American Legends

Rating:
Summary: what a disappointment!
Review: 1. I'm glad I bought it used. 2. I've sold it already. 3. Buy the Silly Symphonies and save yourself this lackluster excuse for nostalgia.

Rating:
Summary: what a disappointment!
Review: 1. I'm glad I bought it used. 2. I've sold it already. 3. Buy the Silly Symphonies and save yourself this lackluster excuse for nostalgia.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been more
Review: I agree with all of the previous reviewers in that Pecos Bill would have been a great addition here. The lack of special features is also a problem. I also don't know why they called the last feature "The Brave Engineer" instead of "Casey Jones." The folks at Disney probably figured kids wouldn't know who he was. Shame. I hope Disney contiunes what it started with the Treasures series.

Rating:
Summary: Disney is a disappointment
Review: I am sorry I purchased this video. I wanted the orginal classic version of American Legends. This is not the case. Disney decided not to include the story of Pecos Bill. Instead they added John Henry. I do not know why, and I am sure we will never know why. I am a teacher in the state of Texas and I have used the American Legends in several different ways. I was excited to see them on video to use in my classroom. If I could I would return it and let Disney know how dissappointed I am.

Rating:
Summary: Glad to have it
Review: I Love the original Disney shorts, and this is a pretty good collection. Others have already commented on the omission of Pecos Bill, who I also missed. But I haven't seen Casey Jones in A Long Time, and had forgotten how funny that cartoon is. The new John Henry short was pretty well done. I liked how the social context of the time was explained in the little space a short allows. The animation is fluid and life-like, but the rough pencil sketches can be seen under the color, which makes the cartoon look rough and is distracting.

Rating:
Summary: Glad to have it
Review: I Love the original Disney shorts, and this is a pretty good collection. Others have already commented on the omission of Pecos Bill, who I also missed. But I haven't seen Casey Jones in A Long Time, and had forgotten how funny that cartoon is. The new John Henry short was pretty well done. I liked how the social context of the time was explained in the little space a short allows. The animation is fluid and life-like, but the rough pencil sketches can be seen under the color, which makes the cartoon look rough and is distracting.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: I must admit I didn't do my research. I was expecting a collection of all new video shorts instead of one new and three older cartoons. While I thought the John Henry cartoon was fast-paced and visually exciting, the others showed their age. I had a hard time maintaining interest so I'm sure it was difficult for my six and four year olds. I doubt that this video will spend much time in our VCR. I would recommend this only to those nostalgic for forty year old cartoon shorts.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: I must admit I didn't do my research. I was expecting a collection of all new video shorts instead of one new and three older cartoons. While I thought the John Henry cartoon was fast-paced and visually exciting, the others showed their age. I had a hard time maintaining interest so I'm sure it was difficult for my six and four year olds. I doubt that this video will spend much time in our VCR. I would recommend this only to those nostalgic for forty year old cartoon shorts.

Rating:
Summary: This probably took a few days to slap together...
Review: I must admit, I love disney's animation, almost all of it, and when I saw that they had put a few shorts together that I didn't own, I bought it. But after watching it, I can't help but think that this was thrown together to make money off of the current level of patriotism. And when I say "thrown together", I mean THROWN TOGETHER. The program doesn't even have any kind of beginning at all. Just a cheap title card leading straight into James Earl Jones' segments, which by the way are terribly written AND filmed. The actual shorts have been snipped down to size, with no beginning, title cards, or end segments, credits, either. And as for all of you buying this just for the new John Henry short, you should know that it is "stylized". This means that the animators used a special technique when creating this short that makes it look "rough" and "rugged". If you've ever seen a clip of animation before it goes into the cleanup stage, where they erase all the little markings on the drawing and then refine the lines, then you've seen this "technique". However, to me it just looks messy and cheap, like the project was so rushed that they couldn't put it through cleanup, and just colored over all the markings. This does absolutely NOTHING to help the short, all it did to me was make me dizzy and annoyed at the sloppiness of it all. The final straw for me was the music over the end credits, a sample of the song from John Henry repeated over and over, about 5 times. THEY COULDN'T EVEN GET SOME APPROPRIATE CREDIT MUSIC, HOW CHEAP! Overall, I was pretty disappointed with their general sloppiness with this whole project. 1 star for a good idea, and the other just because it's Disney.

Rating:
Summary: It is a good video
Review: I remember watching three of these cartoon shorts when I was a girl.I wanted my kids to see them since now is an important time to instill pride of our country in our kids. I especially like the introduction of each short by James Earl Jones. The only fault I see in this video is in the new short about John Henry. The animation is not clean. You can see lines in the peoples faces that should not be there. Other than that it is fine and my kids love the new songs. I rate it 4 stars.