Jay Jay the Jet Plane-Friends Take Flight (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Song Lyrics-Sing-Alongs (4) Trailer-Bear in the Big Blue House, New McDonald's Farm
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	93:20 (Case: 95)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Hugh Martin
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Vanessa Stacy John Semper Terence Taylor
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Craig Dobbin Brian Mann Oscar Dominguez

    My son, who is 22 months old, simply adores all manner of machines like Trains, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Planes and Helicopters, so when I saw this DVD was available for review, I thought - why not? After watching it with him, there are some reasons why not.....dependent upon your point of view.

    Jay Jay the Jet Plane is an American produced animated children's show which is shown on PBS in the US, Discovery Kids in the UK and the Nine Network here in Australia. There seems to be two flavours of this show, one for American audiences and one for English audiences. We seem to have got the English version here. I cannot find any categorical evidence that this is true but rather this is based on a guess. It would seem that the actress who plays Brenda Blue (one of the few human characters) is different in this version than in the US version. Here she speaks with an English accent (as does the narrator), although the actress (Vanessa Stacy) is actually from New Zealand. The US actress looks completely different. I can only assume that the producers decided to make it a bit more English before launching it in the UK. Unfortunately, the voices of the planes are annoyingly American.

    The show is bright, cheerful, twee and completely and utterly political correct. Every episode has a message which is pounded home relentlessly. Despite this the characters are very cute and my son certainly seems to enjoy it. The show is computer animated with real actors added in. The main characters are:

• Jay Jay - A small blue jet plane who lives in Tarrytown and works for EZ Airlines.
• Snuffy - His young friend who is a prop plane.
• Brenda Blue - The airline's mechanic and friend to the planes.
• Oscar - An old bi-plane
• Tracy - An African-American female jet plane
• Herky - A helicopter with a strange Scottish/Italian accent
• Revvin' Evan - The airport fire engine
• Big Jake - A Cargo Plane
• Savannah - A Lear jet

    This disc includes 7 episodes, each of approximately 13 minutes duration. Each episode includes a number of songs sung by the aeroplanes. The episodes are:

1. Snuffy's Favourite Colour - Snuffy tries to choose his favourite colour.
2. Super Loop-de-Loop - An old friend of Oscar comes to visit and he tries to relive his youth, because he thinks she only wants to see the old tricks he used to do.
3. Brenda's Mothers Day - Brenda's mother is coming to visit for Mother's Day
4. Tuffy the Tiny Tow Truck - A young tow truck with annoying lisp needs help to pass her tow truck test.
5. Snuffy's Birthday Surprise - Snuffy doesn't know what he wants for his birthday until Brenda suggests he ask for something useful to help others.
6. Catch the Buzz - Big Jake gets a buzzing in his head which causes him to crash and the friends must help work out why.
7. Grumpy O'Malley - The planes organise a family reunion for the airline's owner, E Z O'Malley.

    If you have a limited ability to cope with American wholesomeness, avoid this series. Younger children will like the funny and cute planes, like my son does, so it all depends on your personal point of view.

Video

    The video quality is very good.

    The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced which is the original aspect ratio.

    Clarity and sharpness were excellent. There was no low level noise.

    The colour was excellent, bright and cheerful.

    The only noticeable artefacts were some mild artefacts consisting of some slight shimmering and jagged lines. They will certainly not bother the kids.

    There are no subtitles despite the case contending that there are.
    

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is very good.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

    Dialogue was clear and easy to understand and there was no problem with audio sync.

    The music by Craig Dobbin & Brian Mann is very twee and annoying for adults but my son seemed to like it. The theme song tends to get stuck in your head...

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu includes stills, and the ability to select episodes.

Sing-a-longs

    This includes 4 of the songs from the episodes with singalong karaoke style lyrics along the bottom of the screen. The songs are Jay Jay's theme song (0:46), Double Over - Loop De Loop (1:05), I Never Give Up (0:47), Happiness is helping all the rest (0:47). These include a glimpse of the American Brenda Blue.

Trailers

    Short trailers for The Bear in the Big Blue House & New MacDonalds Farm on DVD.

    This is available in the same format in Region 2. The Region 1 releases of this series only contain three episodes so the local product seems to be the best.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall