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Tinker Bell And The Lost Treasure
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Buena Vista Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (7th December 2009). |
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The Film
 Disney needs to build a statue to John Lasseter, just outside of the Disney animation studios, like the one they have of Walt Disney in the front of Disneyland. They should have a special 2 minutes of hate reserved for whoever ran the animation department to create “Home on the Range” (2004), before bringing in John Lasseter’s midas touch to resurrect an animation studio that had lost loads of respect. And much like the kingdom of Mufasa and Simba, the light of Lasseter would bring betterment to everything it touched. I was curious about how far his powers of persuasion could salvage the entire Disney animation network. “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” turns out to be a great test: a direct-to-video CG sequel to a spin-off. All the ingredients for failure. But this one turned out to be a shocker. Well, almost. As the best among the tinker fairies, Tinker Bell (Mae Whitman) has been selected to design the all important scepter for the blue harvest moon festival in pixie hollow. The scepter is crucial to their livelihood, it props up the moonstone that on the night of the blue harvest moon brings a renewed fairy dust to the pixie dust tree by filtering the light at a precise angle. Tinker Bell is of course honored and incredibly stressed out as she spends the month preceding the event that happens only once every eight years. While she works her friend Terence (Jesse McCartney) helps her out, but his eagerness gets stressful and pushes Tinker Bell to the breakingpoint as she yells at him for getting in her way, leading the scepter and the moonstone to break. In order to undo what she’s done Tinker Bell acts on an old fairy legend to seek out a magical mirror that could grant her one wish to fix everything. The story brings together a good enough adventure sort of story that doesn’t really impede on any of the Tinker Bell story, but it just kind of rolls along well enough that it isn’t offensive or insulting. It’s just kind of there. Jokes? Sure, there are wacky zany jokes, but every now and then there are some jokes that just pop out of nowhere and made me smile, even laugh. Maybe I’m getting soft. But a Disney direct-to-video movie pulled some laughs out of me. This is the exact sort of movie I can tell parents that if you buy this for your children, you could bear being in the same room with the movie. It will not destroy you or make you worry about your child’s development. Part of this kindness may come from the combination of reasonable CG and the niceities of the Blu-ray format. I’ll get more into the technical sections later, but the animation in this movie is decent. Shockingly, astoundingly decent. None of the terrible interlaced and blatantly last minute fodder from some of the other direct-to-video animated movie I’ve seen out of the DisneyToon Studios. The lines on the characters are crisp and the animation itself doesn’t seem clumsy. It works in it’s own way and maintains a sense of style. There’s a scene with a crowd of fireflies buzzing at the screen followed by a bat. The fireflies are cutesy and typical, but this is one scary bat. It’s a well animated sequence and actually took me back a little, making me completely reconsider my outlook on the movie. Then later when Tinker Bell (spoiler) discovers the magical mirror there are some rats, and these aren’t cutesy big rats or clumsily big rats, these are some good looking scary rats. What am I supposed to think now? A mediocre plot with some real jokes in there combined with passable animation with a few moments of brilliance. After doing my usual reading up on the movie online, I was impressed again by the fairly large name disney cast that wasn’t flaunted while supplemented with some serious voice acting talent. Lucy Liu, Raven-Symoné and Anjelica Huston all voice characters in the movie, with no credit or names plastered all over the box. Plus throwing in some veterans like John Di Maggio and Grey DeLisle? Well played DisneyToons. I don’t mean to take away from what the animators, directors and those affiliated with this movie has accomplished in bringing a resemblance of a quality product to screen, but in my mind a lot of it has to do with the higher standards that John Lasseter brings to your department. I’ve cheered the movie on for the most part throughout the review, but much of it comes from my state of shock from not being stupefied for 80 minutes. It’s a pleasant surprise of a film, though not exactly the quality of movie worth running out to stores for, but if you need your kids entertained and feel like watching with them, this isn’t the worst choice you could possibly make. There are many better movies out there, but this one surprised me. This could just be the numbness left over from “Santa Buddies” (2009) but this movie is far from the bottom feeder I expected. Well, not counting the Demi Lovato song that closes out the movie that kind of cuts me down, but up till that, it’s passable.
Video
Like I mentioned earlier the 1080p 24/fps 1.78:1 with AVC MPEG-4 encoding at about 32 Mbps is solid, the visuals bring together a fairly solid animation job. Nothing is super realistic, but everything is reasonably cartoonish and stylized to make me feel like someone actually tried to put some artistry into the movie. Ther are some large landscape segments and the two more intense styled scenes before that, while still cartoonish, show off an increased talent for art that I haven’t quite seen in the other DisneyToon productions, putting it above even some other lesser studio’s main work.
