I really wanted to like this, but...

As a Christian and a VeggieTales fan (my son likes them, and I've gotten hooked on them), I had high hopes for this installment. Many VeggieTales stories present good morals, but they aren't specifically Christian (in many cases, an ethicist could present the same story). But I read somewhere that this was the clearest presentation of the Gospel in any of the VeggieTales stories, and I hoped it would bring the entire series to a new level.

I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. A few reasons for my disappointments:

1) For starters, this story isn't nearly as much fun as most others VeggieTales stories. If they had gone for a more serious tone--really explaining the Gospel--that might have been okay. But they never even mention the name of Jesus. If you're looking for a solid explanation of the Gospel (beyond vague references to "the hope of Easter"), this story will disappoint. They tried to strike a balance between fun/silliness and serious/Gospel, and both aspects suffer.

2) The storyline is way too predictable for an hour-long story. Granted, most VeggieTales stories' morals are quite evident from the beginning, but this had very few surprises. Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" has been told, retold, spoofed, and respoofed thousands of times, and this version doesn't do much except add a bit of semi-silly padding to the story.

3) Bob & Larry seem pointless to the story. They should have been left out or given a much more important role.

4) The sickness of Tiny Tim (Junior Asparagus) is never really explained, and it's never made clear how Nezzer is related to his illness. In the original "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge's miserliness strongly affected Tiny Tim's ability to get the medical care he needed. But this point is soft-pedaled here, and it has far less effect.

5) The Rebecca St. James character (Hope, the Music Box Angel) just didn't work for me. Miss St. James is an excellent singer, but every moment she was on screen it "felt" like this character was a celebrity written in for the purpose of giving her a song to sing.

6) The old church setting just feels stuffy, and it doesn't seem like a place that really has "the hope of Easter" working within. It comes across as very religious and lifeless--maybe the people do a few good deeds here and there, but what's the difference between this church and a social club that does community service? After watching this, if that's truly all there is to the church, I would rather be out hunting for Nezzer's Easter eggs! (Of course, there IS much more to the church, but you wouldn't know it from this story.)

7) With a story so heavily padded, it's surprising how many loose ends there were: We never see the stained glass window Nezzer's grandmother commissioned. Bob & Larry just kind of disappear after the explosion with no satisfying tie-in to the story's conclusion (the same goes for the Music Box Angel). And it's great that Nezzer now has a more generous heart, but what is he going to do for a living? [EDIT: My wife corrected me about the stained glass window; we do see it. It's just quickly forgotten once it has been shown, and it's never referenced again. It would have worked better if it had been somehow tied into the conclusion.]

8) For fans of the VeggieTales in general, all the staples of the series are missing: There are no countertop sequences, no silly songs, and no Qwerty. (The "Boids" song was cute though, an homage to the opening song in "The Music Man.")

...

Well, I just wrote these out off the top of my head. I hope these criticisms don't come across as being negative toward the series. I really like VeggieTales, but this entry was a bit disappointing. If you're new to VeggieTales, they are definitely worth checking out, but I would recommend watching some of the other stories first. ("Lyle, the Kindly Viking," "Rack, Shack, and Benny," and "Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Samson's Hairbrush" are some good ones to start off with.)