It's Sleepytime

Although I thoroughly enjoyed It's Pottytime, the successful first entry in the Duke Family Series produced under the guidance of Duke University Medical Center (reviewed in our November 1992 issue), their second outing is a little weird. Meant to aid young children in going to sleep on their own at night, the video follows a boy and a girl through their nightly bedtime routine of bathing, brushing their teeth, and listening to stories and songs. The tape offers some good tips for parents--the importance of routine, how to handle nightmares, encouraging kids to have good dreams, etc. But this is overproduced to the max; these families--who appear to be somewhat to the right of a Norman Rockwell portrait--all talk as if they're in commercials; wide-eyed and wearing those Stepford Wife smiles. In one scene, as a mother pads off to attend to her crying baby, a lullaby on the soundtrack starts cooing "I know she is crying, because I'm not there; I'll reassure her and take a nap here." Now, I can handle Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series no problem, but this made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Can today's parents be so stupid that they need to receive child care instruction in rhymed couplets? I hope not. Later on, two young boys are seen playing on swings and one says to the other "we better take our naps now," and his friend agrees! I'm sorry, but Kevin McCarthy, Donald Sutherland, and myself would all see eye-to-eye on the obvious: these are pod people, pure and simple. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: an audiocassette featuring the lullabies is included with the video.] (Available from: Video Distributors, Inc., Dixie Village Shopping Center, Gastonia, NC 28052; (800) 445-5142.)