I don't think there is anyone who won't admit that creating an animated half hour show about an anthropomorphic pile of dog excrement is a little strange.  At least that's what I thought when I first heard of Doggy Poo, a stop motion animated movie from Korea.  Based on a popular Korean children's book, this is not an excuse to get some cheap laughs.  Rather Doggy Poo is a thoughtful examination of how all things are interrelated.

In a small dirt road in a rural village a small dog stops to relieve himself and a pile of doggy poo is born.  He is young and unsure of who or what he is.  A bird lands nearby and pecks at him.  It then flies away and calls him disgusting when it realizes just what it had been pecking at.  Having been physically and emotionally hurt by this, the doggy poo cries.

A nearby pile of dirt starts talking to the poo.  It tells about how happy he was living on a farm with potatoes all around him.  The dirt would nurture them until they were grown.  Then the dirt was dug up.  It was going to be used to make a hut, but it fell off the ox cart while traveling to the building location, and now it was stranded in the road.  The dirt is sure that the next ox cart that passes by will run over him and then he will be scattered to dust, his life being ending.  Talking with the dirt makes the poo wonder about life and why God created him.  A leaf blows by, and tells the poo about living on a tree, and how a leaf only lives for one season, and then falls off to be carried by the wind.

When the leaf blows away, the poo is afraid to be alone.  He feels that there is some reason for his creation, and wonders what that reason could possibly be.  He talks to some more animals and plants, a chicken and her chicks, and a weed growing nearby.  All the while he is looking for the meaning of his life, and is quite overjoyed when he discovers it.

Doggy Poo is a very touching story.  I can easily see why it is so popular in Korea.  It is very philosophical for a children's show, and that is good.  I think that much of children's programming doesn't give their audience enough credit.  The beauty of it is that the show can be seen on more than one level.  Younger viewers will be like hearing the stories that are told, while older children and adults can ponder the meaning of existence with the little heap.

There were some religious overtones, but they were very nondenominational in tone.  Several times the poo will wonder why God made him, or what His plan is.  That is about the extent of it.

While I did enjoy the show, the animation was mixed.  The colors and models that they used were very good.  The sets looked very much what I would imagine a rural Korean village to look like.  The lighting and synchronization of the mouth movements to the dialog was very good too.  I was not as enamored with the larger scale animation though.  Some of the movements look unnatural.  The frog jumping off a rock didn't flow naturally, and the baby chicks didn't raise their legs when they walked.  The farmer looked realistic, but his movements felt mechanical and looked a little jerky.

Another aspect that I didn't think worked as well was the CGI animation.  The flying leaves and moving water were CGI creations and they didn't really blend in with the stop motion animation smoothly.

Even with the minor problems I had with the animation, I enjoyed this program.  It is a show that just about everyone can enjoy.  Both children and adults should be able to relate to the disgusting pile of poo and his search for meaning and reason in life.

There are two versions of this film offered on this DVD: English and Korean.  The main menu asks which version you want to view.  I couldn't really tell any difference between the two, aside from the audio track.  You couldn't switch between Korean and English in the middle of the show, so I assume that the video portion of the show was on the disc twice, instead of just having two different sound tracks.  All the same scenes seemed to be in each version.  I did notice some slight alterations of the dialog between, but these were very minor.

Audio:

The disc sounded fine, but one thing that was missing was the 5.1 audio mix.  The making-of documentary talks about the creation of the DD 5.1 soundtrack, but both the English and Korean audio tracks are in stereo.  I can't imagine why they didn't put a 5.1 audio track on this disc.

The voice talents were okay, but not great.  I thought the voice of the poo was too high pitched in both languages and got a little grating after a while.  His voice also sounded whiney all the time.  Aside from this, the soundtrack was clean and crisp and free from major audio defects.

Video:

The full frame video has good color.  Earth tones are used throughout, brown, orange and dark yellow all come together to give the program a realistic, down to earth look.  The lines are tight and the detail and shading is very good.  Unfortunately, there are a large number of digital defects, especially when the camera moved.  Lines would shimmer and small details would disappear, only to reappear again when the camera stopped.  In one scene the camera is panning of a drought stricken field.  The dirt was talking about how dry it was, but the shimmering lines made the field look wet and glossy.  I assume that these parts were filmed with a digital camera.  It's too bad that these defects were so prevalent, because they marred an otherwise good looking DVD.

The Extras:

The DVD has a good selection of extras:

The Making of Doggy Poo:  A 30-minute featurette that takes you through the whole process of creating this stop motion animated movie.  From storyboards, designs and creating the latex models to shooting the film and post production, everything is covered.  This was a very thorough look at the animation process.

Alternate Angle Storyboards:  The entire movie's soundtrack was synchronized with the original storyboards.  The director's notes show up as subtitles, which can be turned off.  An interesting look at how the original idea gets transformed into an animated film.

Doggy Poo Pilot: a four-minute short that presumably was used to sell the show. It is in English and consists entirely of scenes from the show.

About the Author:  A text piece about author Jung Saeng Kwon

Music Video:  The ending song played with scenes from the show.

There are three Galleries:  One with scenes from the movie, a set gallery that presents pictures of the finely detailed sets, and a behind the scenes gallery with pictures of the creators at work.  This is a through set of pictures.

There are also trailers to Doggy Poo, Grave of Fireflies, and Animated Classics of Japanese Literature.

Final Thoughts:

This was an entertaining and thoughtful little show.  It was quiet and slow paced but not boring.  The story of the little pile of poo's search for meaning in life was philosophical but not ponderous.  I really enjoyed it.  The prevalent digital artifacts in the picture, while not rendering the picture unwatchable, were slightly distracting for me.  If you have a small or medium sized screen they might not bother you, and I can't see children noticing them.  These artifacts are the only things keeping this disc from a 'highly recommended' rating.  As it is, this DVD is Recommended.