Blog:Grust Reviews Journey through the Jungle of Words

Journey Through the Jungle of Words (renamed to Working With Words by ACME Crimenet after restoration) is a 1987 Golden Step Ahead educational video and was restored by ACME Crimenet in 2014.

Since this is an educational video and probably not worth adding to the movie wikis or television wikis, I have decided to do the next best thing and give it a review. Also if you're wondering why I'm reviewing a 31 year old educational video, it's because this along with Good Housekeeping's Colors and Shapes are 2 such videos that stuck with me after childhood and both took me years to find again.

Anyways, the story is about Olivia Ostrich and Groucho Barx (a reference to Groucho Marx and even has his mannerisms and quick wit) as they journey across the jungle to find their explorer friend Schnoz Ali. They first reach the jungle landing on a plane and find a zebra afraid of a monster chasing him. It cuts to a musical number that has nothing to do with reading, writing or word skills so I found it unnecessary especially when it's revealed the monster is just animals making noises. As they journey the trio find a water hole cramped with animals.

Olivia then groups the animals by starting letter and sounds off the letter sound with T M (That's the MMM sound is pretty much the only thing that was stuck in my brain as a kid) S R and C. After all the animals properly have their fill, Zebra leaves the group to final more animals and letter sounds. A crocodile then shows up with a piece of the treasure map Snoz Ali left them and takes them to King Tut's Hut. A friendly ghost then shows up (King Tut) dismayed that he can't put his stuff away due to the shelves saying "og, at, an, ake, and ing." During this, King Tut (who sounds like Boris Karloff) sings a song that sounds like it parodies "Monster Mash." Olivia and Groucho look at the items and use the starting letters they learned at the water hole to place in front of the shelf words, making words like pan, dog, rake, and ring. They then explain the process in a song that clearly parodies the Ghostbusters theme song. After putting all the stuff in its proper place the "ing" shelf starts to spell king.

Continuing the journey, they receive the final part of the map from King Tut and meet up with Dualot and Seealot and enter King Solomon's Mind (not a mispell it's really Mind not Mine) and encounter cave paintings in the dark with words under them. Each painting describes an action that the word under it spells. The only one that was useless to the plot was the "sing" action where they sing a parody of We've Been Working on the Railroad. They soon run to the end of the cave and find the Reader's Palace where Shnoz Ali was awaiting them. It turns out the map they've been using and given actually had instructions to take the bus to the Reader's Palace (which I admit was pretty funny). Schoz Ali then sings about the Reader's Palace in a parody of Jacques Offenbach' Orpheus in the Underworld.

As they explore the Palace, they reach a room that contains a ton of games that build sentences. Dualot, King Tut, and Zebra reappear as the head of each game. Groucho and Olivia win the grand prize and learn the treasure they sought was with them all along, the spirit of adventure, a love of learning and a knowledge of words. Dualot, Zebra, and King Tut sing a final number (if it's a parody I wouldn't know what it is) and the video ends.

Looking back on this, I can easily say this could help young kids to start to learn basic reading and although I'm not entirely sure, I think it might have developed a small cult following, with them appearing in two fandom Wikis (Just search engine Olivia Ostrich or Groucho Barx to find the two) and even an 18 minute YouTube Poop video.

The animation however is fairly weak and use recycled scenes over and over. To be fair however, this was probably very low budget and I've seen this on other Golden Step Ahead videos, so I'm willing to be forgiving.

The story is imaginative and creative for little kids and I find Olivia and Groucho to be quite likable. So much so I almost wish there had been a sequel.

The restoration done by ACME Crimenet could have been better as it's clear I'm still watching a VHS tape on YouTube. But overall, if you have really little kids getting ready for school, this is worth watching. As for me, watching this actually does make me appreciate the fact I can read due to the hard work I did to learn how to.

[[Category: