Year:  2004
Genre:  TV series, Cartoon, Kids
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Spanish
Starring:  Caitlin Sanchez
Creator:  Eric Weiner
Run time:  98 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom, Super Babies Dream Adventure, Dora’s Christmas , Nickelodeon’s Animal Friends, Nickelodeon’s All Star Sports Day

     I needed to figure out what the big deal is with Dora The Explorer. This little cartoon girl has become so big that she can pre-empt playoff hockey games just by coming to town. Why? I watched the entire DVD, Dora The Explorer: Catch The Stars, which comes out tomorrow, July 29th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. And I still don’t get it. Dora barely  does a show! I’m sitting there, watching, and I’m doing her show for her! I’m the one who has to show her where the stars are hiding. I’m the one who has to advise her as to which star to use and when. I’m the one who has to yell JUMP to help her get over the snowball! What good is she anyway? If she can’t do something simple, like explore, on her own, why would I help her out? She may well be an explorer, but Magellan she is not. HE could read a compass. All by himself.

     The plot of Dora The Explorer: Catch The Stars concerns catching stars. In a star pocket. And Dora (with my help, I might add) has a “star pocket” in which to keep the stars she catches. The stars, you see, are floating around in the air. Near where Dora is. And if you jump in the air and clap your hands over your head, you will help her catch these stars. Although I must admit – she must be fairly competent – one time, I didn’t jump and clap my hands above my head. I was busy eating nachos. And she still managed to catch the star. So perhaps she is able to do some things for herself. But she has a lot of trouble seeing things. Basically, she is a blind explorer, which is the most dangerous kind of explorer to be. No matter what is happening on the screen, right beside her, I am still the one who has to point it out for her.

     And that includes Swiper the Fox, who shows up to steal the star pocket. Swiper, it turns out is a kleptomaniac fox. Apparently, simply by saying “Swiper, no swiping!” three times, you can stop him from stealing stuff. When I watched this DVD, however, I was not fast enough and Swiper managed to steal the star pocket. Perhaps when you watch it, you will be fast enough. When you see Swiper pop up on screen, be ready – they only give you seven minutes of Dora being unable to see Swiper to prepare. If you ARE fast enough, and Swiper DOESN’T get the star pocket, it means that you will avoid having to watch the rest of the program. In my version, however, Swiper DID steal the star pocket. But, like most kleptos, Winona Ryder included, he does not steal things because he wants those things. He steals them because he just likes to steal. So instead of taking the star pocket and running off, he just tied it to a conveniently placed helium balloon, and let it drift off into oblivion. Then he cackled. Grr, I hate that Swiper!

     So in my version of this DVD, the one where I didn’t prevent Swiper from taking the star pocket, Dora is forced to set off on a cross-world trek in order to track down the star pocket and put more stars into it. I think. She finds more stars, which she is able to capture even without a star pocket into which she can put them, and they each have a different ability. One is really bright, one is really loud, one is made of springs, and one is a shape-shifter. The bright one helps her find her way in the dark as she sails across the ocean. The loud one wakes up a sleeping whale that is unfortunately directly in the way of her boat. Which takes a long time, but is certainly faster than sailing around the whale would have been. The shape-shifter star does something else to help – I don’t remember what, I think I went for a smoke.

     When I came back, my mind was absolutely blown. I had no idea how to take this at the time, and even now, I can’t fully wrap my mind around what transpired on Dora The Explorer. Please, leave comments with what you think this means, because I am truly still at a loss here. I walked back into the basement just in time to see Dora The Explorer, and her little boat, quite literally jumping a shark. (With my help, and the help of the made-of-springs star, of course. Springs also work on water. What?) And then, she jumped over a second shark. And then – this was the mind blowing part – she jumped a THIRD shark. What? I couldn’t believe it. I had to rewind and watch this again.

     What was this? Was this some kind of bizarre joke? For those of you who don’t know, the phrase “jump the shark” is a reference to an episode of Happy Days where Fonzie literally jumped a shark, on waterskis. This was the moment when everyone realized Happy Days had passed it’s prime, and run it’s course. Ever since, the term “jumped the shark” has come to symbolize a TV show that should really no longer be on the air. So was this a wink to the adults watching? An inside joke among the animators? Or maybe they just didn’t know of the term’s significance, and they really just thought this was a good idea.

     There were three more episodes on the DVD – Swiper stole Dora’s necklace and threw it on top of Star Mountain. Again, I was too slow to help, this time because I couldn’t stop mulling this amazing development in my mind. Then Dora had to wake up the sun, then Dora played hide-and-seek to win Senor Toucan’s trophy. But I really wasn’t paying attention. I mean, Dora couldn’t have jumped all those sharks without my help, yelling “jump!” and so forth. So…was I complicit in the joke? Was the joke on me? Was I making too big a deal out of something innocuous? Has Dora the Explorer, the TV show, actually jumped the shark? What was in my nachos?

I cam across an interesting bunch of statistics today.  Every year, there is a list of “highest paid movie stars”.  And the usual suspects are on the list, and it’s a boring list.  For my purposes here though, I will reprint that list for 2007:

1.  Will Smith (80 million bucks)
2.  Johnny Depp (75 million)
3.  Mike Myers (55)
4.  Eddie Murphy (55)
5.  Cameron Diaz (50)
6.  Leonardo DiCaprio (45)
7.  Bruce Willis (41)
8.  Ben Stiller (40)
9.  Nicholas Cage (38)
10.  Keira Knightley (32)
11.  Will Ferrell (31)
12.  Adam Sandler (30)
13.  Jennifer Aniston (27)

OK.  Boring list.  I know it.  Only Will Smith, however, seems worth the money.  He is the only actor in history to have 8 straight movies earn more than 100 million dollars each.  Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley are coasting off the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and Nicholas Cage seems to be there solely by virtue of National Treasure.  But several others are odd.  Eddie Murphy?  Mike Myers?  Their latest films are dreadful, and Meet Dave and The Love Guru will be lucky to earn 55 million dollars combined!  Whic brings us to the actually interesting list.  Here is a list of actors who are worth the money they are paid.  (For example:  if the number is 14.73 for Vince Vaughn, that means that for every dollar he is paid, he brings in fourteen dollars and seventy-three cents of gross income.)

1.  Vince Vaughn (14.73)
2.  Tobey Maguire (13.44)
3.  Julia Roberts (13.19)
4.  Brad Pitt (12.73)
5.  Naomi Watts (12.16)
6.  Matt Damon (12.16)
7.  George Clooney (11.56)
8.  Jennifer Aniston (10.48)
9.  Hugh Jackman (9.90)
10.  Ben Stiller (9.50)

I note that only Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller make both lists, indicating that perhaps they are paid based on their talents, which are considerable, but that their mass appeal outweighs their talent.  Which is entirely believable.  Pitt, Clooney and Julia Roberts appear here because they all took big pay cuts to appear in the Oceans Seventy-Eight series of movies, which all did major bank.  Julia Roberts paid back $32.50 for every dollar she made on Oceans Twelve.  Now a quick rundown of some of the other big, bankable stars:

Will Smith – $5.64
Jim Carrey – $4.11
Tom Cruise – $3.99

AND…

Nicole Kidman – $1.01

That means that for every dollar Nicole Kidman is paid, the studios make one dollar and one cent.  ONE CENT PROFIT.  Perhaps it’s time for a pay cut?  This is the second year in a row Kidman has been the worst earner in Hollywood.  Mostly because she demands a huge payday for movies that flop.  The Invasion actually cost the studios $2.70 for every dollar they paid Kidman.  You would think that for that kind of money, she would have at least put a little effort into the role.

All this wonderful information was put together by Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/business/2008/07/22/star-salary-roi-biz-media-cz_dp_ph_0722payback.html and they had a specific method to rank each star.  It was all about their last three movies, and they had to earn at least 5 million dollars to appear in one of those three.  Which means that people like Seth Rogen, who would surely be tops on the list, did not make it based on these criteria.  Go to that link to see exactly how they came up with the rankings.  For those of you who just want to see the rankings, here are the rest:

11.  Renee Zellwegger (9.49)
12.  Kate Winslett (9.48)
13.  Reese Witherspoon (8.91)
14.  Jodie Foster (8.59)
15.  Robert DeNiro (8.34)
16.  Denzel Washington (7.95)
17.  Angelina Jolie (7.16)
18.  Russell Crowe (6.88)
19.  Bruce Willis (6.68)
20.  Johnny Depp (6.51)
21.  Will Smith (5.64)
22.  Sandra Bullock (5.59)
23.  Tom Hanks (5.51)
24.  Leonardo DiCaprio (5.46)
25.  Adam Sandler (5.08)
26.  Cate Blanchett (4.97)
27.  Will Ferrell (4.67)
28.  Drew Barrymore (4.38)
29.  Nicolas Cage (4.16)
30.  Jim Carrey (4.11)
31.  Jennifer Lopez (4.10)
32.  Cameron Diaz (4.03)
33.  Tom Cruise (3.99)
34.  Jennifer Garner (3.62)
35.  Nicole Kidman (1.01)