Product Details

• Actors: Fran Bennett, Avery Brooks, Brandy Brown, Maria Bryant, LeVar Burton
• Directors: Kevin Hooks
• Writers: David Eyre Jr.
• Producers: Bernard Sofronski, David L. Wolper, Mark Wolper
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: September 28, 1999
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302561795
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #99,043 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

From the moment the young Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) is stolen from his life and ancestral home in 18th-century Africa and brought under inhumane conditions to be auctioned as a slave in America, a line is begun that leads from this most shameful chapter in U.S. history to the 20th-century author Alex Haley, a Kinte descendant. The late Haley's acclaimed book Roots was adapted into this six-volume television miniseries, which was a widely watched phenomenon in 1977. The programs cover several generations in the antebellum South and end with the story of "Chicken" George, a freed slave played by Ben Vereen whose family feels the agony of entrenched racism and learns to fight it. Between the lives of Kunta and George, we meet a number of memorable characters, black and white, and learn much about the emotional and physical torments of slavery, from beatings and rapes to the forced separation of spouses and families. Nothing like this had ever confronted so many mainstream Americans when the series was originally broadcast, and the extent to which the country was nudged a degree or two toward enlightenment was instantly obvious. Roots still has that ability to open one's eyes, and engage an audience in a sweeping, memorable drama at the same time. --Tom Keogh

Roots rocked the cultural landscape in the late '70s, creating a new wave of awareness of black history. That wave opened the door for its sequel, Roots: The Next Generations, even more of a star-studded event than the original, with stars like Olivia de Havilland, Henry Fonda, Marlon Brando, and James Earl Jones eager to partake in the tale. The sequel follows the rest of the saga of the family of author Alex Haley, from where Roots ended at the Civil War, up to the 1970s when Haley was researching and writing his earth-shattering family story. While nothing can rival the power of the original Roots' unflinching look at the slave trade and slave life in the early years of this country, the sequel is still full of rich African American history, from Reconstruction, to Jim Crow, to the civil rights movement and the early rumblings of black power. Fonda and de Havilland are respectable in their period-piece roles, but the real power of this sequel is in the more immediate concerns of Haley and his own experience of prejudice while building a stellar reputation as a writer and journalist in the '60s and '70s. One of the most unsettling scenes takes place then, when Haley interviews the head of the American Nazi Party, played with chilling diffidence by Brando. (Brando won an Emmy for this performance.) Haley is also challenged by his fractious interview with Malcolm X (a gripping Al Freeman Jr.). Jones launches his acting career playing Haley with nuance and heart, but with a humanizing set of his own demons. The four-disc set includes all seven episodes plus a compelling documentary, Roots: The Next Generations--The Legacy Continues, with interviews with Jones, costar and episode director Georg Stanford Brown and a still starry-eyed David L. Wolper, who understands the cultural impact of the two miniseries he helped bring to the screen. --A.T. Hurley

Product Description

Christmas Eve 1775. For the celebrants at Parker Plantation, it's a time of joy and giving. For enslaved friends Fiddler and Kunta Kinte, it's a chance to give to other slaves the most precious gift of all: freedom. The Roots saga expands in a holiday-themed drama based on characters from Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Louis Gossett, Jr. reprises the role of resourceful American-born slave Fiddler. LeVar Burton again plays Kunta Kinte, the Mandinka warrior who hopes to someday return home to Africa. Year: 1988 Director: Kevin Hooks Starring: Louis Gossett Jr., LeVar Burton, Avery Brooks

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

168 of 173 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Two Great Mini-Series, One Awful DVD Product, October 16, 2007

By 

RW - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Roots - The Complete Collection (Roots / Roots - The Next Generations) (DVD)

"Roots - The Complete Collection" (10 disc DVD set) contains the mini-series "Roots" from 1977 ("30th Anniversary Edition" version on three 2-sided discs), the mini-series "Roots: The Next Generations" from 1979 (on four discs, three of which are 2-sided), the television movie "Roots: The Gift" (on a single-sided disc), and "Roots: The Legacy", a collection of old and new archival material/documentaries spread across two single-sided discs. The content is excellent, and there are plenty of other reviews on this site which go into depth regarding the material.

