by Rating:
[rate 1.5]
History: VeggieTales’ Where’s God When I’m S-Scared was the first VeggieTales movie produced by Big Idea, Inc. It includes the stories “Tales from the Crisper”, “Everybody’s Got a Water Buffalo”, and “Daniel”. This DVD also has the first VeggieTales silly song.
Tales from the Crisper: In this segment, Junior Asparagus is up late watching a monster movie starring a celery version of Frankenstien. This scares Junior as he’s ready for bed and he lies in bed afraid of things in his closet until Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber arrive in his room and get him to sing “God is Bigger than the Boogie Man.” After singing this song and realizing that God created everything and is therefore bigger than King Kong and the Slime Monster (even though the smile monster can spit slime), Junior tells his dad that he’s no longer afraid and can go to sleep. He falls asleep singing this song.
Everybody’s Got a Water Buffalo: Larry the Cucumber starts to sing about how everyone has a water buffalo and comparing them when Archibald Asparagus comes out to correct Larry to prevent them from getting nasty letters from people wondering where their water buffalo is. As soon as Archibald leaves the scene, Larry starts up again with everyone having a kangaroo and is chased away by Archibald.
Daniel: This musical composition is almost opretic in composition. It confuses the instance in Daniel’s recorded life between Daniel revealing Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and Daniel’s interaction with Darius and the lion’s den. Archibald Asparagus plays King Darius in both parts– but perhaps the fact that he’s wearing a different crown signifies a different king? Larry the Cucumber plays Daniel, and has no perceived aging between the beginning of the short and the end. I’m also not sure that Daniel was as afraid as portrayed– though the solo by Lisa Vischer in here is great. The only other quibble I have with this segment is that the king’s wisemen are not thrown in the lion’s den as punishment for being wrong, but are headed off to Egypt.
My grandma sent us this video just a few months after it came out. I think it was mainly the animation that caught my attention. Today, the animation looks really inferior. But, years before Toy Story came out, I was dazzled. I knew it looked different from the cartoons on TV, but I couldn’t figure out how (hey, I was like 8). I watched the first episode twice in a row when we got it, and soon became a fan. The rest is history!
My kids have had the opposite experience. They primarily saw 3-D animation with VeggieTales first, and then the other later.
Of course, they even like the black-and-white Laurel and Hardy stuff, but it’s still fascinating to see the difference.
Have you seen the DVD release for this episode? Phil Vischer comes on at the beginning to comment on the old technology, and yet the place it has in their hearts. I believe there’s also an Easter Egg on either this one or the second one (Are You My Neighbor?) where they show the original VeggieTales theme song!