BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Family	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - 1.33:1, not 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	Yes, 3 - Other Theatrical Trailers
Year Released	1991	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	136:04 minutes	Other Extras	Biographies - Cast and Crew Featurette - Making Of (6:49) Gallery - Alternate Ad Campaigns Gallery - Costume Design Gallery - Production and Set Design Game - The Lost Treasure Menu Animation and Audio Scene Selection Animation
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (65:41)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Steven Spielberg
Studio Distributor	Columbia TriStar Home Video	Starring	Dustin Hoffman Robin Williams Julia Roberts Bob Hoskins Maggie Smith
Case	Brackley
RRP	$39.95	Music	John Williams

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) French (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) German (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English German French Dutch Arabic Czech Danish Swedish Turkish Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Finnish Greek	Annoying Product Placement	Yes, yet another defunct airline
		Action In or After Credits	No

    And contrary to popular misconception, this is not another Peter Pan film. This is very much a "what if" film, based upon the premise of what would happen to a Peter Pan, so heavily dependent upon "never growing old", if he were to grow old and forget his past. It makes an interesting contrast to the oft-repeated Peter Pan story.

    Peter Banning (Robin Williams) is an obviously successful businessman, specializing in corporate hit and run raids it seems. In a depressingly common situation, he is slowly alienating his lovely wife Moira (Caroline Goodall) and children, due to his increasing obsession with his work. He also seems to be slowly forgetting his roots as an orphan, saved by Granny Wendy (Maggie Smith), the grandmother of his wife. So when he returns to England with his family to attend the dedication of a new wing at a children's hospital in Wendy's honour, he seems to be less focused on family than he should be. But he is shocked out of his monomania by the kidnapping of his children, by none other than Captain James Hook (Dustin Hoffman), and even more shocked when Wendy forces him to understand that he is actually the Peter Pan and that he has to go after the children. Slowly getting pickled on some alcoholic sustenance, he is further forced to confront his past when Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts) arrives to drag him off to Never Neverland. No mean task for a guy who has forgotten everything about how he used to fly and why he did it anyway. Suffice it to say, he heads off to Never Neverland where the inevitable (less than successful) rekindling of relationships with Captain Hook and The Lost Boys takes place, with Tinkerbell and The Lost Boys taking on the task of trying to get Peter to remember everything about his past so that we can have the climatic battle between good and bad.

    As long as one approaches the film not expecting a retelling of the classic Peter Pan story, then I have always felt that this was a decent piece of family fun, mixed with a decent dollop of good old family values. To return to it on DVD in all its widescreen glory is a delight after years of surviving on a rather mediocre VHS tape. There is obvious enthusiasm for the project from all concerned here, as the film moves along at a quite decent pace, despite its two hour plus length. The story could perhaps have been aided by a little judicious pruning here and there, but the cast have done a commendable job with what they were given to work with. Robin Williams is his usual sterlingly reliable self in the lead role, without going over the top - which would have been quite easy to do methinks. I have always found this a rather refreshingly different performance from Dustin Hoffman (he copped a Golden Globe nomination for it) and for some reason find him completely convincing as the Hook trying to recapture something that has long gone. The less said about Julia Roberts here the better, although it must have been difficult in a role where basically you would have been doing everything solo for insertion later into a shot. The highlight for me though is Bob Hoskins. Obviously the film is heavily based upon effects work at times, and to be honest the work is showing up its age a little now. However, it remains a rather decent piece of effects work overall. The scope of the design of the film can best be gauged by the five Oscar nominations the film copped in 1991 - Best Art Direction-Set Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Effects-Visual Effects, Best Make-Up and Best Song. Whilst it ultimately failed to collect a single one (mutterings of anti-Spielberg bias again by the Academy were heard), the quality is there to be seen. I return to the film with a lot of fondness and rather enjoyed the experience and I certainly believe this to be better than the 5.8 out of 10 that it currently rates on the Internet Movie Database.

    Looking for interesting little cameo roles? Well everyone knows about Glenn Close (you do remember that, don't you?) and Phil Collins, but how many of you remember the appearance of a certain Gwyneth Paltrow? I have to admit, I had forgotten that she was in this film. And the coolest thing about the DVD? That Amblin Entertainment logo at the end of the credits - may we see a heck of a lot more of it on Region 4 DVDs soon!

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and as is standard from this source, is 16x9 enhanced. Without wishing to resort to bashing, I do wish other companies were as committed to something as simple as 16x9 enhancement as Columbia TriStar are. We will appreciate it in five years time when we start to indulge in those widescreen digital televisions.

    This was filmed anamorphically so I was sort of expecting the usual superbly sharp and stunningly defined transfers that such cinematography seems to produce. In that respect, I have to say that I am a little disappointed and at times I found this to be a lot softer than usual for such efforts. Part of the reason will be of course that this is nine years old and not exactly a sparklingly new transfer, and part of the reason will be the fact that some of the film was intended to be rather softer in focus (notably whenever Tinkerbell appears on screen). Still, despite the odd reservation here and there, this is indeed quite a sharp transfer if lacking the ultimate in definition. Shadow detail is generally good throughout, although again not quite up to the standards of a more recent film. There did not appear to be any problems with low level noise in the transfer.

    This is not the ultimate in vibrant transfers, and some attempt to deliberately play down the colours away from Never Neverland seems to have been employed. However, in general this is a very nicely rendered palette with just the right sort of primary colour vibrancy when required (the Lost Boys food fight for instance). The overall effect is entirely natural, if you can understand that in a totally fabricated world, and quite believable. It just lacks the real wow factor that perhaps I was expecting, given the nature of the film.

   There were no apparent MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There were no apparent film-to-video artefacts in the transfer. There were film artefacts throughout the film, but nothing that was remotely distracting and really for a nine year old film this is very clean indeed.

    This is an RSDL format disc with the layer change coming at 65:41. It is as good a place as any other I suppose but it was just a little too noticeable for my taste, even though it did not disrupt the film in any real way.

Audio

   There are three audio tracks on the DVD, all being Dolby Digital 5.1 efforts: English, French and German. I listened to the default English soundtrack.

   The dialogue is generally clear and easy to understand throughout.

   There did not appear to be any audio sync problems with the transfer.

   The musical score comes from the master of the past twenty years in John Williams, and it is another typical effort from the master. Nothing too overtly noticeable but always ready to support the film. Not a stridently brilliantly effort like say Star Wars either, but nice enough to make most film music composers weep at the master's work.

   Where this soundtrack is underwhelming is in the surround and bass channels. Basically there was barely any activity at all through the bass channel, which was a little surprising as, even though the film is not an overt action effort, there were a few times that I would have expected the bass channel be used to complement the on-screen action. The main problem though is the lack of any real detail out of the rear channels, and this was certainly missed noticeably during the scenes in Never Neverland. There was plenty of scope for background ambient noise and yet there seemed to be none at all. The overall effect is that we have a 5.1 soundtrack that basically sounds like a 2.0 effort. It would seem that rather than go the whole hog and produce a proper 5.1 remaster, the original master has been tweaked into something that is a quasi-5.1 effort. I am no technical genius and don't know the full technicalities of audio remastering, but that is what it sounds like to me. The overall result is a sound picture that I do not find really convincing and it never really makes me feel a part of the film, but rather always a watcher. Apart from that, there is not too much to complain about as far as the sound goes.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer (1:59)

Theatrical Trailers - Bicentennial Man (2:49), Muppets From Space (2:16) and Stuart Little (1:40)

Featurette - Making Of (6:49)

Game - The Lost Treasure

Galleries

Biographies - Cast and Crew

    A very good video transfer.

    A good audio transfer.

    A decent enough bunch of extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
18th March 2000