China: An Open Door--A Tourist View

The back of the box says it all: "Based on an eighteen-day group tour, this video allows you to join our amazing journey in China." Soooo, once again, we have someone taking a tax-deductible vacation while producing a video with all the viewing pleasure of your neighbor's vacation tapes and providing free publicity for the travel company. At least this tape has appropriate background music and maps showing locations visited; however, the journey itself isn't amazing: it's just another bunch of jacketed, sweat-pant wearing, fanny-packed American tourists traveling by the most comfortable means possible, staying in the most Westernized accommodations available. And since the tape was made as part of a group tour, you get the inevitable problems: everybody's head in the shots of the Imperial Palace, crowds cluttering great panoramas, and wide American butts laboriously climbing up temple steps ahead of the camera. The producer has also chosen to include candid moments of chat with the tourists and while I'm sure everyone bonded on the trip, the viewer interested in CHINA frankly doesn't care what Judy or Bob has to say. While this tape is more professional than some of the awful homemade travel "documentaries" I've endured, this remains, in essence, a video scrapbook. Not recommended. (R. Reagan)