Courtesy Disney Channel
Handy Manny Big Race
Friendly Rating: Best for little ones, some wit for adults.
Safety Rating: Perfectly safe.
Quality Rating: It’s more fun than not.
On Disney Channel, 7 p.m.
It’s another primetime special from Handy Manny and his talking tools. Disney Channel is also pushing its tips for family night activities on its website: http://tv.disney.go.com/playhouse/handymanny/bigrace/movienight.html. (Beware, the site has a soundtrack, and the button to turn it off is a tiny green oval with a red music not in it in the upper, right hand corner.) However, while they’ve got the right idea, personally, I found the tips a little on the lame side. Waving flags you printed out to get in the mood? The crafts both involved printing stuff out on your color printer – and it may be because I’m inherently cheap, but it seemed a bit of a waste of paper and ink cartridges.
If you want to do some crafts together – the part I think is a great idea – why not put out some paper and crayons and let the kids draw tools and cars on their own? So what if they don’t look like much – that’s how kids learn. You can also enlist their help pulling together the snacks on the site. And those do look like fun.
As for the show, it’s typical Handy Manny with only one lame song (and it wasn’t that lame). I like Handy Manny. It doesn’t beat Sesame Street, but the gag factor is acceptably low. The tool characters are lots of fun. From grumpy Turner (a flat-head screwdriver) to Rusty, the neurotic wrench, they’re not the typical, gag-me happy crew.
And Manny runs up against some real obstacles as opposed to the more usual non-problems you find in a lot of tiny tot shows these days. In this case, his buddy wants to enter the big race and become a race car driver, but his car is a real wreck. So Manny and the tools go to work (cue lame song). Then the kid gets a case of the nerves and Manny gets reeled in to drive.
Your big problem is going to be older siblings who are just past Handy Manny stage. Upper elementary and middle schoolers are old enough to watch “baby” stuff without feeling like babies, themselves, or having to put down their younger sibs. But this is a good time to teach patience, tolerance and modeling for your older, but not that old, kids. You may even want to point out that even though they’re too old for the show, they can still find something to appreciate in it because they’re old enough and smart enough to.
