Bratz – Good Vibes (CG Animation/Lionsgate DVD) + Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945/Columbia/VCI DVD) + Big Time Rush – Season One, Volume One (Nickelodeon DVDs) + Madeline – On The Town (Shout! Factory DVD) + SpongeBob Squarepants – The Great Patty Caper (Nickelodeon DVD)

 

Picture: C+ (Starr: C)     Sound: C+ (Starr: C)     Extras: D/C/D/D/C-     Main Program: C/C+*/D/C+/C+

 

 

Now for more children’s programming, old and new.

 

The computer animated Bratz – Good Vibes may be new, but it seems old and this is a tired franchise unless you are a very, very young lady.  It is pretty much more of the same, like this:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3629/Bratz+-+Genie+Magic

 

 

By comparison, Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945) may have been based on a comic strip (versus a toy line) but despite being the oldest (66 years old), is the most mature, best and most interesting.  It is also fun as Joan Woodbury plays the nosy reporter trying to get her story and gets in much trouble in the process.  I was surprised how good this was and is among the more interesting Columbia Serials.  Kane Richmond (who once played The Shadow) is her best friend and newspaper photographer as they try to find a quarter-million dollars (that is several million now) as been stolen, but that is just an excuse for snake pit cliffhangers and that is not a bad thing here.  It is amazing how even B-movie level production like these were smarter than most of what we are getting now.  A restoration demonstration and paper pullout inside the DVD case with text are the extras.

 

Nickelodeon’s Big Time Rush – Season One, Volume One is simply a very, very, very bad attempt by the company to do a rip-off of The Monkees and wow, is this lame!  These guys are not funny, have no energy and to say the music is forgettable is an understatement.  We get 11 lame episodes and Nyquil now has competition in the digital world.  Skip this one big time!  Trivial and stills are the only extras and they are very slight.

 

That leaves two more basic titles with no extras in series we have covered often before.  Madeline – On The Town and SpongeBob Squarepants – The Great Patty Caper are more of the same (with six and seven episodes respectively) and are about as good as other releases in their respective series, but not the best.  You can decide for yourself by reading through others we covered ands ask if you need these or not, but they are of the same quality.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Bratz is the same as on its previous CG DVD release and that means limited detail and other limits.  Still, fans might like it, but I found it flat and dull.  The 1.33 X 1 image on the rest of the TV programs look as good, especially when it comes to color, but all have detail issues of their own and even aliasing errors.  That leaves the Starr DVD the softest of the five as the materials were down a few generations and it is just soft overall despite the restoration.

 

As for sound, all have Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo that sounds good, but not great, though the Starr DVD has Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono that is weaker because of the age of the releases and that the sources are a few generations down.

 

*Chapters 3 & 4 even have missing audio that could not be located in time for this pressing if it even survives, so expect that.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo