The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		1.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.0

The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 17, 2020

In The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show!, the animated Bedbugs Buzzer and Sparky introduce three Christmastime Bible stories. In The Story of Mary’s Surprise, an angel informs the Virgin Mary that she will give birth to a Godly King. In Follow the Star, three wise men are led to Jesus' birthplace by following a bright star in the sky. Finally, in The Shepherds of Bethlehem, two shepherds spread the good news about Jesus' birth. Interspersed between the second and third short is a song performed by Freeze the Bedbug.

The content is aimed at extremely young viewers. The tales are Biblical but basic and the songs are simple and rework familiar tunes, such as This is the Way We Wash Our Hands, to support the content. Each short is followed by a basic game taking place on a mostly static screen, challenging players to find hidden objects, find pairs of identical objects, or spot the difference in a series of images. The digital animation is extremely basic and the three stories appear to be hand-drawn. The content is not at all theologically challenging; this is meant to be a happy sing along escape that shares a few basic Biblical messages about the story of Christmas to young viewers. No more, no less, and it does so on a shoestring budget.

The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! arrives on Blu-ray at a resolution of 480i (!) and framed at a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. At DVD quality, this burned BD-R image is crude, and combined with the extremely simplistic digital animation and basic hand-drawn artwork the image just never looks particularly good. Colors are depressed, detailing is poor, and problems like aliasing, jagged edges, pale blacks, and compression artifacts (the latter two seen predominantly during the Freeze puppet sequence midway through) all hinder the image's opportunities to shine.

The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! features a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. Basic clarity is fine and music spaces well enough to the edges. Lyrics and dialogue attempt to image to the center but often wind up spaced further in between middle and edges, though closer to the former.

The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! contains only one supplement, the film's Trailer (480i, 1:02). Curiously, this supplement plays upon initially inserting the disc. There is a top menu screen. No DVD or digital copies are included. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are plenty of faith-based animated programs for parents to choose for their children, including the VeggieTales series, several of which are on Blu-ray. The Bedbug Bible Gang: Christmas Show! has its heart in the right place but its watchability is limited by low-rent production values. It's balanced out by good, clean messaging. It's just a matter whether kids will be drawn to the animation and stories and how catchy they find the music to determine if they will stick around to the end, never mind crave repeat viewings. The Blu-ray is technically poor. For parents of very young kids only.