DTV Wonders: Blue's Big Musical Movie

torchsandaardvarks

Feb 28

I was born in the late 1990s so I was naturally a fan of this show, and I had this movie on VHS, and sometimes I just got to check out an old childhood movie. I remember enjoying it, but preferring many episodes of the show to it.

Like many movies made for fourish year olds it is best to describe the plot points one by one, as it goes from one to another. I presume this is to help children get better attention spans. The basic plot is the cast of Blue's Clues is putting on a musical production (which apparently only has one song), and they are literally only writing it, getting the costumes ready, and the sets ready all the day that it is performed. With all these talking objects I am going to presume most of the audience wanted to see the stage sing.

It starts with Tickety, the clock, waking up Steve, and I like that he says "Clue" in his sleep. Plenty of the education part of the show comes from visual awareness and noticing visual signs, hence the audience identifies the checklist, which is just drawings. The other plot elements is Periwinkle thinks it is a magic show, Tickety got Laringitis, and cannot sing (the clues are on finding her replacement), Side Table wants a role and is too shy to say it, various things going wrong and Steve fixing them, and Steve wanting to for once find a clue before the audience. I am not going to pretend this plot gripped me as a 26 year old man, but it kept me entertained as the target age.

For the clue plot, this is actually inferior in many ways to the typical episode. A 23 minute runtime meant a speedy plot, and I remember enjoying trying to figure out what the clues meant and when they would be found. Normally the characters played a game and one showed up when it was over. Here the first clue is 15:40 in. Second clue at 29 minutes. I like that he sounds really confident since they have 40 minutes to find the last one. Even the characters just want him to find the third clue. The third clue is found at around the 53 minute mark, and I think this just took too long. Maybe make it a separate occasion for a movie with more clues would have been better. On the bright side Steve finding the third clue one of the show's signature moments.

Steve nearly gives up until all his appliances encourage him, and this is very touching, especially when he finds it inside a drawer before the audience can see it. I just noticed for the first time in over 20 years that Blue put it there on purpose so the audience could not beat him to finding it. I was actually close to tearing up seeing all these childhood favorites be so supportive, especially after they are so needy and desperate for help most of the movie. It is nice to see them return the favor.

I see a lot of the show's success was the little details with detective work. When analyzing the clues Steve gives plenty of time for the audience to guess, but no actual clues. I remember them normally being easy to find from the first clue.

I forgot how cute it is when the image of the solved clue smiles and nods when Steve solves it.

I remember Periwinkle (the cat who is sometimes nicknamed to "Perry") being my favorite character, but I cannot say I remember enjoying him much here. He thinks it is a magic show and is devastated to learn it is not, but when they need to stall for time they let him go up as the opening act. Considering Mail Box is doing a comedy show this fits in perfectly fine.

Tickety is the MVP. She is solving as many problems as Steve does, and she is so encouraging at key moments. She has a very sweet voice, and I presume this was to help kids like their alarm clocks. Still it is distracting she sings perfectly fine in the show. Despite her laryngitis. I like that she solved her own problem by using her bells to make music instead of singing, and was then constantly a voice of reason helping with everything.

Side Table Drawer is the answer to the clue and becomes Blue's singing partner. Being a side table who exists for people to put stuff on I guess it makes sense she is shy, and she does not want to just be the ticket counter/costume table (Those are important jobs). Since the second clue is a knob, this was not a hard mystery to solve.

I forgot how much range Blue has. In all the promotional material she looks happy all the time. In the actual show she often shows emotions like unhappiness, misery, confusion, and curiosity, but it is not over the top. This animation really is great. Still I have to wonder this question- if every dog in this world named after a color? I never saw an episode with Green in it, yet I still knew that was her name. In fact Magenta was hardly ever in an episode, so why did they get so much merchandise?

My main problem is when the skidoo into a picture. Normally the part where they go into a picture is my favorite part, but here it is just too long.

Slippery the soap probably has a sucky life. He slips everywhere and gets smaller every time he does his very scary job. As an adult I just feel so bad for the poor guy.

In both the audience and right before The Thinking Chair many minor characters from the show appear. I could not remember any of them now, but I remember I used to enjoy trying to remember what they did in the show, so I am sure this was fun for most fans.

As expected this movie has lots of padding and slow paced, but it is very well done. The songs are simple yet effective, the animation is great. It has enough with the songs and third clue to feel special and not like just a long episode. The acting is way better than I remember. I give it a solid 4 Tree Stars.