Shapes And Colors

It sounds like it could be a brilliant independent abstract film. Instead we have what I dub the spiritual successor to SINGING BABIES. This film stars Puppy Dog- a man in a dog suit. To help him are Jack and his sister (forget her name, shall we go with Jill?); two CGI kids who repeat everything Puppy Dog says.

This is actually two films in one. One film is about shapes. The other is about colors. I have to say, SHAPES is much more entertaining (yup, I'm actually distinguishing goods and bads in a movie like this). COLORS just features Puppy Dog describing objects of various colors (bananas, apples, I think you get the idea). BORING!!!

SHAPES, however, is an interactive tour de force that will keep infants and drunk college students entertained for 45 minutes. Jack and Jill visit Puppy Dog at his house. Puppy Dog teaches the kids how to make shapes with their hands. Unfortunately, Jack is not very adept at this. Every time he tries to make a shape he literally falls on his ass. Apparently making shapes has the unexpected side effect of causing one to lose all equilibrium.

After we watch Jack makes a fool of himself, we cut to a group of live action kids making fools of themselves. Sadly, most of them don't do much better than Jack. Sure, there are some superstars who have mastered the craft of shape-making, but most simply spin in circles while Puppy Dog sings lyrics like:

"Make a square / Make a square / With your hands / With your hands" to the tune of Frere Jacques.

We learn how to make squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, and hearts, but the film doesn't just quit there. It then proceeds towards a hard core anatomy lesson about eyes, ears, mouth, nose, head, and shoulders. Can you guess what that builds up to? That's right! The triumphant second act culminates in the soaring number "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" (yes, Jack still falls down throughout).

But we're still not done! All that learning makes Jack and Jill hungry so Puppy Dog turns them (and the audience) into bears. He then has them all sit on the couch and sing about their favorite foods:

"Five little hungry bears / Sat in a great big chair / Eating some yummy yummy [insert food, needless to say my friends and I were shouting Vodka the whole time]"

The film actually has the gall to have one bear eat broccoli. PC strikes again…

The closing number features a song about learning how to brush your teeth. The fact that there is a scene about teeth brushing in a film titled SHAPES is, in my opinion, one of the greatest works of deconstruction in the modern film era.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License