Heigh-Ho Sliver, Away! It's Moe and the Big Exit!

The Broadway production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was in town last week. I didn't get to see it. But I have the DVD to console myself with, and I also have Big Idea's The Ballad of Little Joe and its just-out sequel, Moe and the Big Exit.

Now, Moe - a VeggieTales spectacular based, if you haven't guessed, on the Biblical story of Moses - isn't about Joe at all, but it takes place in that same old town of Dodgeball City where the boy with the Technicolor dream vest so distinguished himself. The stage is set when Larry begs Bob to do another western. Soon we find ourselves around a campfire with a group of crusty cowboy carrots (and one sombrero-clad gourd) singing in close harmony. Led by a rumbly-timbred, mustache-clad wrangler voiced by cowboy singer Babe Humphries, they take us back to days long ago, first to Little Joe's time, then to years later, just before the dramatic entry of "the lone stranger."

Joe's people (peas, mostly) have overtaken the city, to the consternation of the corrupt mayor (Mr. Nezzer). In an effort to curtail these outsiders' rising population, he orders that all the babies be sent "up the river." This metaphorical phrase is used to great literal effect in this episode on several more occasions, most notably the culminating plague scene, which manages to be elegiac but not gruesome. I wondered how that crucial part of the story would be handled, and I think it was managed very well, with delicate solemnity. At any rate, when the babies go up the river (in baskets, which was rather considerate), Moe winds up in the reeds, where he is found by the mayor's daughter (Akmetha) who, following a joyful tune about her new acquisition, rushes home to raise him under the name Moe (which is "Indian for 'lookin' for gold and findin' a baby'").

As a fan of the western genre myself, I loved how every aspect of the story was given a western twist. The work that the mayor forces Joe's descendants to perform is the construction and painting of the Grand Canyon. They are said to have multiplied "like prairie dogs"; the mayor advises his second-in-command (Mr. Lunt) to "thin the herd". The stick that Moe (Larry) uses to drive away a bear becomes his most prized possession; later, he uses it as a practical demonstration of God's power by turning it into a snake and initiating plagues, an action preceded by his cry of, "Heigh ho, Sliver, away!"

When he flees Dodgeball City after sending his bullying brother up the river with a well-aimed dodgeball, Moe winds up in the Rocky Mountains. Maybe it's just my partiality to Colorado, but this section of the episode is absolutely gorgeous, filled with lush grass, tall trees, taller mountains and adorable forest creatures. Moe meets up with Sally (Petunia), who lives in a nearby teepee with her father (Pa Grape) and mother, and soon, to the tune of a rather loopy love song provided, as all but one of the songs within the story are, by the cowboy chorus, he settles in for a nice comfortable life in the Rockies with a wife and young son. But God has bigger plans for him; while Moe is out for a walk with Sally's pet buffalo Zippy, God reveals Himself in a burning tumbleweed, and Moe reluctantly returns to face the man he used to call Grandpa.

He gets a little help from Aaron (Archibald), his buckskin-clad biological brother who has been assigned to a remote post selling cheesy souvenirs to travelers who never seem to come. Aaron is a gifted speaker, unlike Moe, and the two rely on their respective skills and God's strength to get their people out of Dodgeball City. There are just seven plagues this time, among them grasshoppers, prairie dogs and twisters, and throughout the ordeal, Moe remains incognito thanks to his mask. When the mayor finally relents, God puts one more great task before Moe and his people: crossing through Death Valley, hotly pursued by the mayor, who has changed his mind, and his posse. Instead of dry land, Moe's people walk on a freshly fallen pathway of snow. It's all marvelously executed.

The only aspect that I don't like is the silly song, which is usually one of my favorite parts. The Boyz in the Sink, the 'NSync knock-off made up of Junior Asparagus, Mr. Lunt, Larry and Jimmy Gourd, decide to tell the story of Moe in their own hip style, but for me, it's grating rather than entertaining. I would have rather had a silly song in a western style about something totally pointless, like the one Archibald pulled the plug on way back when he cancelled Silly Songs. I wish we could've seen that one; it looked very promising...

But aside from the disappointing intermission, Moe and the Big Exit is a very clever re-telling of the story of Moses that still keeps the focus on God and the importance of obeying Him. Yee-haw!