Friends Are Forever-Tales of the Little Princess (1997) |
BUY IT |
General | Extras | ||
Category | Childrens | None | |
Rating | |||
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 |
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.
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.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
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.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
Absolutely no extras at all are present on this DVD.
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.
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.
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Pioneer DV-S733A, using Component output |
Display | Barco 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 Decoder | Meridian 568. |
Amplification | Adcom 555 mk2 x3 |
Speakers | 3 Klipsch La-Scala speakers (left, centre and right); 2 Infinity sm122 speakers (rear); 2 Mirage bps 400 subwoofers with 400w built in amps |