A guilty pleasure. Sort of.

The sales guy at the Media Play checkout line chuckled to himself as he scanned the bar code. Was he thinking the same thing I was thinking? 10 year old girls are the target market for this? Yeah, right.

Well, there may be something to it. The psychology of the music (some may question whether use of that word is warranted, but I am using it) is either ridiculously cynical or ridiculously niave. It's one or the other. There is no in between.

I admit it. Every now and then, there's nothing that hits the spot quite like inserting the cd, hitting the play button, and listening to "(You drive me) Crazy" at full volume in the middle of the night. It sounds good in the same way that Cheetos taste good: Totally artificial, no ingredients with any nutritional value whatsoever, and you'd probably puke if you ever saw the chemical plant where they originated. But it tastes good anyway.

The accented synth hits, the ultra-processed vocals, and lyrics so clichéd that not even a 5-year-old could say "I wrote this!" with any pride whatsoever. Turn it up!

Anyone who is deranged enough to actually enjoy the music of Britney Spears will probably like listening to this dvd. Likewise, anyone whose eyes gravitate toward the prefab plastic android vision of nubile sexiness will probably enjoy watching this dvd. Truthfully, there's a little bit of each in me. "Down, boy."

Anyone expecting a truly "live" performance will probably be disappointed. The show primarily consists of remixed studio recordings blasting out over the speakers while Britney shakes her ass around and pretends to sing. (If you think that's a joke, it's made even funnier by the fact that she wears a mike throughout the performance. Lest we become concerned that it has no functional value, she does occassionally use it to say things between songs.)

Britney haters will find plenty of ammo in the fact the vast majority, if not every song in the show, is lipsynced. (The jury is still out on "Not a girl, not yet a woman." It almost looks like she could be singing it live, except the vocal intonations are nearly too perfect. If that was her voice coming out in real time, she gets the robot vocalist of the year award.)

After about an hour of watching this disc, it becomes clear that, as with cheetos, too much Britney Spears at a time might not be such a good thing after all. Numbness ensues. The songs all start to sound the same. With prolonged exposure, even Britney's pretty little ass starts to look about as sexy as a piece of gum that has been chewed for too long.

But again, with the little-girl-dollhouse childhood imagery, alternated in rapid succession with lusty cleavage shots, I am compelled to wonder: Exactly who is this supposed to appeal to? Pre-adolescent girls, or horny males? If I'm going to have soft porn, I don't really want it mixed with bedtime stories being told to little kids. Similarly, I highly doubt that pre-teen females are going to appreciate the image of Britney's almost-naked body being drenched by thousands of gallons of water during the grand finale. (The raining hologram was pretty cool though.)

Oh well. I guess as long as it's selling to somebody, who cares, right? The almighty marketplace at work. Hell, I bought it, so if someone is going to bitch about it, it shouldn't be me. Even given this mixed review, I think I got my money's worth. Good mixes of the ear candy music, some decent choreography, and a chance to gaze at Britney's "I can't believe it's not plastic" physique. Just don't watch too much at once, or the numbness factor due to the extreme artificiality of the entire thing will kick in.

That's my review. Flame away.