Product Details

• Actors: Veggie Tales
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Big Idea
• DVD Release Date: May 20, 2003
• Run Time: 30 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00008K7AY
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #84,195 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Larry the Cucumber's vision of the future includes automated robotic hosts telling jokes with random punch lines and musical numbers in which the performers and themes are chosen entirely by chance. As Bob the Tomato quickly points out, the jokes of the future aren't very funny because they don't make sense. Worse, technical malfunctions in the Ventrilomatic hosts actually promote emotional instability. Nonetheless, Bob admits that Larry's vision of the future contains some very cool adaptations of classic songs like Gilbert and Sullivan's fast-talking "Modern Major General" and Binky the Aardvark's solo performance of Mozart's The Barber of Seville. Larry's vision of the future also includes an amusing animated short about greed called "Lunch." Junior Asparagus calls Bob and Larry back to the present with a final song celebrating God's unconditional love. (Ages 3-7) --Tami Horiuchi

Product Description

Wake up and smell the future with the latest VeggieTales release featuring all-new animation and six new songs. The Wonderful World of Auto-tainment is one trip to the future you'll want to take again and again! What's "Auto-tainment?" Frankly, we don't know. But Larry the Cucumber is pretty sure it involves an automated set from the future, singing robotic children and some of your favorite veggies performing bizarre renditions of songs like "Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" and Gilbert & Sullivan's "Modern Major General." All that and a whole lot more. Tune in for the fun as Big Idea's award-winning writers and animators cut loose with the most bizarre vision of the future since 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice songs, but no plot, May 23, 2003

By	E. Borah - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This DVD reminds me a lot of the Ultimate Silly Songs DVD -- there are a lot of great songs (and this time they're NEW), but not much in the way of a plot or a message. It starts with a silly (of course) view of the future, where Larry is convinced that randomly-generated programming is the wave of the future. So we get a randomly-selected Veggie singing a randomly-selected song topic in a randomly-selected genre. The results are...well...random, with some hits and some misses.

The song list includes:
There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea (French Peas)
Zacchaeus (Pa Grape)
Modern Major General (Archie)
You are My Sunshine (Larry)
Erie Canal (Pa Grape)
My Day (Junior)

Some of these aren't original...well, other than My Day, none of them are original (and My Day was on a VeggieTales CD last year -- Junior's Bedtime Songs). But they're well-executed, with visual and aural humor throughout. The between-songs shtick is a little annoying, but delights our girls (ages 3 and 1.5).

There aren't any Bible stories (though the Zacchaeus song is itself a short one), and not a huge message (My Day is what passes for that -- God loves us even when things go bad), and not even all the traditional trappings of a VeggieTale (no visit to QWERTY at the end). Still, it's cute -- and it's a lot better entertainment for kids than some of what's out there! The songs are memorable and fun to sing(though Modern Major General may be more for listening to than singing...but the tune is stuck in my head after hearing it just a couple times).

Not a bad purchase, all considered, but I wish they'd let themselves stick with the formula that worked. I'm sure they get bored with it, but the kids don't seem to!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An underrated masterpiece, September 24, 2003

By	Andrew Garman (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

To a degree I can understand the ire of some of the reviewers' postings here. This video is definitely a stylistic departure from the more story-driven VT productions. It took me some getting used to (I'm slower to adapt than my twin three-year-olds, who requested it every night for a week), but I am glad I gave it a few views before making up my mind on it. It has become one of my favorites.

Although the content draws less from biblical content than many VT videos, I think the headline lesson (unconditional love) warranted this approach. I also found the satirical elements (lost on me in the first several viewings but more apparent thereafter) made this video stand up well to the kind of repetitive viewing my household demographic seems to demand.
I found the production quality of this video truly stunning; all of the songs are also terrific. Junior Asparagus' "My Day" alone is well worth the admission price.

I'm giving it 5 stars, and also recommending that you view it a couple of times before making up your mind on it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "This is the worst day in my show business career!", June 16, 2003

By	Brian Reaves (Anniston, AL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

So laments Bob the Tomato at one point in this dvd. The problem is that he's absolutely correct. Never before in the history of the Veggietales series have they produced a complete bomb...until now. There's no plot to speak of, most of the between-songs moments are just plain dumb, and the entirety of the Bible lesson normally so prevelant in other entries in the series is summed up in the final song. This is absolutely nothing like any of the other dvds in the series (with the possible exception of the Silly Songs one...and even that one had a lot of funny moments in it). The only redeeming thing in this dvd is the shorts shown during the show. The "Lunch" short and the aardvark singing opera were hilarious, and I would have loved to have seen more of them. Don't judge the whole series by this one episode. Hey, they've been doing this for 10 years...they're bound to get bored and want to try something new every now and then, right?