LEGO Friends: Friends Together Again (DVD) – Series Review
You’ve already met the group of friends in the LEGO Friends series as we’ve already did a review on another part in the LEGO Friends franchise. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to check out the review here but as we all are a bit lazy sometimes, I’ll provide a small recap.
In LEGO Friends, there’s a group of five young, energetic girls who are best buddies and experience a huge variety of adventures. First of all, there’s Olivia. Olivia enjoys science and seems to know quite a lot about everything. She’s incredibly smart and mostly finds the solution for any kind of problem. Next up, we’ve got Stephanie who’s very social and likes to organize and lead events. Most of the time, she’s a pretty easy-going character but sometimes she likes giving orders a bit too much. Emma is totally into fashion and won’t hesitate to give you advice on clothes and jewelry. In every group of friends there’s at least one person who’s infatuated with animals and here, that’s Mia. While being a vegetarian too, Mia loves caring for animals and riding a horse. Lastly, some words about Andrea. You can associate her with music and singing. If there’s a song playing in the series, it’s mostly because Andrea initiates it.
So, that’s about it for the introduction of the main characters in the show. Of course, there’re still a lot of recurring ones but those five are the most important obviously. Now let’s talk some more about the episodes that come with the DVD box. The first one is titled “Country Girls” and tells us the story of the Friends staying over at Mia’s farm where lots and lots of animals are roaming around. Of course, life on a farm comes with a nice diversity of chores so the girls need to strap on their working boots and help out wherever they can! Episode number 2 goes with the name of “Emma’s Dilemma” and shows us how an insecure Emma gets badly ignored by her buddies while the group is thinking of participating in a floating competition (where every party must make a beautiful boat). After being continuously ignored, Emma decides to help a different party with the creation of their boat and like this, the Friends are torn apart. The whole episode focuses on working together and making amends. Last but not least, in “Friends of the Jungle” we see how Olivia’s aunt Sophie is getting ready for her marriage. There’s only one minor problem: the groom has gone missing in the jungle! Time for the LEGO Friends to take the plane and go looking for him while making sure Sophie isn’t aware of what’s going on.
The episodes offer a nice variety of themes and characters but in “Country Girls” there’s a different branch of the story which makes two of the girls argue about the same boy who they both seem to like a lot. Thinking about the audience this series is targeting, this seems a bit out of place. An audience as young as that won’t get the whole triangle romance thing and even if they do, it might not seem appropriate to put it in a young children’s show just like this one. The other episodes are pretty fun to watch and you can see that the creators try to be as diverse as possible in thinking about adventures for the girls.
Unfortunately, the series isn’t without it set-backs. For one, the lip synchronization could’ve been better as the words don’t always match the mouths of the characters. Of course, children probably won’t notice this at all but if you’re watching with your kids, you might become a little annoyed by it. Another remark is one about the voice acting. The five girls themselves have a pretty good voice actress but this doesn’t apply to other, less prominent personages. In one of the episodes, we meet Mia’s grandparents but their speech wasn’t all that great and way too artificial. Some other characters suffer the same issue so it might be a good idea to keep this in mind for future releases.
Conclusion
LEGO Friends: Friends Together Again is a decent addition in the LEGO Friends franchise but it’ll not blow you away. The themes in the episodes are varied enough but some situations were probably best left out as it doesn’t fit the target audience. The voice acting is a bit lacking for some secondary characters and the lip synchronization could’ve used some work too but these are mostly things young children won’t even notice. The series is an average alternative for girls who like LEGO as well and don’t like the more action-oriented LEGO television series.
LEGO Friends: Friends Together Again (DVD) – Series Review,
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