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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.
Friends Are Forever-Tales of the Little Princess (1997)

Friends Are Forever-Tales of the Little Princess (1997)

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Released 21-Dec-2001

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Childrens None
Rating Rated G
Year Of Production 1997
Running Time 81:22
RSDL / Flipper No/No Cast & Crew
Start Up Programme
Region Coding 1,2,3,4,5,6 Directed By None Given
Studio
Distributor

Beyond Home Entertainment
Starring Paige O'Hara
Engelbert Humperdinck
Roddy McDowall
Nancy Cartwright
W. Morgan Sheppard
Stanley Jones
Jack Angel
Phillip Clarke
Case Alpha
RPI $14.95 Music None Given


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None
16x9 Enhancement No
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles None Smoking No
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

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Plot Synopsis

    Friends are Forever (Tales of the Little Princess) could best be described as a animated musical, although don't get me wrong - this feature is not a musical from start to finish, but rather it is narrated throughout and includes about a dozen or so songs through the feature.

    The story is basically very simple. The Princess is kidnapped by an evil spellbinder by the name of Drako (voice provided by Phillip Clarke) who is banished from the kingdom, so in order to get back at King Bernard (voice provided by W. Morgan Sheppard) who banished him, he sets a spell on the young kidnapped Princess. A search of the entire kingdom is ordered by the King to find the Princess but little do they know that the search is going to be harder than they thought because Drako's spell has made the young Princess ugly and therefore no one will be able to recognize her. Three friends; a Cockney Cat (voice provided by Roddy McDowall) an English Fox and a French Rooster find the Princess trapped in an old barrel and they have to find a way to reverse the spell that has been placed on the Princess. Ultimately, the spell is reversed by love and friendship proving once and for all that friends and family are truly forever.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    The transfer of this animated movie is of poor quality.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is very soft and is lacking in any sort of fine detail. The shadow detail was adequate in the few night scenes that were present. Low level noise was present on this DVD but I was unable to determine if the noise was in the poor quality source material or if it was caused when it was transferred to disc.

    The colours were a little oversaturated on this disc resulting in an very reddish look to a lot of this movie.

    There were a couple of MPEG artefacts seen but nothing to be concerned about.

    This disc is single layered so therefore there is no layer change.

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

Audio

    The audio on this DVD is of very poor quality.

    There is only one audio track available on this DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack but this is a mono soundtrack from start to finish.

    The dialogue quality was good and was easy to understand. Audio sync did not seem to be a problem.

    The musical score consists of about a dozen or so numbers sung by the characters themselves throughout the movie. Like the rest of the audio, the songs were of poor quality.

    The surround channels and subwoofer were not used at all in this movie.

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

Extras

    Absolutely no extras at all are present on this DVD.

R4 vs R1

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

    I cannot find any information about the release of this DVD anywhere else in the world so at this time a comparison cannot be made.

Summary

    Friends are Forever is a kids movie but I would have a hard time recommending this movie to anyone. It is definitely not for adults and I also believe kids would not enjoy it either.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Stephen Wilson (read my bio)
Saturday, May 04, 2002
Review Equipment
DVDPioneer DV-S733A, using Component output
DisplayBarco 708mm CRT front projector (line doubled) onto a 2.5m wide 16x9 aspect screen. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderMeridian 568.
AmplificationAdcom 555 mk2 x3
Speakers3 Klipsch La-Scala speakers (left, centre and right); 2 Infinity sm122 speakers (rear); 2 Mirage bps 400 subwoofers with 400w built in amps

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