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Can you tell me how to get, how to get back to my childhood’s Sesame Street?

Can you remember a time when Sesame Street didn’t include Elmo, the furry, fuzzy, scarlet-red usurper so many of us have come to loathe? I can. He was just being introduced when I was a little kid, and mostly, he just showed up in a couple of small segments. He would sing his cute-but-not-overkill “Elmo’s Song,” (mostly composed of the lyrics, “La la la la…”) and go away again, and because he always seemed like a little brother to all the other characters, that worked out fine. No, to me, Sesame Street is about all of the other characters, so many of whom have now been pushed to the wayside, either because the show itself has decided to re-focus on younger children, or because (sadly) the original voices are no longer with us. My Sesame Street will always be Jim Henson’s Ernie and Frank Oz’s Bert. It’s Grover and Cookie Monster and Herry and Snuffleupagus and Barkley and the Tweedles and Guy Smiley. It’s Maria, Luis, Susan, Gordon, Linda and Bob. It’s “The Alligator King,” and “I’m An Aardvark,” and the original Henson version of “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon” that makes me tear up every single time.

Follow That Bird is my Sesame Street.

Actually, it pre-dates me slightly. Follow That Bird is the original, theatrical Sesame Street feature film from 1985, probably less than a year before tyke-sized me sat down in front of the tube and started learning how to memorize a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. But the elements that are here are exactly as I remember the Street: a little expanded in size and detail for theatrical presentation, to be sure, yet with the same cast and the same puppets at the time I recall them best. The interesting thing about Follow That Bird is how much it emphasizes the ensemble nature of the cast, human and otherwise. Yes, it’s a story about Big Bird leaving to search for a family (or if you prefer, being forced to join a family by social workers!), but the point of the film is that he’s already left his family behind, back on Sesame Street. As viewers, children are asked to identify the cast as a sort of extended family, too: all of them, not just Big Bird, or Oscar, or the cameoing little red monster who looks just like something called an Elmo (but sure doesn’t sound like him). All the characters kids loved in 1985 are here. They all get something to do. Nobody gets left on the sidelines.

Okay: truth be told, it’s not the greatest of plots. It’s a good plot idea, and the central theme works well. Big Bird gets placed with a “bird family” (a group of Dodos who are, well, dodos) by a well-meaning social worker, Miss Finch (a large Big Bird-style Muppet voiced by Sally Kellerman), and she takes off in hot pursuit when he makes up his mind to leave for his real home. Simple enough – and, in fact, boring enough, really only punctuated by a couple of songs and a cameo from singer Waylon Jennings. Ex-SCTV members Joe Flaherty and Dave Thomas don’t work that well as villainous carnival shysters, and their threat – locking Big Bird up and painting him bright blue as a sideshow – is a bit of a damp squib after the energy of the chase throughout the rest of the film. That’s where the fun does come in: watching the residents of Sesame Street set out in search of Big Bird themselves. Cookie Monster ends up eating most of Susan’s car; Oscar and Maria end up at a Grouch diner; Bert and Ernie take their biplane (yes, their biplane) and have the most addictive song of the movie. Those are the portions of the movie parents will find at all entertaining; the rest is strictly for kids.

That’s okay, though – this is, after all, Sesame Street. If a five-year-old likes it, success! And really, that’s still true. No matter how much I dislike the modern incarnation of the show, the four- and five-year-olds adore it, and they adore Elmo, the spotlight-grubbing imp. (This doubtless explains why he appears on both the DVD menus and cover art!) Jim Henson’s vision, then, carries on, just as it should, and it doesn’t matter if Ernie doesn’t sound quite the same as he did in 1985. Really, it doesn’t. It doesn’t at all.

Okay, so it does to me, anyway.

Follow that Bird comes to us from Warner Brothers, and is presented for the first time on home video in its original, 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The anamorphic transfer is grainy and, frankly, a bit gray. Skin tones are rather pink. Otherwise it looks okay – just not remarkable in any way. Kids aren’t going to be disappointed, but this is one of the DVD transfers with the least “pop” I’ve seen in a fairly long time.

Audio is provided in English, Spanish and Portuguese, while optional subtitles are available in English, French, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese. Wow! Lots of options for the kids to learn from, there, and they’re available for the special features, too.

Despite the DVD cover’s claim to be “loaded with NEW bonus content!” the only real bonus is Follow That Bird: An Interview with Caroll Spinney (10 mins.). Spinney discusses his creation of the Big Bird character, along with Oscar the Grouch, and relates a few specific memories from making the bigger, more expensive film. It’s all pretty generalized, and frankly, I was a little sorry not to see clips of the early, “Bullwinkle”-voiced Big Bird, or even the original costume design so kids can fully visualize how it works.

Sing-a-Long offers kids the opportunity to sing along to three songs – “Easy Goin’ Day,” “Grouch Anthem,” and “One Little Star” (exactly two of the three choices you might expect); the film footage, interestingly, is presented 4:3 and unrestored, while the technique of showing what lyric to sing actually makes them quite hard to read. When did the bouncing ball fall out of fashion? Jump to a Song, on the other hand, does just that – to any one of the seven songs in the movie.

The Theatrical Trailer (2 mins.) may be dingy and unrestored, but it is presented in the original 1.85:1 ratio, while the Trailers sub-section includes spots for Scooby-Doo: Where Are You?, Clone Wars, Smurfs, Peanuts: Snoopy’s Reunion, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Tom and Jerry Tales and The Wiggles Present Dorothy the Dinosaur. I would certainly take Follow That Bird over any of those.

Finally, as is mentioned on the DVD menus, parents with DVD-Rom drives can use this disc to print off six Sesame Street coloring pages (four of which, comically, star our old friend Elmo!). There are also weblinks to the KidsWB and Sesame Street sites. Sneaky.

Follow That Bird is a welcome reminder of my youth; more so, I think, than it actually is all that great a film. Its heart, however, is firmly in the right place, and anyone who grew up with Sesame Street in the early-to-mid-1980s will enjoy a visit with old friends. Maybe a few of us will even be able to pass on a little of that enthusiasm to the next generation – leading them, naturally, from the cult of Elmo, and back to the path of righteousness.

…I really have become an old woman, haven’t I? 

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