Review: Sing Along with Barbie DVD

As a mom with three daughters, it’s pretty much inevitable that Barbie has become a large presence in our house. But my girls have only really become enamored with Barbie over the past year or two, and pretty much only with the Barbie movies (and associated products, of course). I don’t have any problem with the girls watching the movies because from what I’ve seen (and I’ve now seen just about all of them – multiple times), they promote values that I am happy with – like standing up for and taking care of yourself and following what’s in your heart. Each movie has strong female characters and, unlike many other ‘princess-ish’ movies, tend to keep the romance themes to a minimum. Barbie isn’t your typical heroine looking for a prince to save her – she usually saves herself and sometimes saves the prince as well, as in the recent “Barbie and the Three Musketeers”. I’m not saying that Barbie is always the best role model, just that these movies are something that I as a parent have decided that I’m ok with my children seeing and playacting about. And they’re not bad for adults to watch either – I actually like them, especially the more recent ones – and even my husband has sat through one or two. For him, that’s saying something – he tends to avoid anything overly ‘girly’ whenever he can.

Along with the actual movies, my girls really love the songs that are included – especially in the more recent movies like “Barbie and the Diamond Castle”, “Barbie as the Island Princess” and “Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princesses”. We own the Diamond Castle soundtrack and even my 4-year-old sings along with every song. To me, the songs are a good transition from the preschool fare that my older girls are admittedly outgrowing, but not quite as “tween-ish” as the Hannah Montana type fare that’s all over the place. Like the movies, the songs are upbeat and generally involve themes like friendship, believing in yourself and such. Every time my daughters watch the movies, they dance and sing along to the songs – which is why I was absolutely thrilled to see that a Barbie Sing-Along DVD has been released and so excited to have the opportunity to try it. Courtesy of Mom Central, we received a copy of the Sing Along With Barbie DVD to try out and review.

What it is:

Sing Along With Barbie* includes 12 songs from the previously-released Barbie movies – complete with on-screen lyrics that make it easy for kids to follow along and perform right along with the characters from the movies. Included are songs from movies like Barbie & the Three Musketeers, Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper, Barbie as the Island Princess, Barbie and the Diamond Castle and more.

The DVD has a run time of 37 minutes if all songs are watched straight through. It offers three language options – English, Spanish or French.

Here’s my our take on it:

So, given that we already love pretty much all of these songs already, I was sure that my girls would like this DVD. Also given that my older girls got a play guitar (Barbie, of course) and drum pad for Christmas and perform at a drop of the hat anyway, I kind of had an inkling that they would appreciate the fact that this DVD only includes music. At times it does seem like they are watching the movies just for the songs anyway, so it’s definitely a good thing to have a lot of the songs gathered together here. And since my older girls are reading now, they can follow along with the words on the screen – although not always as quickly as they’re sung, especially for my first-grader. She knows a lot of the words already, just from listening to the music (although not always the correct words, lol), and every time she watches this DVD she picks up a few more. Watching her try to read, sing and dance all at the same time is actually quite entertaining for me.    My youngest doesn’t read yet, but she has no problem simply singing and dancing along with her sisters. My 7-year-old is extremely excited about sharing this DVD with her friend ‘K’ (another big Barbie movie fan) the next time she comes over to play.

The menu is very easy to navigate – you can choose to either ‘play all’ or select individual songs. Each song is played – either straight from the movie it’s from, or if there’s an actual music video available. The words change from white to pink in time to the music as they are sung.

There is one slightly annoying thing that I’ve found with this DVD – and it’s that for the songs where an actual music video wasn’t produced, they include the clip of the song as in the original movie. Which includes movie dialogue during the clips as well, where talking occurred during those points in the movies. And they include the words for the dialogue along with the song – which is really confusing. I don’t see why they couldn’t have edited out the dialogue audio for the purposes of this “Sing Along” DVD. Otherwise though, we’ve really enjoyed the DVD and I know it’ll be played often in our house for some time to come. I would have loved a companion CD though – since we don’t have audio versions of all these songs and my girls love to listen to the ones we do have on their MP3 players.

The bottom line:

Sing Along With Barbie* offers the opportunity for kids to sing right along with the songs from previously-released Barbie DVDs – and gives them the words so that they can learn the lyrics as well. The songs are catchy and seem to incorporate positive and uplifting themes. If you have a Barbie fan, this will likely be a huge hit in our house like it is in ours.

Where can you find it?:

You can purchase the Sing Along With Barbie* DVD at most retailers where children’s DVDs are sold, as well as on Amazon (affiliate link). The list price for the DVD is $14.98.

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Mattel. In addition, I received a gift certificate to thank me for taking the time to participate.

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*Affiliate link