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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure (2009)

Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure (2009)

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Released 9-Nov-2009
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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Family Animation	Featurette-(4:37) Magical Guide to Pixie Hollow Outtakes-(3:55) Completed sequences deleted from film. Deleted Scenes-(15:32) Eight story-boarded unused sequences. Featurette-(8:18) Backstage Disney : Pixie Hollow Comes to WDW. Music Video-(3:23) Demi Lovato's "The Gift of a Friend" Featurette-(4:45) Blu-ray Is Suite - format promotion
Rating
Year Of Production	2009
Running Time	57:40
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (57:00)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Klay Hall
Studio Distributor	Disney Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Evan Spiliotopoulos Mae Whitman Jesse McCartney Lucy Liu Anjelica Huston Kristin Chenoweth Raven-Symoné Pamela Adlon
Case	?	Starring
RPI	$39.95	Music	Joel McNeely Jeremy Milton Desi Scarpone

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Czech Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Hungarian Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Hebrew Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Slovak Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No	Miscellaneous
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Czech Hungarian Hebrew Slovak	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    Just in time for last Christmas, Disney released the second instalment in their Tinker Bell series, and it is a safe bet that the DVD helped stuff the stocking of many under eight young ladies around the land. Although the first Tinker Bell was a minor delight, and found instant acceptance from its target audience, Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure improves on the first entry and provides an hour and a quarter of entertainment that will enrapture little girls, while providing enough substance, in its tale and its telling, to occupy any straying adult who has found him or herself in Tink's domain.

    The previous film having established the fairies and their functions in and around Pixie Hollow, the plot of Lost Treasure focuses upon Tink herself, and her assigned task, which is to create the prestigious Autumn Sceptre. The previously established characters are still here, including Tink's fairy friends Rosetta, Silvermist, Iridessa and Fawn, but there are two new characters who provide much of the charm and entertainment of the film. First there is Terence, a Pixie Dust fairy - male - whose job it is to distribute the daily supply of Pixie Dust to all the fairies in Pixie Hollow. Terence, with cute teenage charm, assists, or at least attempts to assist, Tink in her sceptre creating task. Along the way Tink also encounters Blaze, an extremely mischievous, inventive and enthusiastic firefly. Much is made of the creative use of Blaze's lighting capabilities as the lovable bug accompanies Tink on her colourful adventure.

    This movie is a product designed for a specific audience. Modest in length, vibrantly colourful and active, heavily laced with humour, excitement and romance, there is nothing here to test the attention span of a five-year old. But there is more here than just the superficial gloss. Tink is a real personality, and a flawed one. She is frequently impatient, and bossy, with Terence the major brunt of her unpleasantness. There are lessons in personal relationships to be learned here. There is also a strong thread of nature awareness running throughout the movie. No preaching, or "message" about conservation, but an awareness of the beauty of nature, in its myriad of changing forms, and the interdependent nature of existence.

    Contributing strongly to the "nature awareness" theme is the look of the film. It is gorgeous, vibrant, rich and lush, with an immense colour palette artistically controlled to at times startling effect. While I am sure that this does look stunning on Blu-ray, which is available, the standard DVD version is nothing to be sneezed at. The audio is on a par with the quality of the visuals, with at times quite exciting use of the surrounds. There is plentiful movement across the fronts, and the surrounds are alive with excitement and action - and music.

    As we would expect, the animation is superb, with wonderful facial expressions throughout. The voice talent is excellent, but it is once again a shame to have the marvellous Kristin Chenoweth voicing Rosetta, and not singing. She does function as narrator, but what a waste of talent. Mae Whitman (Tinker Bell) is excellent again, with Jesse McCartney (Terence) and Eliza Pollack Zebert (Blaze) contributing to the enjoyment. Other recognizable voices are Jane Horrocks (Fairy Mary) and Anjelica Huston (Queen Clarion).

    Recently, there has been a resurgence of female oriented movies, which seem to be covering the full age spectrum. There has been the surge of adult female fare, such as Mama Mia, The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City, the teenage phenomenon of Twilight, and this Tinker Bell series for the littlies. It's comforting to see an erosion, any erosion, of the fourteen year old male domination of filmed entertainment. I don't need to urge you to buy this one, your young daughters will already be begging for it.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    It goes without saying that a 2009 Disney DVD is going to look wonderful. The Blu-ray undoubtedly is stunning, but the standard DVD is mighty impressive.

