Review of Follow That Bird (1985) by Robbie B — 01 Nov 2012

Big Bird is feeling lonely in Sesame Street since he was never raised by a bird family and there are no other birds living there. Opportunity soon knocks when Big Bird gets the opportunity to live with a family of birds. However, Big Bird finds that he is not happy with his new family and decides he is going to head back to Sesame Street and what follows is the great adventure back home while Big Bird's real family tries desperately to find him.

It may seem weird for a 20-year-old man to get excited about this movie, but even though this is technically a kids movie and can be enjoyed by anyone who has liked Sesame Street at some point in their lives. For kids, its a fun movie with their favorite characters and for adults it's a nostalgia movie. I really enjoyed this movie in the way that it shows the importance of family and that it does not matter who is raising who, but rather how they raise you. Family is more than that. I also enjoyed the musical numbers and thought the songs were pretty catchy considering they are meant for young children (including the one featuring Waylon Jennings). I even liked Kermit the Frog's cameo in it. I'm not sure if he was still a starring muppet on the show, but nonetheless, I liked how they threw him in. However, there were two parts of this movie that kept me from giving it a perfect score. The first is the Dodo family, a family of dodo birds and the family that Big Bird temporarily lives with. Their behavior is just plain silly and I realize they are suppose to be since that motivates Big Bird to leave, but even after he leaves they still act silly and do not seem to care that their new family member has just run away from them (so much for family). There's even a part where they act a little like racists when they tell Big Bird he needs a new best friend since his best friend, Snuffy, isn't a bird. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intention of Jim Henson, but it still felt wrong. I also wasn't very fond of Cookie Monster in this movie. For the most part, Cookie Monster is just eating up Gordon's car. I know that this is part of Cookie Monster's character as he eats things other than just cookies (or even food), but a car is just ridiculous. I did not find that funny even at a kid's level of humor. However, these are small flaws to an otherwise very good movie and I'm not ashamed to have watched this on my own at age 20.