The Secret Of The Magic Gourd DVD Review

Walt Disney’s The Secret of the Magic Gourd is a Chinese made children’s movie about a young Cantonese boy named Raymond. It is a combination of live action and computer graphic animation. Raymond is an easily distractible boy with his heads in the clouds. This poses a problem for him in school when his teacher calls on his group to answer a math problem that Raymond did not complete. His inability to complete the math problem creates dissention in his group both during class and in their afternoon study group. Raymond’s problems are exacerbated when he knocks over his group’s construction project, destroying it. This causes even more bickering between Raymond and his friends.

Raymond returns home and once again falls asleep instead of doing his homework, afterward Raymond decides to go to the lake to fish, while there, fate intervenes, dragging his hook down. Raymond drags in a magic gourd named Bailey.

Bailey is a walking, talking, grant-wishing gourd who makes Raymond promise that only he can know about Bailey. Mayhem ensues as Bailey begins to grant Raymond’s wishes a little too literally, including making a book fly and stuffing his mouth with chess pieces.

The duo finally seems to find their stride making Raymond into an unstoppable force. He suddenly knows every math answer, and making him a wiz in the swimming pool. Raymond soon finds himself on the school swim team and finds acceptance with his peers.

However, Raymond soon discovers that having everything he could ever want is not all that it is cracked up to be. Especially when Bailey fills Raymond’s bedroom with all of the contents from a local toy store.

Raymond soon begins to discover the importance of hard work and doing it on his own.

Walt Disney’s The Secret of the Magic Gourd certainly is not blazing any new ground plot wise. The concept of problems arising from a character getting everything that they wish for has been seen and done several times before in countless movies, although the talking gourd concept is relatively new. That being said, the film still has its entertaining points. The boy playing Raymond does an excellent job and really does a good job showing the interpersonal changes that the script requires.

The English version of the film is dubbed with voice actors redoing the dialog in English. This, of course causes for somewhat flat, particularly from child voice actors.

Walt Disney’s The Secret of the Magic Gourd on DVD features the full length film presented in anamporphic widescreen and features a 5.1 stereo surround sound track. The DVD special features include a blooper reel and a behind the scenes featurette. The DVD also features an interactive game called Too Many Toys! where the player has to help Raymond ship off all of the toys before Dad gets home. There is also a music video for the final song, World of Wonder. The DVD also features a Mandarin and a Cantonese language of the film.