An Extremely Goofy Movie

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Details At A Glance

General
Extras
Category Animation Game - Trivia
Read Along
Rating
Year Released 2000
Running Time 75:44 minutes
RSDL/Flipper No/No
Cast & Crew
Start Up Language Selection, then Menu
Region 2,4 Director Douglas McCarthy
Studio
Distributor
Walt Disney Pictures
Warner Home Video
Starring Bill Farmer
Jason Marsden
Jeff Bennett
Jim Cummings
Brad Garrett
Vicki Lewis 
Bebe Neuwirth
Rob Paulsen
Pauly Shore 
Case Transparent Amaray
RPI $36.95 Music Steve Bartek

 
 
Video
Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
French (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
Arabic (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s)
Greek (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.66:1
16x9 Enhancement
Theatrical Aspect Ratio ?1.66:1
Miscellaneous
Macrovision ?Yes Smoking No
Subtitles English
French
Hebrew
Greek
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits Yes, during credits

Plot Synopsis

    Every so often, one needs to just sit back, grab a cold beverage of your choice and throw something utterly idiotic into the DVD player for an evening's viewing of utter idiocy. When those nights rock around, is there anyone better to indulge in than the quintessential Disney loser, Goofy? Okay, the utterly idiotic Donald Duck might be a better choice, but since he has yet to grace Region 4 DVD, the choice really is Goofy or nothing.

    In what could only be described as a rather loose sequel to A Goofy Movie, the suffering son of Goofy, Max has attained the status of college freshman and is heading off to State University with three things on his mind: getting away from his father, getting away from his father and .... the College X-Games. So Max and his buddies PJ and Bobby head off to college with high hopes of escaping their families and wresting the X-Games Championship away from the all conquering Gamma team led by Bradley Uppercrust III. Max is soon drawing all the raves on his skateboard and gets an invite to join the Gammas, but things start to go awry. Back at home, Goofy is so lost without son Max that he loses his job. Blessed with few skills and no college degree, and with very slim job prospects, he does the only thing possible - heads back to college to get his degree. And guess which college he heads to? So there is poor old Max enjoying the adulation of his peers when who should rock up to destroy his college heaven but dear old dad? Faster than Goofy can say "yuck, yuck, yuck" Max's rep starts sliding faster than a Jamaican bobsled team on ice. And when Goofy inadvertently falls foul of Max's skateboard and puts on an unintended display the likes of which no one has seen before, Max rapidly becomes the son of Goofy. Goofy gets co-opted onto the Gamma team on the strength of that display, but gives it all up for love and his son - the former when he meets the sexy vixen of a librarian, Sylvia Marpole. After a slight hiccup, Goofy goes onto fame, fortune and a college degree whilst also aiding Max in his quest for X-Games glory, as well as in true Disney fashion also getting the girl.

   This is actually a quite decent story given the direct-to-video status of the film. Sure it will not be confused with something from the pen of Chaucer or Dickens, but sometimes you've just got to have that mindless piece of fun. Taken in the right spirit, this ends up being a pretty decent and reasonably entertaining piece of work. Nicely animated, and reasonably taut in direction, there are plenty of worse direct-to-video efforts out there.

   Personally I think this is a better overall film than the original A Goofy Movie, and certainly worthy of consideration if you need to keep the kids amused after weeks of the summer holidays have taken their toll.

Transfer Quality

Video

    Whilst I would be loathe to call this amongst the best of transfers to come from Disney for an animated film, there is certainly nothing wrong with it and it does come quite close to that class. Indeed, my notepad is sadly devoid of any notes - a good indicator of a very good transfer. The only bummer is that the widescreen 1.66:1 ratio transfer is not 16x9 enhanced. Do I really need to go on again about the absurdity of issuing widescreen transfers without this essential ingredient? Plain idiocy in my view. And just to add a little more insult, the packaging proclaims this to be a 1.33:1 transfer to boot!

    Basically this is pretty much a perfect transfer - nice and sharp throughout without being too sharp, nicely detailed throughout without any slight loss anywhere to dampen the quality on offer and as clear as crystal. Overall, very nice indeed without any blemishes in the way of grain or low level noise to mar the proceedings.

    Well it is an animated feature aimed squarely at a younger market, so we do get plenty of bright colours in a surprisingly nice looking transfer. Whilst lacking the absolute depth of colour and certainly lacking just a little in the vibrancy stakes, the overall result is a nicely matte feel that is quite easy on the eye. Nothing in the way of oversaturation or colour bleed raises any issue here.

    There did not appear to be any MPEG artefacts in the transfer, and there was a noticeable dearth of film-to-video artefacts here as well. There might have been the odd speck here and there but that would have been the extent of the film artefacts on offer - and they were certainly not in the slightest bit distracting to the film.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-to-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are four soundtracks on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a French Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, an Arabic Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded soundtrack and a Greek Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. I stuck with the default English soundtrack, although the Arabic effort sounded "interesting" in a brief sampling I made.

    The dialogue was nice and bright, and very easy to understand. There did not appear to be any significant audio sync problems at all, given that this is an animated effort that is blessed with all sorts of "sync" issues.

    The original music score comes from Steve Bartek and is very much in the music-score-by-the-numbers category. Nothing memorable but with enough spark in it to raise it above the average category. Some of the throwbacks to the disco age are worth the price of the DVD alone though.

    I have to say that the soundtrack was overall just a tad disappointing. Whilst there is nothing really wrong with what we have been given, I really would have thought that such a recent film would have been a little more dynamic, especially in the surround channels. To be honest I felt the soundtrack was just a little flat. I was sort of expecting a bit more action out of the rear channels and a slightly better front soundscape. Still, it is very clear and certainly the bass channel comes to the party well, when it was required to anyway.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

    Although Disney have been improving in recent times, with at least some sort of extras package on their DVDs, the presentations have been very much aimed at the younger set - which is to be expected I suppose with the perception of animation being for kids. This is another example of an extras package so aimed at the younger set.

Menu

    Okay theming but very much plain vanilla stuff, with no audio or animation to liven things up.

Game - An Extremely Goofy Movie Trivia Game

    Sixteen relatively simple questions about the film, where a correct answer is rewarded with a suitable accolade and where an incorrect answer gets a suitable raspberry. Your score is provided at the end. Hardly the stuff to keep the over ten set riveted to their screen.

An Extremely Goofy Movie Read Along

    A condensed version of the film, which can either be read by the children or they can have it read to them by Max. Either way, it is not an automatic thing and you have to push the forward button to move to the next page.

R4 vs R1

    It would appear that the Region 4 release misses out on:     It would appear that the Region 1 release misses out on:     This one gets down to whether you want some additional extras of marginal worth, and believe me I do mean marginal worth, or whether you want a slightly better transfer. Direct comparison certainly seems to indicate that the Region 4 transfer is a little better being a little sharper and a little more colourful. Personally I'd go with the better transfer, but then again your mileage may vary.

Summary

    An Extremely Goofy Movie is by no means a Disney classic but it is an entertaining enough film with enough of the goofiest lughead around to keep the amusement level up a bit.
 
 

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
12th January 2001

Review Equipment
DVD Pioneer DV-515; S-video output
Display Sony Trinitron Wega 80cm. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Audio Decoder Built in
Amplification Yamaha RXV-795. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Speakers Energy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL