The Water Babies (1978)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Family	Main Menu Audio Theatrical Trailer Gallery-Photo Trailer-The Wind In The Willows, The BFG, The Bear
Rating
Year Of Production	1978
Running Time	90:14
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Lionel Jeffries
Studio Distributor	Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	James Mason Bernard Cribbins Billie Whitelaw Joan Greenwood David Tomlinson Tommy Pender Samantha Gates Paul Luty Jon Pertwee Olive Gregg Lance Percival David Jason Cass Allan
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	Phil Coulter Bill Martin

    How far have children's movies come since the late 1970s? Well, here is your chance to find out. Water Babies was made in 1978 and is a feature film based upon a 19th century children's story by Charles Kingsley (not Kinglesy as it is spelt on the front of the case). It was a UK/Polish co-production with the animated elements being made in Poland. It is a combined live action and animated production (although never in the same frame).

    The plot involves a young orphan called Tom (Tommy Pender) who has fallen in with a drunken chimney sweep, Mr Grimes (James Mason) and his assistant Mr Masterman (Bernard Crimmins). They treat him badly and involve him in their criminal exploits. They head out to a country house to clean their many chimneys, but Grimes' plan is that they will also rob the place. Upon arrival, they send Tom up the chimneys and Grimes proceeds to collect items of silver. When Tom gets lost in the many chimneys, Grimes plan comes unstuck, but he blames the thievery on Tom who tries to run away. In order to avoid what he thinks will be the gallows, he jumps into a river and enters a magical world under the water (which is the animated part). Once in the underwater world he works out that he must get help from the water babies, without knowing who they really are, to escape back to the real world. However, many obstacles are in his path including a bad shark and eel who are planning to enslave the water babies.

    This is a very dated film these days and I think it unlikely that you could convince kids to watch it. The acting is pretty average and the production and direction perfunctory. The animated sections looks extremely old fashioned but they were not even that flash when the film was made in the late 1970s. If you compare the quality of the animation to that of Bambi which was made much earlier, this doesn't stack up at all. The animated section also includes a number of musical numbers.

    All in all, this is not much of a film but may be of interest to people who remember it fondly from their childhoods.

Video

    The video quality is poor.

    The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced which is NOT the original aspect ratio. The original aspect ratio is 1.66:1. I will remove one star from the overall video rating as per the site's policy.

    The picture was fairly soft throughout although there was no evidence of low level noise. Shadow detail was below average. There was significant grain throughout and some spots of minor macro-blocking.

    The colour was poor, with faces being blotchy and bleeding being present, especially from lighter colours.

    Artefacts include telecine wobble, evidence of excessive noise reduction, some splodges during the live action and lots of specks during the animated sections.

    There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is average.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

    Dialogue was mostly reasonably clear although regularly lines of dialogue were hard to make out.

    The score of this film by Phil Coulter is reasonable but quite dated. The music sounds a little distorted and harsh.

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu included music and the ability to select scenes.

Theatrical Trailer (3:21)

    Unlike the feature, this trailer is in the original aspect ratio although not 16x9 enhanced.

Photo Gallery (1:41)

    Fairly pointless gallery of stills from the show set to music.

Umbrella Propaganda

    Trailers are included for Wind In The Willows, The BFG and The Bear.

    This movie is available in Region 2 in the same format.

    The video quality is poor.

    The audio quality is average.

    The set has a few very ordinary extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall