I bought this movie before I ever even bothered watching it because I figured, hey, it's Veggie Tales. How can you go wrong, right? Well, I don't regret buying it, but it's not quite as good as most of the regular Veggie stuff.
Most of us have a pretty good grasp on the Jonah story right? Well, just as always with Veggie Tales, the heart of the story is there with the most important details, and then everything else gets mixed up and screwed around with. It starts off with Dad Asparagus and Bob the Tomato driving a bunch of the little veggies to a Twippo concert. Then they encounter some difficulties on the road and find themselves with two flat tires and crashed into a tree stump.
They get out and head for the nearest building, a seafood restaurant. When Junior Asparagus sits down at the table, he hears some people talking on the other side of the glass. It's the pirates who don't do anything! I don't remember what they ask Junior, but they eventually strike up a conversation, and the pirates tell Junior the story of that one time when they met Jonah and had a little adventure
Jonah was a prophet who traveled across Israel delivering God's messages to His people. Then Jonah gets a call from God to deliver a "turn and repent" message to Ninevah. But why Ninevah? The Israelites and the Ninevites don't get along, and Jonah would rather die than go there. So he decides to go against God's orders and sail as far as possible in the opposite direction, to Tarshish. He hires the pirates who don't do anything to take him out there, and so the four of them set sail for Tarshish.
Just like in the Bible story, there's a big storm because of Jonah, and after they cast lots to determine who is responsible (done quite ingeniously in the movie I think), they throw Jonah into the ocean. The storm goes away when they throw him in, and a whale (not a big fish like the story) comes along and swallows Jonah up. There Jonah has a little encounter with a choir of asparagus angels, and then the whale barfs him up on the shore, and he heads out for Ninevah.
I think the hilarious thing is how the pirates end the story. Just like in the Bible story, at the end, Jonah is wailing and mourning and whining and crying and there's no real conclusion, and that's how it ends in the movie. The pirates just say "the end" and that's pretty much it. Of course, there's still some other stuff that happens outside of the story segment of the movie.
Overall it's done pretty cleverly, but it doesn't quite have the same Veggie Tales zip that it should. The special features on the DVD and certainly worth the cost though.
Bottom Line: 3 out of 4 (worth watching)
