Barney's Halloween Party

	Super-de-dooper? Not exactly. Barney's latest entry in the bludgeon with blandness kidvid sweepstakes is as butt-numbingly pedestrian as...well...the initial Barney and the Backyard Gang: The Backyard Show (VL-11/88) was 10 (!) years ago. Here, Barney and the color-by-numbers multicultural ‘backyard' gang gather pumpkins for a school Halloween party, make their own ‘goodie bags' for trick or treating and share in the Halloween party festivities with their classmates (such as an extremely fake pinata bashing, in which you can see the pinata jiggle when some unseen stagehand lets the ripcord go). With the exception of a side story involving Baby Bop's first Halloween, the characters--including Barney--are depressingly interchangeable (you could take all the dialogue by Barney and the kids, arbitrarily reassign the lines, and no one would notice the difference; which gives you a pretty good idea how much thought went into character development). The other usual ‘Barney' tropes are all here in strength: lip-synching of (mostly) un-original songs, aggressive smiling and feigned hyper-enthusiasm by the Unchildren, and not one lick of originality in the storyline (kids going to a Halloween party does not--in my book--even qualify as a story; it's an activity). Don't get me wrong: I love good children's videos--Sesame Street, Blue's Clues, even Lyrick Studios' Wishbone series; all wonderful stuff...but I do not love Barney, and I suspect--after ten years of consistently tepid reviews--he doesn't much love me either. Not recommended. (R. Pitman)