For adults who at one time or another have wished they could be young again, “Planet Twelve: The Secret Life of 12-Year-Olds” will be a sobering reality check. Airing at 2 p.m. Tuesday (and repeated through the month), this edition of HBO Family’s monthly documentary series “Parent Handbook” chronicles a week in the lives of 6th graders at Mt. Nittany Middle School in State College, Pa.
In its way, it is comforting that this time capsule portrait of adolescence does not wallow in such contemporary bugaboos as sex, substance abuse, violence or race relations. It seems junior high life is the same as it ever was, with close-knit cliques (“It’s all about the groups,” notes narrator Ebony Richardson “If you don’t fit in, you’re just, like, a loser.”), the popular kids who rule and the unpopular kids who don’t (one particularly wrenching case is an overweight boy name Kyle, who will happily come into his own by film’s end).
There are the petty slights and humiliations, run-ins with authority (some April Fool’s pranks go awry), friendships gained and friendships lost, and priorities re-examined.
These are universal experiences and issues that will provide parents and their own aliens from Planet Twelve with fertile common ground.
Thomas’ pal James chugs onto DVD
New to video this week are two collections of stories from popular preschool series. One of Thomas the Tank Engine’s most popular characters, James, gets his own DVD, “The Best Of James” ($20), a collection of eight stories previously released on VHS. But the disc also contains interactive readalong stories, singalong songs and playalong games.
Fans of “Kipper” the imaginative and playful dog can fetch “Cuddly Critters” ($10), a 60-minute VHS release that contains seven stories from Nickelodeon’s delightful British animated series based on the books by Mark Inkpen.
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The real dog of the week is “Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf,” available on VHS ($15) and DVD ($20). The Mystery Inc. gang wisely sat out this 1988 feature in which Count Dracula turns Shaggy into a werewolf to complete the roster of monster racers competing in Drac’s Transylvanian Grand Prix. It has Scrappy, always the kiss of death.