    The transfer is presented in as aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and is 16x9 enhanced.
    The image is crystal clear and sharp, with eye dazzling detail in the elaborate backdrops.
    The colours are sumptuous, but with artistic control over the palette.
    You will search in vain for artefacts of any description.
    This second title in the Tinker Bell series maintains, and possibly exceeds, the quality of the initial entry.

    The English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles were sampled and found to be excellent.
    There are also subtitles in English, Czech, Hungarian, Hebrew and Slovak.

    This is a dual layer disc with the seamless change at 57:40.

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

Audio

    The feature has five audio streams all encoded at 384 Kbps :   English in Dolby Digital 5.1
                                                                                                  Czech in Dolby Digital 5.1
                                                                                                  Hungarian in Dolby Digital 5.1
                                                                                                Hebrew in Dolby Digital 5.1
                                                                                                 Slovak in Dolby Digital 5.1
    Without being a dynamically dramatic audio experience - don't want to scare the littlies - the sound is most attractive and rich. There is active directionality across the front, with quite a few auditory auditory surprises along the way.
    The dialogue is crystal clear, and there are no sound glitches of any description.

    The score from Joel McNeely (Holes / Ghosts of the Abyss) is extremely attractive, beautifully recorded and reproduced making extensive use of all surrounds, with subtle use of the sub-woofer.

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

Extras

The extras are rather skimpy, with nothing particularly outstanding.

Main Menu

    The main menu has attractive animation of the flying ship, plus music from the score.

    The options presented are : Play Movie
                                              Scene Selection : Twelve thumbnails on three screens with music.
                                              Bonus Features : See details below
                                              Set Up : Here you can choose Language and Subtitles.
Bonus Features

Bonus Short : Magical Guide to Pixie Hollow (4:37)
An attractive guide to Pixie Hollow, aimed at the very young audience. Presented at 1.78:1 and 16x9 enhanced with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio.

Outtakes and Bloopers
Scenes You Never Saw (3:55)
This is a collection of fully animated joke scenes, short gags played in rapid succession. This is all very entertaining and amusing, and leaves the impression that they may have added some welcome levity to the movie.

Deleted Scenes (Total 15:32)
With the same technical specs as above, but no language option other than English, eight short deleted scenes are on offer, with the option to view each scene with or without an introduction by filmmakers Klay Hall and Sean Lurie. These are genuine deletions, left in unfinished form, relying basically on storyboards rather than animation. These are not as enjoyable as the bloopers.
The scenes are :

    1. Introduction (0:34)
    2. Frog Race (1:56)
    3. Terence Finds Friends (2:03)
    4. Vortex (2:39)
    5. Terence Mimics Tink (2:13)
    6. Blaze Gets Eaten (1:49)
    7. Trolls Reprise (1:48)
    8. Goodbye Blaze (2:30)

Featurette : Backstage Disney (8:18)
Pixie Hollow Comes to Walt Disney World :
This is a behind the scenes look at the planning and execution of the Pixie Hollow exhibit at The Epcot Centre.

Music and More (3:23)
Here you have the opportunity to "enjoy" Demi Lovato's boring presentation of a dreary song, "The Gift of a Friend".

Dylan and Cole Sprouse : Blu-ray Is Suite! (4:45)
A really cloying Blu-ray promotional featurette, with two obnoxious adolescents. Presented 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced and with English only audio, Dolby Digital 5.1.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

The only difference between the Region 1 and the Region 4 releases is the inclusion of more promotional material on the US release.

Summary

Though undeniably not up to the extraordinary heights of the major cinema released animated features, Disney's two Tinker Bell titles to date have been dazzling visual creations. Their young target audience have embraced Tink and her friends and it looks as though the little fairy will have a long and financially rewarding life. There is enough substance and artistic skill on display to keep older children, and their parents, fruitfully occupied for eighty enjoyable minutes.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment
DVD	SONY BLU RAY BDP-S350, using HDMI output
Display	Samsung LA55A950D1F : 55 inch LCD HD. Calibrated with THX Optimizer. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 1080p.
Audio Decoder	Built in to DVD player. Calibrated with THX Optimizer.
Amplification	Onkyo TX-DS777
Speakers	VAF DC-X fronts; VAF DC-6 center; VAF DC-2 rears; LFE-07subwoofer (80W X 2)

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