Kim Possible-The Secret Files (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Family	Main Menu Audio & Animation Menu Audio Game-Kim's Most Wanted Wacko Bad Guys Bonus Episode-Crush Music Video-"Say The Word" By Christy Carlson Romano
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	67:24
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Chris Bailey
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Home Vid Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Christy Carlson Romano Nancy Cartwright Will Friedle John Di Maggio Gedde Watanabe Brian George Kerri Kenney Melissa McCarthy Breckin Meyer Tahj Mowry Kirsten Storms
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Adam Berry

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Dutch Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Portuguese Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.70:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired French Spanish Dutch Portuguese French Titling Dutch Titling Portuguese Titling	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

I'm your basic average girl
and I'm here to save the world

    Kim Possible is, according to the opening theme, "just an ordinary girl". She has no superpowers, although she's very good at gymnastic moves because she's a skilful cheerleader. She's also rather bright, cute, and is quite determined — the attitude is "there is nothing she can't do". She doesn't have a secret identity, either: her dad congratulates her on saving the world when he reads about it in the paper.

    Kim has lots of friends — whenever she needs to get somewhere in a hurry she gets help from someone who thanks her for one of her previous exploits. She also has more specific helpers. Her sidekick is Ron Stoppable, who is the usual well-meaning incompetent. Ron has an unusual pet: Rufus the naked mole rat, who looks like a pink ferret with buck teeth. More helpful is Wade, who provides all manner of special gadgets, and provides computer research and hacking skills. Kim keeps in touch with Wade using her Kimmunicator, which looks like a combination of PDA and cell-phone.

    This is not a movie, even though it has been made to look like one. This is three episodes spliced together with 3D-animated footage of Rufus and the Kimmunicator. The first episode involves Dr Drakken and his attempt to get revenge on his old college friends; unfortunately, one of them is Dr Possible, Kim's father. The second episode features DNAmy, crazed biogeneticist, while the last is about Senor Senior Senior, and Senor Senior Junior, a father and son pair of super-villains.

    Kim can handle anything, well, anything other than standard teen problems: parents, twin kid brothers, and boys. It's good to see her stammering over a boy in between defeating super-villains.

    This show is cheerful, has the occasional decent moral (without being too obvious about it), and is not likely to leave mental scars on children (or adults). Kim Possible is not a bad role model. If you had to pick something to worry about, you might be disturbed by a girl who has no clothes in her wardrobe which cover her midriff, and who has a waist which looks to be about 10 inches (her classmates have similar willowy figures) — I don't think this cartoon will be encouraging anorexic behaviour, though.

Video

    The cover of this DVD says it is in an aspect ratio of 1.77:1, not 16x9 enhanced. That's not true. The picture fills the frame. I have watched it in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced, and in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, not 16x9 enhanced, and strangely enough, it looks fine either way. It is meant to be watched wide screen, though.

    The image is clear and sharp. There is no grain, and no low-level noise. The black lines outlining the characters are fairly thick, and there is minor edge enhancement visible.

    Colour is excellent, with some nicely chosen colours well-rendered. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are no noticeable film artefacts. There is a fair bit of aliasing on occasional scenes, but no moiré to speak of. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in a number of languages, but I only checked the English subtitles — they are fairly accurate (some abbreviation of sentences is all), well-timed, and quite legible.

    The disc is single-sided and dual layered. There's no layer change in the "feature" — the whole thing is on layer 0, with the extras on layer 1. Can't complain about that.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in five languages, but I only listened to the English. The English soundtrack is Dolby Digital 2.0, with the surround encoding flag set — I can't see why, though, because there's nothing significant directed to the surrounds. There's some reasonable stereo separation on occasion.

    The dialogue is clear and comprehensible if you speak "American teen". There are no obvious audio sync problems.

    The music is very good. Adam Berry's score is well matched to what we're seeing on screen. There's an atypical closing song to the main feature: the voice actor for Ron rapping about Rufus the naked mole rat.

    The soundtrack provides no signal for the subwoofer, and there's nothing noticeable from the surrounds. Considering that this started life as a TV cartoon series, a standard stereo signal is fine.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menus are animated with music. They are simple and effective.

Kim's Most Wanted Wacko Bad Guys

    This is a brief intro to each of several of Kim's foes:

• Dr Drakken
• Shego
• Gill
• DNAmy
• Killer Bebes
• Monkeyfist
• Senor Senior Senior and Senor Senior Junior
• Duff Killagain
• Jackie the Jackal

Bonus Episode — Crush

    An extra episode with Dr Drakken, but with the main storyline concerning Kim's crush on a cute guy, and her inability to ask him to a dance. Apparently this was the premiere episode of the series, which makes it even more interesting.

Music Video — Just Say the Word Christy Carlson Romano (2:43)

    (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) The voice actor for Kim Possible doing a song from the soundtrack album. There's an ad for the soundtrack album at the end of the music video.

    The Region 1 version of this disc is different. It has the same first two episodes, but a different third episode. Theirs has the villains of the first two episodes (Dr Drakken in the first, and DNAmy in the second) teaming up in a third episode. Strange that we get a different third episode — I have no explanation for the difference. The extras are the same, however. I think that the R1 sounds a bit more coherent, but that's without seeing it. The R1 gets a 5.1 soundtrack instead of the 2.0 surround-encoded one we get — I don't imagine it gets any more surround activity than ours, but the subwoofer might see some use. The one big advantage we have is that our disc doesn't start with a series of unskippable trailers.

    A cartoon series that's a lot of fun, given a good transfer to DVD.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are quite decent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall