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Concert Review: VeggieTales Live

I know you’ve seen the commercials:

Cost of tickets for a family of four: Free (Okay, so writing does have its perks…)
Time of travel: One hour, one way
Equipment needed for the trip: Two Happy Meals, three duffel bags of toys, a handful of CD’s, and one bottle of Tylenol per parent.
Seeing the joy on our children’s faces when the Veggie’s took the stage: Priceless.

Such was the case not long ago when our family made the trek to the Lakeland Center’s Youkey Theater for the most recent VeggieTales Live: God Made You Special Tour. Like most families who have touched their toes into any level of the Christian pool, our children, and to be quite frank, ourselves, are big fans of the Big Idea franchise which has been going since 1993, launching over thirty episodes featuring everybody’s favorite vegetables, Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber. Needless to say, we were ready for a fun night.

And fun it was! Great seats started out the evening as we were in the third row near center. The room wasn’t entirely filled, largely due to the fact that the evening show was the second show, thus keeping the headaches to a minimum. Tots of all ages bobbed and weaved throughout the auditorium right up until the lights dimmed and the music kicked in.

That’s when the story began to unfold. The premise of the show centers around the VeggieTales team, featuring all your favorite characters in glorious costumes, complete with moving mouths, and their human “stagehands,” as they’re working on taping some new scenes for an upcoming episode. Along the way, Larry unveils a new creation he picked up on eBay, the “Weird-o-meter.” The purpose of said creation is to determine the utmost weirdness of a song. But when Larry starts up the machine, Bob ends up disappearing and the fun begins.

The story continues with everyone searching for Bob, with the action punctuated by a wide array of silly songs that feature not only the Veggies, but a very talented team of performers as well. These folks sing and dance with the best of them, with a couple showing some very real promise. It’d be great to see a few of them pursue something outside of the vegetable garden as their talent was unmistakable. And of course, a wonderful lesson is interwoven throughout the time, ultimately reminding any and all that yes, in fact, God does think you’re special and has a wonderful plan for your life. It’s a message we can never tire of.

But as a concert, it’s a mixed bag of Veggie classics. Songs like “His Cheeseburger” and “Belly Button” are surrounded by many more of the favorites. And, thankfully for us parents, a few old school classics get tossed in as well like “Car Wash,” which featured the show-stealing bubble machine kicking in, and a rousing rendition of “Proud Mary.” The only disappointment for us came in the fact that the quintessential silly song of all time, “The Hairbrush Song.” Its exclusion came most likely, as my ever observant wife pointed out, due to the absence of the peach, because he’s got hair.

All in all, watching the smile light up on my children’s faces was well worth the short trip, the fast food munchies, and the slight headache from the pounding children’s music. The VeggieTales franchise is one that I can heartily stand behind and recommend, largely because it does have something for everyone. And I can never argue with anyone who reminds my children that God thinks they’re special. As a matter of fact, I can recommend it that much more because the message does stick, as evidenced by what my son shared with me as I dropped him off at school the following day:

“Daddy,” he called as I readied to pull away, “God thinks you’re special and He loves you very much!”

Who can argue with that?