3-2-1 Penguins! Trouble on Planet Wait-Your-Turn

Reviewed by: Josh Johnson
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating:	Excellent!
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience:	Family
Genre:	Animation
Length:	30 min.
Year of Release:	2000
USA Release:

Relevant Issues

Penguin coloring page

Adventures in the rainforest! Learn about the Creator of the universe by exploring His marvelous creation. Fun for the whole family with games, activities, stories, answers to children’s questions, color pages, and more! One of the Web’s first and most popular Christian Web sites for children. Nonprofit, evangelical, nondenominational.

Featuring	Zidgel, Fidgel, Midgel, Kevin, Jason, Michelle
Director
Producer	Big Idea
Distributor

Years ago, Big Idea productions created the groundbreaking video series Veggie Tales, which successfully combined Sunday school values and Saturday morning fun. Now, the creators of Veggie Tales have created an entirely new series that promises to live up to the first series.

“3-2-1 Penguins!” follows the story of two young children, Jason and Michelle, who have adventures with space-traveling penguins while visiting their grandmother. Because this is the first episode in the series, there is a lot of character development and not as much plot as later episodes will have.

In this episode, “Trouble on Planet Wait-Your-Turn”, Jason is acting impatiently until a toy spaceship and some penguin figurines come to life, and he is taken into outer space to help on a mission. On Planet Wait-Your-Turn, the locals’ desire to always be before everyone else has spread to the planet itself. As a result, the planet has broken its orbit and is now the first planet in the solar system, which means that it’s too close to the sun. Jason has to help the penguins while also learning the importance of patience.

In terms of quality, “3-2-1 Penguins!” is right up there with Veggie Tales. The plot is good, the humor fits in with the story nicely, and the animation is superb. The older fans will enjoy this new series as much as the younger fans. “3-2-1 Penguins!” has the same solid morals and Christian messages as Veggie Tales. The message of this video is clear: God wants us to be patient and to let others come before us.

I have been a fan of Big Idea’s works since I was in high school. I got this tape the day it came out, and my friends and I all loved it. I’m looking forward to future episodes of the series. I definitely recommend this video.

I thought this was a great show. I liked the world and framing device aspects which are kind of lacking in VT. In response to the above viewer, since they stressed strongly that the whole thing was a daydream, I didn’t have a problem with Jason not being too scared since he was thus in charge of the whole story. They did show the grandma using the vacuum around the same time the kids were in the attic. This maybe was the source of the vacuums showing up in the daydream, a la Wizard of Oz, if that’s what the writers were after. My only real problem with the story […spoiler here, feel free not to read further!] was that in the end it was supposedly Jason’s allowing someone else to go first which solved the problem, although earlier the captain said to Kevin something like “OK, if that’s your attitude then you go first” when he kicked him out of the ship. Admittedly not the offer, but the attitude. In all I think the imagination and humor are on par with VT and I want to see more! My Ratings: [Excellent / 5]

Justin Massengale, age 27

This video was created by a small, but hard-working team who managed to accomplish an extremely challenging project in a very short period of time, yet managing to make it an OUTSTANDING show! I look forward to each and every upcoming release. That team is awesome! My Ratings: [Excellent / 5]

Joe Gorski, age 23

My whole family LOVES anything Big Idea makes! However, my husband and I were a little disappointed by this video. Our kids seemed to like it enough (ages 4 and 6). Reflective here; “I don’t know… it just wasn’t as good as Veggie Tales.” My Ratings: [Excellent / 4]

Joy Mason, age 23

Wow! I’m impressed! The wait for this release from Big Idea was worth it! The stupidity makes it all the more fun. Our whole family has watched this more times than you would believe, and we still crack up! My Ratings: [5/5]

Mickey Johnson, age 16

Well, unfortunately I have to say that I was a bit disappointed in this release. We have been waiting for penquins for 6 months now and were hoping for so much more. Jason is a good character, but I thought Michelle was boring, annoying and contrived. I don’t understand why Jason wasn’t scared when he was shrunk by the penquins and put into their space ship. The folks at Big Idea have compared this series to “Chroincles of Narnia” meets “Chuck Jones” and that is a bit overstated. It seemed unbelieveable to me that a boy who was shrunk and brought into another world wouldn’t have been scared. Then to go to a planet full of vacuum cleaners? Why? My children thought that was so stupid. I think the whole show was a stretch. The animation was good, as is most of what Big Idea puts out, but the story was lacking… just a bit contrived to me and mine. My Ratings: [4/3]

Jessie Blake, age 34