Barney And The Backyard Gang: The Backyard Show

Sandy Duncan is the "star" of this amiable, and in the spirit of the new kid's video, perfectly tame show for young children. When Father goes off to golf, Mother (Duncan) and the kids work on a surprise birthday party. The two white kids, a boy and a girl, are given a hand by the backyard gang--two boys and two girls of Black, Indian, Latino, and Oriental backgrounds. (The inclusion of different ethnic groups on film is a welcome and much needed change--but this is so obviously contrived it ends up insulting everyone). When the gang is assembled, they descend on the garage for props. One prop, a cloth dinosaur named Barney, does a special-effects quick change, becomes larger than life, and encourages the kids to use their imagination. So when one little girl finds a red wagon with chipped paint and dents, Barney encourages her imagination by literally creating a brand, spanking new, shiny red wagon (signaling the filmmaker's confusion over what is imagination, and what is merely pretty to look at on TV.) The other kids each get new props, courtesy of Barney the set designer. The highlight is the song and dance numbers which the kids do using traditional songs and nursery rhymes. Yet even here, the kid's singing is clearly dubbed in (and it even looks as if some of the speaking parts were dubbed.) All of these reservations aside, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this program. Sheryl Leach and Kathy Parker, the creators, who both hold M.A.'s in Education, are billing this as an "edutainment" video (a blithe bastardization of two perfectly good but unrelated English words). But this seems a rather unusual accolade for a music video. Again, this is a fine program which kids are sure to enjoy, but the solemn introduction and epilog by Duncan would have parents believe that some kind of re-invention of the wheel has transpired here. Hardly. Recommended, because it will be popular. (See SITTING IN LIMBO for availability.)