The Worst Film Ever

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

You've got a cat, a turnip, a robot, a dinosaur/bass and a red pickle with spikes who's also a cyclops. They all hop around some split landscape. And we've got a black man who's apparently their God or something who looks like a carrot, and he apparently controls their world. They also share the world with giant worms that look like socks according to one episode and their freaking food is ALIVE. They just look uncanny and not alive. And you've gotta ask.. are we the Yo Gabba Gabbas? Are we being controlled? Is God just a black guy that looks like a carrot and has a orange grass hat? And they just tell all things everybody knows, except like really small children don't know. But they tell us that we were all once babies! WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT IN A SHOW THAT IS MOSTLY WATCHED BY BABIES?!?

Recent winner of the Critics Choice Award for Innovative Children's television programming, BAFTA, and several Emmy nominations this pre-school kids show airing on Nick Jr. (previously the Noggin' channel) may appear out of nowhere but follows a long tradition of quality children's television programming including Syd & Marty Kroft's works, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Sesame Street, and Jim Henson's The Muppets.While it's live-action, large character costuming have more recently become widely associated with Barney and The Teletubbies programs, Yo Gabba Gabba (YGG) incomparably sets itself apart from the annoying and scary aspartame of 1990s children's TV with REAL sugar-pumping originality, humor, artistry, child developmentally safe/appropriateness(Teletubbies has been clinically found to actually slow children's language acquisition with it's incessant infant babble)and authentic heart.According to interviews with the creators of the show, YGG was actually created with parents in mind being subject to the repetitious desires of their toddlers and perhaps feeling out of the loop with the latest & hippest pop culture music/art. Not so with YGG, it is a relative Entertainment Weekly or Rolling Stone(censored for the kiddies of course)of who's who in the arts. Where else can you see the likes of The Killers, The Shins, Weezer, MGMT, The Ting Tings, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Biz Markie, Mike D. from the Beastie Boys along with Jack Black, Elijah Wood, Weird Al Yankovich, several actors from "The Office," NBA stars, and Mark Mothersbaugh all along with numerous guest artists on a kids show?! THe premise surrounds energetic but always kind DJ Lance Rock (an actual Los Angeles disc jockey Lance Robertson) who opens his retro-style boom box with the magic words "Yo Gabba Gabba" on top of the play-set of Gabbaland. Five characters come alive and are introduced: Muno, a friendly rough & tumble tall, red cyclops; Foofa, a happy almost-motherly pink flower bubble creature; Brobee, an ultra lovable, conscientious short, fuzzy green-striped, long-armed and mono-browed monster; Toodee, a spazzy tomboyish blue cat dragon; and finally Plex, the yellow robot who acts as an overseer of these brightly-colored toddler characters. The show is Sesame Street-like segmented to keep the short attention span of little ones (just try and find a Yo Gabba review board where a parent says "it's the only thing my child will watch"). YGG is split up into character song segments where Muno, Foofa, Plex, Toodee, Brobee learn and have fun in Gabbaland then spliced with animated shorts accompanied by cool guest Indie/Hip Hop music then clips of toddlers dancing, riding on toys, or actually playing inside an Atari-type video game then there are come & go segments like "Biz's Beat of the Day" where Biz Markie teaches kids how to beat box and "Cool Tricks" where adults and kids show quirky cool things they can do. Every episode ends with a remix portion reviewing what the characters learned that day in a psychedelic concoction any spinner would be proud of.

My 16 month old daughter loves this show! I was switching back and forth from Disney to Nickelodeon in the morning a few months ago and this was on. My daughter sat in front of the TV the whole time the show was on (which was rare at the time). I at first thought the show was stupid, but it's not about what I want to watch, it's about what my daughter is interested in. Yes, their songs are repetitive, and it's very colorful, and the characters are odd, but for most young children, that's what appeals to them. Every episode deals with an issue that young kids deal with like eating their vegetables and brushing their teeth and being scared of the dark. They just choose to do it in a different way then most kids shows address these issues. Personally, I'd rather have my daughter watch this show over most other shows out there nowadays geared towards young kids such as Sponge Bob and Total Drama Island. Sponge Bob teaches violence and I've seen on Total Drama Island two female characters talking about showing boys their breasts. I can't stand when 2pm rolls around and these type of shows are all that's on. We're trying to clean up our youth, but our youth gets corrupted by all these cartoons. At least Yo Gabba Gabba is a clean show that teaches children something other than violence and how to be sexual.

I'm never quite sure what to make of shows that try to re-create the schmaltz of the late '60's and early '70's kids shows like the Banana Splits and any thing by Syd & Marty Kroft. But this show just doesn't make any sense and every time I see it, I always come away thinking two things - (1) what the heck was that? and (2) there's a 1/2 hour of my life I'll never get back. I don't let my 2 1/2 year old twins watch this because it is just plain out there. And I also noticed that this show was nominated for outstanding costume design. How in the world does that happen? A dude in an orange jumpsuit and shag orange wig orchestrating the actions of four (and sometimes more) characters in bad high-school play caliber costumes is considered outstanding? You have GOT to be kidding me. Do yourself - and more importantly your kids - a favor and skip this show if it's on. Put on re-runs of Little House on the Prairie or something else.