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Television Review | 'The Backyardigans'

Cartoon Creatures Leave Home and Find ... Home

In the halcyon days of our remembered childhoods we played fabulous games of imagination in our neighborhood backyards. Nowadays children don’t get out in the yard as much; they watch those games being played on television.

Case in point: “The Backyardigans,” a series on Nickelodeon that starts every episode in a suburban yard, spins into a transforming adventure and ends, just like Dorothy, back home again. Now this morning series, for preschoolers, has spun off a prime-time one-hour movie, “Tale of the Mighty Knights,” to be shown Monday night.

“Knights” opens with two “Backyardigans” characters, Tyrone, a moose, and Uniqua, a bug-like girl of indeterminate species, playing knights under a tree on the dappled grass near a picnic table.

A pot of impatiens blooms by the back door; mulch is visible around the bushes by the modest, well-kept house. The series, filmed in combined 3-D and CGI animation, has a distinctive look: goofy, cartoonish characters against a realistic backdrop. It’s sweet, and sometimes lovely.

Tyrone and Uniqua, brandishing shields but not spears, sing “We’re Knights,” a catchy, heavily syncopated anthem that is one of a half-dozen songs in the film.

“First we crossed a river and scaled the cliffs of doom,” they sing. “Then we took a little break and went to the bathroom.”

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From left, Austin, Pablo, Tyrone and Uniqua take the dragon express while Tasha floats above in the Backyardigans movie.Credit...Nick Jr.

Soon the suburban backyard becomes another landscape, this one punctuated by a castle and, in the distance, a menacing peak that our young knights recognize as Dragon Mountain.

Tyrone and Uniqua visit the king, who, like them, is a character from the regular series, Pablo the Penguin. Hungry for a real quest, they are disappointed when the king instructs them to baby-sit for an egg. But the egg turns out to be their ticket to adventure, as it bobbles along through the landscape, leading them into and out of trouble.

The trouble looks serious — the questers dangle over a mile-high waterfall — but it’s treated too lightly to frighten even a 3-year-old. Throughout, the constructs of the age of chivalry shrink to child size, digestible truisms: Knights are polite, brave and ultimately obedient.

The trajectory isn’t toward Thomas Malory, but to Miley Cyrus. Every few minutes a character breaks into music mode, and belts out a number that should be pleasing to children as well as adults nostalgic for three-chord rock ’n’ roll. The musical climax is Adam Pascal of “Rent” fame singing “Not an Egg Anymore” (soon to be available on the CD “The Backyardigans: Born to Play,” which will also have a song by Cyndi Lauper and another by Alicia Keyes).

For all the emphasis on music, this movie’s real delight is visual. The rubbery, translucent egg bobbing down a swiftly flowing river makes for a scene so richly textured you feel as if you could touch it. And that suburban backyard, with its dappled grass and perfect details, makes a middle-class cul-de-sac neighborhood look positively Edenic. It’s hard to say whether “The Backyardigans” is a fantasy for children or for their parents.

THE BACKYARDIGANS

Tale of the Mighty Knights

Nickelodeon, Monday night at 7, Eastern and Pacific times; 6, Central time.

Created by James Burgess; Janice Burgess, Jonny Belt and Robert Scull, executive producers; Pam Lehn, producer; Adam Peltzman, head writer; music by Evan Lurie and Douglas Wieselman; Kay Wilson Stallings, executive in charge of production for Nickelodeon Preschool Television. Produced by Nick Jr. Productions and Nelvana Limited.

WITH: the voices of Jonah Bobo, Gianna Bruzzese, Jordan Coleman, Sean Curley, Jake Goldberg, Lashawn Tináh Jefferies, Gabriella Malek, Jamia Simone Nash, Thomas Sharkey, Tyrell Jackson Williams and Oliver Wyman.

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