Barney's Great Adventure

''Barney's Great Adventure'' (also known by its promotional title ''Barney's Great Adventure: The Movie'') is a 1998 musical comedy adventure film based on the children's television series ''Barney & Friends'', featuring Barney the Dinosaur in his first feature-length film. The plot follows Barney, along with three young children named Cody, Abby, and Marcella, as they discover a magical egg in a barn. After learning that the egg is a dream maker, Barney and the gang must return the egg to the barn before it hatches. The film was written by Stephen White, directed by Steve Gomer, produced by Sheryl Leach and Lyrick Studios and released by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment on March 27, 1998, at Radio City Music Hall in New York and worldwide on April 3, 1998, in the United States and Canada at the height of Barney's popularity.

The film received negative reviews from critics and was a box-office bomb, only grossing $12 million against a budget of $15 million. This was the third and final film to be produced by Lyrick Studios before it was acquired by and folded into HIT Entertainment on June 6, 2001. It is also the only theatrical Barney film as all other Barney films were just direct-to-video productions.

Plot

The movie begins with a black screen featuring Barney, BJ, and Baby Bob introducing the presentation. Next, we see Cody, Abby, and Fig Newton, along with Abby's best friend Marcella Walker, traveling to Newton's grandparents' farm in Upstate New York for a full week during summer break. While the parents are lost, Cody feels disappointed about spending the week at the farm. He asks Abby and Marcella to stop rubbing a Barney doll in his face, as he hates Barney. Cody then launches into a rant explaining why he dislikes Barney.

Upon arriving in Merrivale at the farm, the grandparents greet them warmly. Cody retreats to a bedroom to sulk, but Abby invites him to play, teasing him by waving the Barney doll in his face to start a game of "keep-away," with Cody running off with the doll as the girls chase him across the house. They catch Cody, who has hidden the doll in the bathroom, and he encourages them to use their imagination, laughing as if nothing unusual is happening. Suddenly, the Barney doll comes to life as Barney the Dinosaur from inside the tub, sending the girls off to play in the barn. Cody follows but refuses to believe Barney is real, insisting that dinosaurs don't talk or laugh. Barney then sings a song about the joys of imagination, prompting Cody to try wishing Barney out of existence using his imagination.

That evening, after dinner, the family gathers on the porch, where Cody tries convincing his grandparents that a giant dinosaur is hiding in their barn, not just a small doll. Grandpa serenades Grandma with "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" before they go inside with Fig. On cue, Barney appears after Fig and the grandparents have gone inside, and they sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," with a dog playing guitar with his tail. Abby and Marcella then head indoors to play in the attic, leaving Cody to sit alone on the porch, gazing at the moon. Barney offers Cody a piece of advice: to wish upon a star. Taking this advice, Cody wishes for a summer full of adventures and to do things no one else has done before. A shooting star streaks across the sky, transforming into a magical egg that rolls into the barn.

The next morning, Cody awakens dressed in cool clothes, alongside Barney, who is dressed in farm attire. Barney and the girls enjoy playing with the cows, though Cody accidentally steps in a cow pie. The children then search the barn for the egg, trying to figure out where it came from. As the egg begins changing colors, they plan to tell their grandparents, but before that, Barney quickly changes out of his barn clothes. Baby Bop appears, worried about her blankie, and Barney gets distracted when he hears Fig crying upstairs, rushing off to change his diaper before the grandparents see him. Grandma suggests Abby and Marcella visit Mrs. Goldfinch. Cody finds Barney in the baby room, about to tell his grandparents, but Abby and Marcella take the egg to their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Goldfinch.

The children ride on a horse into a spooky forest to visit her. Mrs. Goldfinch mistakes Barney for a parrot, and the kids show her the egg. Inside her house, they discover a vast collection of books and fossilized eggshells. When the egg adds another color stripe, they realize they need to look up information in a book stored under the couch. They learn that an egg falls from the sky every 1,000 years and hatches a dreammaker, but only if it lands exactly where it first touched down before its colors change; otherwise, it won't hatch. Cody accidentally knocks the egg off the table, causing it to fall through an egg-shaped hole onto a birdseed delivery truck. Barney and the kids chase after it, building a makeshift horse chariot from household scrap.

They pursue the egg as the delivery driver makes a milkshake while driving. Meanwhile, the town hosts its apple festival parade, during which Baby Bop stops abruptly to search for her blankie. The driver swerves to avoid the parade, and the kids chase the egg into the festivities. Barney nearly collides with a carnival worker and bumps heads with an anthropomorphic apple but soon rejoins the children, who see the egg caught in the parade and watch as it is launched across town. Barney chases after it, and with help from his friend B.J., catches the egg just before it hits the ground. B.J. throws it onto the roof of a fancy French restaurant called Chez Snob, like a football. The egg lands in a woman's hat, and the children follow her inside to find it. Barney entertains the customers by singing "If All the Raindrops."

Inside, they discover that the restaurant has sent the egg to a circus, with Barney speaking fluent French. They find the egg in the hands of a juggler, who tosses it into the air. When it starts raining, the children take cover in a dressing room, nearly losing hope. Barney and the kids sing "We're Gonna Find a Way," with Barney brightening the mood and performing a reprise of his imagination song. Rejuvenated, they set out to find the egg before it hatches. With help from a quirky carnival worker, they discover it is inside one of many hot-air balloons used as ballast. Cody imagines a plane from a log to catch the balloon but forgets how to picture himself flying it. The group chases the balloon, retrieving it from the operator, but they have to make a crash landing in the barn. The grandparents are puzzled, so the kids quickly recount their adventure in 15 seconds. Barney then surprises the grandparents by emerging from some hay, scaring them. The final color stripe on the egg changes, and the kids rush to the barn, but Cody trips, causing the egg to fly again. Luckily, Baby Bop arrives just in time to save it with her blankie.

After returning the egg to the barn, they witness it finally hatch into a koala-like creature named Twinken, who shows everyone Abby’s dream and Barney’s dream during the night. Cody apologizes to Barney for being mean and admits he thinks Barney is cool. Barney accepts the apology, saying he thinks Cody is cool too, and they share a hug. Twinken then puts on a magical fireworks display that lands in Barney’s arms. Barney begins singing "I Love You," with everyone joining in. As Baby Bop gets sleepy, B.J. decides it’s time to go home. Twinken sits beside Barney, who has reverted to his doll form as the movie ends with Fig saying his first word, "Harmony."

Cast

Production

Development

Word of a Barney film first arose in November 1992 when Debbie Ries, sales director for The Lyons Group said plans for a movie was in the works. In 1993, it was later announced by creator Sheryl Leach at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that a movie is coming. Later in 1994, a Barney Magazine article had stated that Barney the Dinosaur would star in his first ever film entitled ''Barney: The Movie''.

At the time of development, all the major film studios wanted to do a Barney feature, with production companies pitching to the owners of Barney. One studio even assembled executives together to sing "I Love You" to Sheryl Leach when she arrived to the respective studio.

Trey Parker, co-creator of ''South Park'', stated that he was offered $1.5 million to direct ''Barney’s Great Adventure'' after the underground success of '' The Spirit of Christmas''. According to Parker, producers believed his ability to create humorous content with children made him a suitable choice for the project. However, he declined the offer.

It was originally going to be distributed worldwide by Geffen Pictures through Warner Bros. and produced by Sheryl Leach and Dennis DeShazer. According to Sheryl Leach, it had a release date for summer 1995. Warner Bros. and Lyons had disagreements over marketing, leading the latter to bring the film (with help from now former producer Geffen) to PolyGram.

Steve Gomer, the director of the film, was approached for the film by an individual who called in regards that a musical Barney film was being made. Gomer had no interest in being a part of the ''Barney & Friends'' television series, but expressed interest in doing the film.

Filming

To Sheryl Leach, it was a joy of filming as she stated:
Leach adds that the film allowed them to "take the familiar Barney and put him outdoors and in other very different settings from his traditional environments."

The film was shot from July 1997 to October 1997 on locations outside Montreal, Canada, including the renowned Ste. Anne de Bellevue's Morgan Arboretum, a popular wildlife sanctuary. The veteran film crew was initially a bit skeptical of the large purple star. Gomer expressed his desire to work in Montreal, Canada to save on the cost of filming the movie.

Original version

According to writer Stephen White, he penned an initial script that was cut down for being too lengthy. In the original script, the egg was going to hatch a giant bird who misses its mother, Baby Bop and BJ were expected to make a lot more screen time, appearing in the farmhouse attic, but those scenes were soon scrapped, as director Steve Gomer claimed the scenes to be "unaffordable", Miss Goldfinch was originally planned to be a comedic character, as opposed to the more subdued character of the final film, the circus scenes and the "Collector" character were not in the original drafts, as well as rather than using a log, Barney and the gang would have built a plane out of cardboard boxes, and the film originally saw the main characters each have their own dreams and desires fulfilled by the end of the film.

Release

Critical reception

''Barney's Great Adventure'' received mixed to negative reviews from film critics, owing to it being based on the aforementioned television program which is aimed for young children aged 2–7, the growing popularity of " anti-Barney humor", and the general unpopularity of the Barney series outside of its target audience of preschoolers. John Petrakis wrote in the ''Chicago Tribune'', "If my 21-month-old son had any inkling that I was giving a less than stellar review to his film,he would no doubt shoot me that look he tends to give when his milk is warm or his Cheerios a bit stale." ''The New York Times Anita Gates wrote that it was a film "his young, undemanding fans are likely to enjoy." Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and said: "Barney has his own movie. Not one of those videos you've watched a hundred times, but a real movie, more than an hour long. If you like him on TV, you'll like him here, too, because it's more of the same stuff, only outdoors and with animals and shooting stars and the kinds of balloons people can go up in."

Another review, from the ''Los Angeles Times'', read: "The creators of the great purple scourge, Barney the Dinosaur, have an unspoken contract with parents palatable for all involved: We buy their videos and an occasional plush toy for our 3- and 4-year-olds and make Barney's brain trust obscenely wealthy; they in turn create benignly lobotomized entertainment that holds our non-demanding kids in thrall; our kids watch TV and allow us a few precious minutes of peace. The most important element is parental trust in Barney to be blandly wholesome, so that we have to endure only a few seconds of it while we cue up the VCR for our tykes. Family movies, on the other hand, imply a rather different contract: Parents buy tickets and popcorn for the whole family; filmmakers deliver light entertainment that kowtows to kids yet is not so brain-dead as to alienate sentient adults. 'Barney's Great Adventure: The Movie,' the first theatrical film featuring the green-bellied beast, takes that big old fat foot of Barney's and stomps that contract beyond recognition. . .The flat lighting and two-dimensional sets of the TV screen serve Barney far better than a modestly expanded budget and a director insistent on using locations, romantic lighting and mildly adventurous camera angles. Barney looks both more real and more magical on video; on film, he's clearly a doofus in a felt outfit."

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 33% with an average score of 5.00/10, based on 24 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Barney's friends are big and small / They come from lots of places / But after this film, their parents / Will be left with pained faces". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.

It was nominated for two awards at the 19th Golden Raspberry Awards: Barney himself was nominated " Worst New Star", but lost to a tie with Jerry Springer in '' Ringmaster'' and Joe Eszterhas in '' An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn''. The Jerry Herman-penned "Barney, the Song" was nominated for " Worst Original Song", but lost to "I Wanna Be Mike Ovitz!" from ''An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn''. It also received three nominations at the 1998 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.

Box office

In its limited release weekend, the film grossed $2,203,865 from 540 theaters and ranked number 11. A week later, in wide release, it grossed $1,382,373 from 809 theaters and ranked number 15. By the end of its run, the film grossed $12,218,638 in the domestic box office, falling short of its $15 million budget.

Home media

In the United States, the film was released on VHS and DVD on September 1, 1998, and was reprinted on VHS in 2002 and 2003 by Universal. It was re-released on DVD in 2012, whilst in the United Kingdom, it was released on DVD in 2002.

See also

* List of films featuring dinosaurs

References

External links

*

Scriptwriter shares thoughts about ''Barney's Great Adventure''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barney's Great Adventure
Barney (franchise)
1998 films
1990s fantasy adventure films
1998 independent films
1990s musical fantasy films
American fantasy adventure films
American children's comedy films
American children's fantasy films
American independent films
American musical fantasy films
Canadian fantasy adventure films
Canadian children's comedy films
Canadian children's fantasy films
Canadian independent films
Films based on television series
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment films
Canadian musical fantasy films
Films set in New York (state)
Films shot in Montreal
Films about dinosaurs
Films scored by Van Dyke Parks
Mattel Television films
Films directed by Steve Gomer
1990s English-language films
1990s American films
1990s Canadian films
English-language Canadian films
English-language independent films
English-language musical fantasy films
English-language fantasy adventure films
1998 musical films