Rating: 
Summary: Toy Story Comes To Life....
Review: This video made it to our family library long ago. Entertaining, enjoyable for adults and children, with relatively little violence (there are some battle scenes), it opens up avenues for dinner time conversation about reality, fantasy, Native Americans, friendship and bullies. In addition, watching this movie led us to the book series, which my then 6 year old listened to intently. What we liked - fantasy mixed with reality, much like Small Soldiers or E.T. (though not nearly as good as E.T.) With the help of a magical key and cabinet, our hero, Omri, brings a figurine, Little Bear, to life (in miniature form). He watches Little Bear build a home and finds a wife for him. Omri's best friend, Patrick, doesn't quite understand the difference between play and real lives, and brings Boone, a cowboy and his horse to life, setting off a small battle between the two people. Boone brings a touch of comic relief to the film, which deals with some serious issues. Death is lightly touched on, when Omri's first attempt to find a friend for Little Bear pushes an elderly figurine into cardiac arrest, with serious effects on Omri's comprehension of his 'toys.' War, too, is addressed slightly when he brings a tiny World War I medic back to care for a miniscule character's real life wounds. Parallel to this story is Omri's move into a new neighborhood, away from his best friend and into some slight confrontations with bullies (further developed in the sequel to this video). We started with the video, which led us to the book series (by Lynne Reid Banks). The video is almost as good as the book, with convincing special effects, good acting, entertainment and more meaningful after-movie talk than most children's. A good view, and if you get the version(s) with the figurines, they are very close to the movie miniatures! Thumbs up from all of our family members - hope you enjoy it (and read the books!!!)
Rating: 
Summary: Lessons to Learn
Review: When Omri makes his toy Indian and his friend's toy cowboy into real miniature people, the Indian and Cowboy learn to overcome their prejudices and become friends. Omri also learns that relationships require responsibility and that we should not use others for our own pleasure. The movie contains a beautiful scene of the sun setting between New York's Twin Towers (WTC) that brought my wife to tears. The DVD version contains both widescreen and full screen versions. The full screen seemed to run better on my player. It's not the best family movie around, but it's not bad either.
Rating:
Summary: Good movie.
Review: When you first see Omri, a kid who's short, has messy hair and not the greatest teeth in the world, you don't think anything interesting can happen to him. But something does. His best friend, Patrick, gives him a toy Indian for his birthday. At his party, his brother gives him an old cupboard that he found in the crawlspace of their house. Omri's mother tells Omri that if he can find a key out of her collection, he can have it. He does. It was a key that his great-grandmother gave to his mother.
When Omri carelessly puts the toy Indian into the cupboard and locks it, the toy comes to life.
At first, the Indian (Little Bear) is scared, but eventually learns to trust Omri. Omri gives Little Bear whatever he desires, tools, food, and a hatchett from a knight! However, when he was getting a bow and arrow from an old Indian, the Indian is scared to death--literally! Omri realizes that these "Toys" have real lives and that they aren't something to fool around with. When Patrick discovers Omri's secret, he brings back a Cowboy named Boone. Little Bear and Boone eventually become friends. Omri takes Boone and Little Bear to school (Patrick wanted him to) and Omri displays that he has learned that the "toys" were people by saying "You can't! They're people! You can't use people!" When Patrick was going to show them to friends. Omri's brother takes Omri's cupbaord as a cruel joke and the key gets lost! What's worse, Boone is seriously wounded, and without medical attention, he will die! Omri realizes that Little Bear and Boone's safety and hapiness meant more to him than the novelty of having them. So Omri declares that when the key was found, they were sending Boone and Little Bear home.
The key is eventually found, and Omri is forced to let Little Bear and Boone go. Little Bear and Omri share one last moment, and then he sends them back.
This was a very good movie, at least fo me, and it's a good movie for kids to watch.
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