Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Animation
Likes: Noggin
Dislikes: Dora the Explorer
Hates: How little content is on most kids DVDs

The Show
One of the most defining elements of "Dora the Explorer" has to be the music, as each episode features songs that serve to push forward the story or lesson of the episode. Sometimes they are just a way to help remember the Spanish/English vocabulary exercises, other times they are just silly songs. But there's one thing they all are, and that's incredibly repetitive, which makes them hard to listen to for adults. As Brian Regan has pointed out, the Map song, in which the character says "I'm the map" approximately 400 times in a row, is not exactly the pinnacle of lyric-writing. Putting them all together doesn't help, especially when you end up with songs like "The Bubble Song" and "The Squeaky Song" back to back, illustrating that they are the exact same song, with a few words changed.

On this DVD, you get a selection of songs from the series, broken up into four groups of questionable qualification, Friendship Mountain, Music School, El Parque and Pirate Piggies' Ship, positioned on a map like Dora's usual quests, with Map serving as M.C. What these groups are suppose to represent is unclear, though El Parque claims to be Spanish songs (unlike the songs with Spanish in the other three groups?) and Pirate Piggies' Ship is basically just the songs from the two-part "Give Us Back Our Treasure!" episode. Other than those qualities, it's just a mess of music thrown together. If your kid has a favorite tune, they are out of luck though, as there's no individual track listings, and chapter stops are only available for the four groups, not songs.

Part of the reason for that is probably the length of the songs. One song, "Buzz Buzz," consists of the word Buzz repeated several times, and lasts all of 20 seconds. When you add up everything, it's just 32 minutes of music, or just a bit more content than a single episode of "Dora the Explorer." While the addition of on-screen lyrics for each song is a definite plus, making it easier for your child to sing along with, the overall package is distinctly lacking and is certainly less likely to entertain than your traditional four-episode DVD release.

The DVD
For some reason, most kids DVDs have excessive and unskippable openings, which just serve to frustrate your child, but this disc raises the art to a new level. After slogging through the many Nickelodeon promos, you have to suffer through a full song by Map before accessing the menu. Thankfully, it doesn't repeat when you return to the menu to select a section of the map (the four groups of songs) or the play-all, instructions or special features options. There are no audio options and no subtitles (which isn't a big deal, as the words to the songs appear on-screen.) There's also no closed captioning.

The Quality
The full-frame video from the series looks as good as it ever has on DVD or TV, though the intro scenes, which are not fully animated, look as cheesy as the old cut-out Marvel cartoons of the '60s. Everything is bright and vivid, with no obvious issues with dirt, damage or digital artifacts. The newly inserted sing-along text looks good as well, and fits in fine with the animation.

The Dolby Digital 2.0 track does a fine job of presenting the songs on this disc, playing everything strong and right down the middle. It's a clean reproduction of what you hear on TV, with no bells or whistles not a dynamic mix, but that's exactly what you'd expect from a kids DVD.

The Extras
The only extra on this disc is an additional song, "Down By The Bay," sung by Dora and Boots. A rhyming exercise, the song is utterly nonsensical and will be hard to listen to more than once.

There's an added non-DVD extra included (for a limited time, according to the packaging) as it arrives with an inflatable Dora microphone for little tykes to play along with. About 10 inches long, it's a cute prop that should get plenty of playtime from any hammy kiddo.

The Bottom Line
This may be the biggest rip-off among the Nickelodeon DVDs, with just 35 minutes worth of content (including the extra.) Worse yet, that content is Dora songs, which, probably, isn't so bad for the small fans of the show, but get stuck watching with your kid and you'll probably want to cause damage to your eardrums. Add in a distinct lack of extras and a slow start-up, and there's little to recommend about this DVD, unless songs like "Bate, Bate, Chocolate" are your cup of tea.

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*The Reviewer's Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer's biases lie on the film's subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.