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Category | Animation/Family | Theatrical Trailer(s) | None |
Rating | Other Trailer(s) | None | |
Year Released | 1995 | Commentary Tracks | None |
Running Time | 74:33 minutes | Other Extras | None |
RSDL/Flipper | No/No |
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Start Up | Movie | ||
Region | 2,4 | Director | Kevin Lima |
Distributor |
Warner Home Video |
Starring | Bill Farmer
Jason Marsden Jim Cummings Kellie Martin Rob Paulsen Wallace Shawn |
Case | Transparent Amaray | ||
RRP | $34.95 | Music | Carter Burwell |
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Pan & Scan/Full Frame | No | MPEG | None |
Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Dolby Digital | 2.0 |
16x9 Enhancement |
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Soundtrack Languages | English (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s)
French (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) Dutch (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) Polish (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) Czech (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) Hungarian (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) Hebrew (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) |
Theatrical Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 |
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Macrovision | ?Yes | Smoking | No |
Subtitles | English
English for the Hearing Impaired Greek Icelandic French |
Annoying Product Placement | No |
Action In or After Credits | No |
Naturally if your father is Goofy (Bill Farmer), you are facing an uphill battle in life. And so Max (Jason Marsden) is suffering in general as a result of that, but in particular because he has the proverbials for the foxiest looking dog in school in Roxanne (Kellie Martin). In a rather wayward attempt to impress Roxanne - how many of us have done something similar? - Max concocts a hijacking of the last school assembly of the term by doing a impersonation of the current rock icon. Unfortunately, like most such plans, it comes to naught and Max ends up having to deal with Principal Mazur (Grand Negus Zek... err, sorry, Wallace Shawn) and ultimately his own father. Whilst Roxanne thinks the whole deal was terrific and agrees to a date with Max as a result, Goofy thinks it is time for a good old father and son fishing holiday instead. So what follows is your basic holiday from hell as far as Max is concerned, particularly as in breaking his date with Roxanne he has made a suggestion that borders on the criminally insane. Still, undeterred he tries to ensure that he is able to do as he said, by sidetracking the holiday jaunt, along the way discovering that all he needs to do is just talk to his old man and things are not as bad as he thought. Since this is a Di$ney film, we all know that not only does he make good on his totally insane suggestion, but he also gets the girl.
Now don't get me wrong, just because this is typically Di$ney fare, does not mean that there is nothing to enjoy here. It is simply that I really wish that just once we could have a Di$ney film that does not end up in the usual happy ending - a decent non-ending would be nice for a change even. In other words, just chop this off at the end of the concert and I would have been just as happy with the result, even though as it is this is a seriously short film. The story is reasonable enough, if completely derivative; just don't expect too much from it and you will enjoy it fine. You will not get too much in the way of laughs either, but at least a slight grin can be expected now and then - probably as you recall the horror holidays that you have been forced to endure more than anything else!
If you like bright animation and need to keep the kids amused for an hour or so, then this may serve you well. Just don't raise expectations too high or it will disappoint - although you can always sit there trying to work out where you have seen some of the character animation/background animation/broad story before.
This is a rarity this far in Di$ney animation in Region 4 - the transfer is presented in a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1: unfortunately it is not 16x9 enhanced and that may be the source of my puzzlement over the transfer.
Okay, it is animation so there is obviously some stylistic restrictions on the transfer: whilst it is quite sharp, obviously there is little depth to the picture. The detail is limited to the detail available in the animation and in this instance it is quite a flattish animation style. The transfer is in general very clear and there did not appear to be any low noise problems with the transfer.
This is a really vibrant looking transfer with plenty of bright colours to keep the younger ones more than happy. Thankfully, there was also a very nice consistency to the vibrancy of the colours. This really is about the best looking animation I have seen thus far in DVD as far as the colours go, reflecting the more recent vintage of this effort compared to the others available so far. It really does pique the interest about how good something like Beauty and The Beast will look when we finally get to see it on DVD. There is no hint of oversaturation at all in the transfer, other than that which was intended to be present.
There were no apparent MPEG artefacts in the transfer. The question of film-to-video artefacts is the puzzler though: the impression I get of the transfer is that of minor aliasing throughout the film, making the sharp, black edges of the character animation seem far less solid than I would expect. I would doubt however that that is the real reason for my problem with the transfer, but it is the best analogy I can come up with. I would doubt that animation could show the sort of aliasing problems that would be necessary to cause the problem I describe, but no doubt somebody far more knowledgeable upon the technicalities of transferring animation will be able to correct me here. And I stress that this is an impression that the transfer gave me - maybe I was just expecting something a lot sharper given that this is a PAL transfer as opposed to the NTSC transfers I have seen recently of Di$ney animated films. There may not be anything really wrong with the transfer, and it would be very wrong to think that I am condemning the transfer because of it, for I am certainly not doing so: I was in general very happy with the overall video transfer package. I do not recall seeing any film artefacts in the transfer, which really is very clean.
Unfortunately, it would seem that Buena Vista have caught the Warner's disease and the packaging omits an Icelandic subtitle option in the special features listing on the back cover.
There are a plethora of audio tracks on the DVD by Di$ney standards: apart from the three false Dolby Digital 5.1 efforts listed above, there are also Dolby Digital 2.0 efforts in Dutch, Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Hebrew. Whilst there is nothing quite like watching the film in Hebrew with Icelandic subtitles, I actually decided against doing so for the whole film and boringly stayed with the English default soundtrack. One rant I do want to make this time around, simply because it is starting to really annoy me, is why are the languages only selectable from the menu? What is wrong with being able to change the language on the fly like the DVDs from just about every other source???
Dialogue was clear and understandable throughout.
There did not appear to be any audio sync problems with the transfer. Okay, that was an attempt at humour - of course there are audio sync issues, that is the whole point of animation (and especially animation with talking dogs). Everybody expects it so it does not make any difference how sloppy your dialogue work is, nobody will complain about it.
The musical score comes from Carter Burwell, and it really is nothing to write home about. The main musical contribution comes from the songs - what else do you expect from Di$ney formulaic animation? - and in general these are reasonably catchy little numbers.
Apart from the fact that the sound is not what the packaging represents it to be, there is nothing too much wrong with the sound that we have. It is not the most detailed effort I have ever heard: indeed, I would go so far as to say that the surround channels were superfluous here, along with the bass channel. But it is animation after all, so what do you really expect here? Its clean, free of distortion, eminently listenable and devoid of real character. Anything else you would like to be included?
A very good video transfer despite my minor puzzlement.
A good audio transfer.
The extras are as good as the hole in a doughnut.
And unlike previous Di$ney releases, this effort has come packaged in one of those sexy transparent Amaray cases pioneered by Fox Home Entertainment. Hope it is a harbinger of a wholesale change, as they look a lot better than the dowdy black Amaray cases previously used.
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Extras | |
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Overall |
© Ian Morris (have a
laugh, check out the bio)
29th February 2000
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DVD | Pioneer DV-515; S-video output |
Display | Sony Trinitron Wega 84cm. 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 EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL |