Coolmanio wrote:Peter Pan Platinum Edition DVD
Presentation:
A-
Comments
* Menus play original music from the movie, the animated menus look amazing. Even the CGI for the cheesy, lame games is very, very cool. I think there may be one menu that uses a replacement / new instrumental music track and I still thought it was very good.
* The cover art is quite nice, of course. The best of the 3 releases in that regard. I rated it an 8. The individual discs' artwork is/are very pretty.
* Menus are very easy to navigate through (mostly because there's so little on them, but I still like the easy-navigation).
* The one source of complaint here is all the unnecessary screens we're forced to have to skip through... and some won't allow us to skip. "Walt Disney Home Video" or whatever is one thing. FBI Warning is another- we knew that was coming. But there are at least 3 more if you press Play on the main menu. I personally avoid doing that altogether by going to the Chapter menu, selecting
2, and then just pressing
1 on my DVD remote- takes me right to the beginning.
Film Value:
C-
Comments
The animation here of course is some of Disney's all-time most stunning. The Mary Blair backgrounds are jaw-dropping. The music is very well-written. Though the songs are real hummers- they're also the type I wouldn't be caught dead singing in public. The hero characters are not very likable at all, nor are they any real fun- unless somewhat spastic tweenage boys have a habit of motivating your energy level up. However, the villains in typical Disney fashion are a lot of fun. Bill Thompson as Mr. Smee is enjoyably silly, and Hans Conried as Captain Hook and George Darling is a freaking riot. Also, his scenes with the crocodile are hysterical. I don't think I've ever laughed as hard with this movie as I did last night, watching it again for the first time in about 3 years. The way he screams makes me grin and giggle thinking about it right now, as I type this. The slapstick hijinks in the cave and on the lifeboat are hilarious.
However, there are a great many sources of imperfection here. Obviously the one that sticks out the most is Disney's unbelievable portrayal of Native Americans. I've never been a stickler for historical accuracy, but this is downright mocking and ridiculous. The "What Makes the Red Man Red" number can still be enjoyed for the quality of the music but everything else in the scene is just cringe-inducing. Still, there is something other than this that gets me. The moment where Wendy first meets Peter is the one that really gets under my skin. They truly forced her "I have to say a lot right now or else Peter's next line won't work." The moment where he says "girls talk too much" would automatically make any hero unsympathetic. But that's not the worst of it- what's worse is they seek to prove him right by insisting Wendy's an airhead and giving her a behavior she doesn't have in any other scene of the movie.
The theme of female jealousy in this movie is overbearing. Yet, all the women are portrayed as very young girls. Nice to know their first touch of romance is spoiled because they're forced into competition with each other. Over one boy. Everyone else is too young for them. Or, too old- in the case of the Indians (but I'll get back to them in a second) and the pirates. The mermaids live there and in all that time, they weren't able to find another male to swoon over? Oh, and when they attack Wendy- Peter laughs at her. Again, not doing much to make him likable. And out of nowhere, Tinkerbell is self-conscious of her hips. Hello! She can't even be with Peter anyway, he's not only too young to want to be in a romantic relationship- he's too large for her. Although, I thought that very short scene after the bomb goes off was very sweet and very well-done. And lastly... even in animation a scene of the Lost Boys and the Indians fighting is awkward and too bizarre.
Video:
A
What's there to say? The transfer is impeccable. Everything looks utterly perfect. And more than any other Disney classic animated film on DVD I've seen so far, I was really in awe of how beautiful the shots are / the animation. I was never distracted by the transfer because of their bad handling of dissolves (CINDERELLA!!!) or light coming up or draining out.
Audio:
B+
I had to turn the volume up very loudly but after that, never had to turn it down. There's like no bass to speak of on the 5.1, but everything - music and sound effects - was remarkably clear and strong. A few scenes even seemed to have sounds travel from left to right.
Extras:
C-
Comments
Since I never bought the previous Special Edition (because it wasn't a 2-discer), I don't know what might be missing and what is definitely on the new disc. I just imagine that all the crappy stuff is new and the meaty bonuses are ported over. So with that in mind, I have to say this disc offers up 4 really excellent bonuses.
The old VHS / laserdisc featurette is excellent (anyone else notice these things were all produced by "TV is OK!"? Check the end credits of this one, the ones for Jungle Book, Sleeping Beauty, Fun and Fancy Free, and the 38-minute one on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), the 12-minute 1952 promotional featurette is great too, and I really appreciated both the deleted "Pirate Song" and the 20-minute collection of original concepts not used for the final film (I believe both of these are brand new to this set, after taking a look at Allmovie.com).
Just read Jack Seiley's review of the Special Edition disc and now I have to imagine that this new release has quite a bit more in the Photo / Art Gallery department. 'm I wrong? There still doesn't seem to be nearly as many photos total as there were on the Snow White, Bambi, or Sleeping Beauty DVD's. Is there a reason for that? Either way, I breezed through them all in less than 15 minutes. Usually, these take me well over an hour! Including the one for the later-released Jungle Book 2-disc.
I still haven't done the audio commentary for any Disney DVD yet. I watched the featurette about Tinker Bell once when I rented the bonus disc from Netflix last fall and remember thinking it wasn't too shabby. Since buying the Platinum Edition last month... I haven't had the stomach to sit through it again. Crappy new music, crappy sound effects, lame camera / CGI tricks, annoying narrator, and the interviews are almost jammed into hard-to-find places. Not to mention, surrounded by more awful narration. Instead of being informative, it's just irritating. What little information we are given other than among the interviews is too easy to ignore. Obviously, this is geared more toward the kids than the adults. Shouldn't it, then, have been put on the first disc? Or at least not in the Backstage Disney section.
I'm registering that one ^ as a formal complaint. But that's not all... Now we come to the new music additions. Page O'Hara's "Never-Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever-Laaaand!" is so bad, I nearly vomited up the Pear-flavored yogurt I was eating at the time. I'm sorry but, aren't the pop-hip hop tracks supposed to be the worst music videos on this set? Which of course... oh yeah... there's more than 1 new music video here. As though the former's attempt to class this set up by bringing it back to Barbra Streisand's cover of "Some Day My Prince Will Come" on the Snow White Platinum wasn't agonizing enough... it's a multi-ethnic kids' singing / dancing troupe doing a cover of "Second Star on the Right." I'm only surprised they couldn't find anybody to do "We Can Fly!" I'm also a bit surprised to find out that of all the opening-credits songs for Disney's 50's movies (Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty) that this one is the one Disney themselves consider a huge hit. It's flatter than both the ones from Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty... though not outright bad, like "Cinderellll-a."
I finally beat that stupid Tink's Flying thing last night. I thought the point was to do exactly what the compass told you to do as fast as you could (that's the only way you can win that acorn-falling thing on the Bambi DVD). Instead, you're supposed to wait a couple seconds before pressing the corresponding arrow. I beat the Sudoku thing first time out. And I don't remember the other game. After all this complaining, I actually have something nice to say about the whole Virtual Flight thing. I kinda said it already when I said even the menu's CGI stuff looks cool. But I thought this thing was really cool! Much like the Virtual Forest thing on the Bambi DVD.
Anyway, back to bitching. I'm sure this sentiment has already been expressed here by everyone else who's talked about the DVD over the last 3 years, but I'll say it again... the "English Read Along" bonus on Disc 2... : W-T-F?!?! They just do the entire movie over in English subtitles and some incredibly cheap pics of the faces of the characters. They didn't even bother to separate the mother and the father's heads! Did anyone else see that? That's cheap! That's cheaper than putting the lyrics up on the Sing-Along clips of the same damn text as you find in the English subtitles when you Play the movie. They obviously only did this to pad Disc 2 to make it look like there was more on it. It's also just about the most forehead-slapping thing Disney has ever done for a DVD. At least... this side of the ESPN bonus on the Cinderella Platinum. And lastly...
no bonus cartoons?
), I was thinking we, as a forum, pass judgement on the DVDs/Blu-rays that we already have. Everyday I will post a new DVD/Blu-ray, and we will give them a grade in each of its corresponding sections. They will be grades A-F. With doing this, we will be able to pass a few of the months in which we have to wait for Beauty and the Beast. The next day I will tally up the votes and give an overall grade and percentage according to our votes, and then I will place it on a scoreboard. Sound good? Well, the categories are :
) and is slightly better than the 2002 DVD.