Timberrr! From Logs To Lumber

He's a lumberjack, and he's okaaaay. Well, Mac isn't exactly a lumberjack, and okay is a matter of semantics. Mac dresses up in his logger costume and essentially does an Ernest shtick at a logging site and a sawmill. Mac loves to take over the controls of large, dangerous machinery and make a mess. Every kid's dream. At the sawmill, Mac scampers up a pile of stacked logs. Had one of those logs broken free, Mac would have looked like a cartoon character after an encounter with a steam roller. This reviewer immediately turned to his 6-year-old co-reviewer and told him that the man on TV was seriously stupid (and the 6-year-old concurred). Later at the sawmill, courtesy of video magic, Mac goes on a bad trip, being pursued across a dreamscape of giant sawblades. From a production standpoint, this program is superb, featuring outstanding photography and editing, and clever use of special effects. From a learning perspective, it does expose the viewer to a wide spectrum of processes involved in turning trees into finished wood products, but safety and responsibility values are often out in the zone. Timberrr! From Logs to Lumber could almost be classified as adult humor. Pretty weird, but still, thumbs up! Ages 6 and up. (E. Swanson)