All Rise...

Judge David Johnson is brought to you by the letter D. For "dope." As in, he's so dope! (Not, "that guy is a dope.")

Editor's Note

Our reviews of Sesame Street: 20 Years And Still Counting (published September 4th, 2010), Sesame Street: Abby In Wonderland (published March 3rd, 2010), Sesame Street: Being Green (published April 6th, 2009), Sesame Street: Bert And Ernie's Great Adventures (published May 8th, 2010), Sesame Street: Bert And Ernie's Word Play (published April 9th, 2010), Sesame Street: Bye-Bye, Pacifier! (published January 1st, 2012), Sesame Street: C Is For Cookie Monster (published November 3rd, 2010), Sesame Street: Dinosaurs! (published May 26th, 2008), Sesame Street: Elmo And Abby's Birthday Fun (published June 10th, 2009), Sesame Street: Elmo's Travel Songs And Games (published May 8th, 2011), Sesame Street: Firefly Fun And Buggy Buddies (published June 1st, 2010), Sesame Street: Learning Letters With Elmo (published September 4th, 2011), Sesame Street: Love The Earth! (published June 4th, 2008), Sesame Street: P Is For Princess (published August 11th, 2010), Sesame Street: Preschool Is Cool! ABCs with Elmo (published July 6th, 2010), Sesame Street Spoofs! Volumes 1 and 2 (published July 10th, 2011), Sesame Street: The Best Of Elmo 2 (published May 19th, 2010), and Sesame Street: Wild Words And Outdoor Adventures (published April 17th, 2011) are also available.

The Charge

This DVD is sure to "shape" young minds.

The Case

Sesame Street rolls out its prime-time player for their latest anthology, Elmo's Shape Adventure, a 45-minute sampling of skits, songs, and animation dedicated to transfusing knowledge of octagons, rhombuses (rhombii?), squares, circles, and all other manner of delightful shapes to your preschooler.

The headlining segment is "The Shape-O-Bots," a goofy little riff on Transformers featuring Andy Samberg of SNL fame dropping wearing a large fake mustache for some reason. It's an extended bit and actually pretty clever.

In support is a section of more shape-themed entertainment, including the "What shape is it?" game, Bert and Ernies' dalliance with a circle, plus a handful of shorter clips, culled from the humongous Sesame Street library. There are more than a couple of decades represented here, and those are some fly stone-washed jeans kids!

While Elmo's Shape Adventure is really just a themed highlight reel, I've come to appreciate these releases. It's not like we need entire seasons of this epic series, so distilled 45-minuted DVDs that hammer home specific learning modules is a good way to go. The cynic can decry the brief runtime and lack of original content, but if you want to get your kids thinking about the magic of parallelograms, this strikes me as one of the better ways to make that happen.

Standard-issue Sesame Street disc: full frame, 2.0 stereo, a downloadable activity book, and a bonus "Triangles with Telly Hut" segment.

The Verdict

Don't be a square. Not guilty.

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