the show are Stephanie, Sportacus, and Robbie Rotten, which give them grave importance in a show with CGI background and puppet supporting characters. The show uses lighiting fast jump cuts, and speed up motion speeds, sublimnally expressing high activity. The shows techno music and bright colors, seemingly raises pulses in kids. Watching this program with my younger cousins, it wasn't long before they were jumping along with the program. The uses of editing to evoke this reaction helps with the overall goal of the program. The catchy pop songs in every show usually have lyrics that push the shows moral.
There isnt any commercialism in the show, which is a breath of fresh-air. The only thing show seems to endorse is "Sport Candy", which is just fruits and vegetables. The continue use of the "Sport Candy" phrases makes me think that they could use it to appear on a brand of fruit and vegetables, however there is no blantant brand marketing. For a show, with a classic good vs. evil theme, there is no violence whatsoever. Robbie Rotten is usually defeated after losing in some physical game or activity. He often gets tired and retreats home. I enjoyed the lack of pain, and humilation in the show. The viewer still understand the Good has conquered evil without anyone getting hurt emotionally or physically. The cicrumstances are usually realistic, with common consequences. However, Sportacus numerous acrobatics don't frequently come with a "Im a professional, don't try this at home" disclaimer.
I enjoyed my viewing of Lazytown, and find the use of plot, characters, and setting a lot more effective in encourage activity, than the surrealism of Boohbah. I think as long as Lazytown, stays true to mission, and doesn't surrender to branding and heavy merchandising, it will do a lot of good. I commend Magnús Scheving for his endeavors. The show is needed, as physical education slowly declines in schools.