Sing-A-Long with Barbie

Pro: Three stars because my daughter loves this and anything Barbie

Con:

Given this DVD costs as much as any Barbie Movie I was really disappointed.

I expected Karaoke style music videos. Instead the first 2/3rds of the DVD is simply clips from the movie with words.

By clips I don't mean that the DVD strings together clips of the movies to make a music video. That's what I expected and there are some videos like that on the last part of the DVD.

Instead Barbie exerted as little effort as possible and just copied the section of the movie with the song. The problem with this is that the non-song parts of the movie are also included. For example if anyone was speaking during the singing in the movie, they are speaking during the video (complete with text on-screen). This is very disconcerting to be singing the song with barbie and then all of a sudden the DVD is telling you to say whatever the evil Witch or two alternate life style guys are speaking (not singing).

The lost couple of songs are what I expected the entire DVD to be like. However as these videos are included on their respective DVDs (diamond castle and 12 dancing princes) you are paying for content you most likely have already purchased. Again, barbie gives us nothing new.

Finally some of the song selections/omissions are odd. For example, none of us could even remember 2 of the 3 songs from "Barbie and the Three Musketeers", but one song that would have been a great "sing along" song (She's unbelievable) is not included on the DVD. The song "connected" is on the DVD twice however the Katherine McPhee version of Connected is omitted.

Finally for us the sound volume is all messed up. It's almost as if Barbied copied the sound directly from the movies without any adjustments. When listening keep the remote handy as we had to vary our sound from 30 to 82 to maintain a good volume.

Edited:
Corrected spelling error pointed out by Stefanie Kline
Corrected idol contestant gaffe pointed out by Melanie Lane

I love the Barbie DVDs so when I was given the new "Sing Along with Barbie" DVD to review I was excited! Though not put together as well as it could have been, it still is entertaining.

Twelve Barbie songs comprise this DVD which is basically 12 scenes ripped from some of our favorite Barbie movies like "The Island Princess," "Barbie and the Three Musketeers," "Barbie and the Diamond Castle," "The Princess and the Pauper" and a few more.

My seven year old daughter was able to follow along with the purple highlighted words, like you'd do in karaoke, though we did notice when there was a duet, it was harder to follow. We did figure out that the second singer's lyrics were on the bottom, but my son pointed out it would have been better if the words were highlighted a different color. One negative is that since the songs are scenes from the movie, there is talking involved and that talking is also highlighted across the screen as if the subtitles were just turned on, but that is easily overlooked.

I'm sure more effort could have been put into making this product more of a traditional karaoke style then just scenes ripped from the dvds with subtitles turned on, but having the songs all in one dvd is a fun way to watch all your favorite Barbie dvds.

It was a great idea, putting many of the songs on one DVD. My granddaughter sits and watches and sings for long periods of time. She loves all the songs from the movies and practically has them all memorized, so even though she can't read yet, she still knows most of the words. Nothing compares to the Barbie movies in creativity, vidid, beautiful color and characters.