However, my one star rating for this "item" is based primarily on two things. First, this item constitutes a shameful forced double-dip manipulation on the part of the DVD producer with respect to customers who previously purchased either the "Roots" 25th Anniversary DVD set released January 2002, or the "Roots" 30th Anniversary DVD set released May 2007 (five months before this "Complete Collection"), and who now must in effect repurchase "Roots" for roughly $40 in order to purchase "Roots: The Gift" on DVD, which is in release only as part of this set, which doesn't include any DVD extras, and which easily could have been released as a stand-alone item for $10-$15. Second, the packaging is horrendous. Instead of packaging this set in a manner which would make shelf storage convenient and which would protect the discs from damage (think of the typical DVD "collection" box set - e.g. "The Matrix Collection", or any TV series season set), the collection comes in a huge "cigar box"-style case, with the DVDs wedged into tight "slots" in one of three long, flat cardboard folders in the box, much as if the DVDs were coins in a coin collection folder. Getting the DVDs in and out of these slots without scuffing them is difficult at best. Further, the set I received had four discs dislodged prior to opening, and these dislodged discs were scratched on both sides as badly as old rental store discs, while almost all of the other discs which were not dislodged from their slots had lesser degrees of scratch damage on one or both sides. Disc 1, Side 2 froze at the 41:30 mark, likely due to scratch damage.

The bottom line is, unless you absolutely must own "Roots: The Gift", this collection should be avoided like the plague. It is largely a waste of money and space. Purchase "Roots" and "Roots: The Next Generations" separately instead. Most of the archival material from "Roots: The Legacy" is included on the 30th Anniversary Edition of "Roots".

Edit: One thing I forgot to add way back when I originally reviewed this set is that "Roots: The Gift" for this set has been cropped to fill a 16:9 (1.78:1) television screen. Since "Roots: The Gift" originally aired on TV in 1988, this was years before anything on U.S. television aired in anything other than the standard 4:3 (1.33:1) screen aspect ratio. Widescreen televisions are perfectly capable of showing those old TV shows and old movies in the 4:3 format. "Roots" (1977) and "Roots: The Next Generations" (1979) are both on DVD in their original 4:3 screen aspect ratios. Maybe the DVD producers wanted to make "Roots: The Gift" look more like "a movie". If so, this was misguided. "Roots: The Gift" was made for television and shot for television. For the most part, I didn't notice any glaring framing issues on the DVD with the cropping from the top and bottom of the original image. However, that's usually not the case with this practice. And the viewer is not seeing the complete image as it was originally intended to be seen. It's also completely unnecessary.

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible Packaging, November 13, 2007

By 

J. Myers "jenbooks" (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Roots - The Complete Collection (Roots / Roots - The Next Generations) (DVD)

Like the other reviews, I found the packaging on this set to be horrible. I bought mine at [...], and the first one I bought had 3 cds that were very badly scratched. The second one seems to have a few scratches that don't look *too* bad - I'm hoping they're playable.

Double sided dvds - great way to cheap out on manufacturing guys! Next time though, don't put them in cardboard sleeves, that when closed, cause the (double sided, remember) dvds to rub up against one another. Even if the disks manage to stay in place (HA!) they'll rub against each other and scratch that way.

Looking closely at the disks themselves, they don't look very well made to begin with. The "silver" at the edges of the disks is very ragged, and the edges of the disks themselves aren't smooth.

I've polished them up, and got them in protective sleeves now - here's hoping they actually play!

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poor Packaging, October 29, 2007

By 

G. Haley - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Roots - The Complete Collection (Roots / Roots - The Next Generations) (DVD)

This is a great story. I have watched it many times. It is great. I was glad to get all of these disks at one time. I was elated to get Roots and Roots 2 at the same time. We can't forget about what happened during those perilous times in our history. (And no, I am not related to the author nor have any connection with him. But if he ever wanted to give me his autograph, I would never turn it down.).

Like other reviews, my score is not because of the story. I am not giving it a very high review because of the packaging. I couldn't believe when I opened the box, there were 7 DVDs just rubbing against each other and the DVDs almost looked used because of it. I could deal with about anything but that. The only, so called, protection to the discs, is the cardboard sleeves that don't hold the discs during transport.

The other problem I had is that I couldn't get the captions to stay off on the original series. That was quite annoying.