Audio
Like the visuals the English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround at 48 kHz brings reasonable standards to a passable audio track. The score sounds original and is reasonably well composed for the film to amaze me that they would put the time of getting a full composer and orchestra to bring to a direct-to-video movie rather than just synthesize something together on computers from stock tracks. It’s not the most impressive gathering, but it’s done justice in the transfer with a good enough of amount of mastering to make for a more quality production than I’m used to out of these films. Also included are French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround tracks, as well as English for the Hearing Impaired French and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
The 2-disc set comes moderately equipped with extras, including a bonus short, a featurette, deleted scenes, blooper reel, unfortunately a music video, bonus trailers and BD-Live access. DISC ONE: This disc includes the blu-ray version of the film. “Magical Guide to Pixie Hollow” bonus short runs for 4 minutes and 4 seconds and takes the viewer through a tour of Pixie Hollow using a 2D animation style in a 3D environment to show the viewer around the scenery and major locations of Tinker Bell’s world with tour guides Tinker Bell and Terrence. It’s basically one giant moving storyboard that tells the story of the film and shows off the world. Next up is the “Scenes You Never Saw” blooper reel that runs for 4 minutes and 2 seconds. It feels something like what Pixar would do, creating some deleted scenes specially for the movie, included are some mistake jokes, and more generic sort of blooper material though the movie, even a fart joke. Not as funny as the Pixar ‘deleted scenes,’ but still; well played DisneyToon Studios. The deleted scenes run all together for about 16 minutes and 10 seconds, or individually described below, including introductions from director Klay Hall and producer Sean Lurie. All the scenes are shown in the form of moving storyboards with the original voice acting for each scene. They include: - “Intro” runs for 35 seconds, Hall and Lurie introduce the deleted scenes segment from the pixie hollow room at Disney. - “Frog Race” runs for 2 minutes and 1 second, Hall and Lurie describe the story reel sequence and then Terrence and Tinker Bell race on frogs. - “Terrence Finds Friends” runs for 2 minutes and 8 seconds, Hall and Lurie set up this cene where Terrence tries to make friends with other Faries after he and Tinker Bell have a sort of falling out. - “Vortex” runs for 2 minutes and 44 seconds, the duo introduce the scene about a giant weather obstacle that would have made for more action to Tinker Bell’s journey, but the two explain it was cut for time reasons. - “Terence Mimics Tink” runs for 2 minutes and 16 seconds, Hall describes the scene where Terence tries to cover for Tinker Bell, but again they explain it was cut for time. - “Blaze Gets Eaten” runs for 1 minute and 53 seconds, Hall and Lurie call it the funniest scene, where Blaze… gets eaten. - “Trolls Reprise” runs for 1 minute and 52 seconds, more troll action while Tinker Bell heads home, Hall and Lurie joke about the trolls being representations of them. - “Goodbye Blaze” runs for 2 minutes and 34 seconds. Tinker Bell says goodbye to blaze, Hall and Lurie describe it as a cute emotional moment, but John Lasseter vetoed the move to have the Blaze character leave. Smooth move Lasseter, shows he actually had some involvement and oversight (they even include a picture of the duo with Lasseter to show off that they have been near his greatness). “Pixie Hollow Comes to Walt Disney World” runs for 8 minutes and 20 seconds. This featurette runs through the lowering garden festival at the flower Garden that represents Pixie Hollow with Hall and Lurie. It’s a big ad for the Walt Disney World Resort, but is actually a sort of cool behind-the-scenes look at how they designed the world within the movie as well as designing the garden exhibit/area at Walt Disney World. Finally is the dreaded moment, the music video. “The Gift Of A Friend” by Demi Lovato runs for 3 minutes and 23 seconds, including scenes from the film as well as footage of Lovato iin a field like Pixie Hollow. “Learn to Take Your Favorite Movies On The Go with Disney File Digital Copy” instructional video runs for 1 minute and 4 seconds. Bonus trailers are for: - “Dumbo: 70th Anniversary Edition” runs for 1 minute and 16 seconds. - “The Princess and the Frog” runs for 2 minutes and 39 seconds. - “Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue” 1 minute and 47 seconds. - “Disney Blu-Ray” spot runs for 1 minute and 12 seconds. - “Disney Movie Rewards” spot runs for 20 seconds. - “Santa Buddies” runs for 1 minute and 39 seconds. - “Ponyo” runs for 1 minute and 33 seconds. - “G-Force” runs for 1 minute and 36 seconds. - “Beauty and the Beast Diamond Edition” runs for 1 minute and 42 seconds. - “PixieHollow.com” spot runs for 32 seconds. - “Disney On Ice” runs for 32 seconds. - “Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue” runs for 1 minute and 39 seconds. There’s also a Disney BD-Live network feature that gives access to a bunch of extra previews and ads for Disney related products. This feature is accessible on profile 2.0 players only. DISC TWO: This disc is simply a DVD version of the film, lacking the BD-Live access, while including the same special features with a few minor changes. “Dylan & Cole Sprouse: Blu-ray is Suite” promo spot runs for 4 minutes and 45 seconds, selling Blu-ray to the viewer through a really really annoying infomercial. Bonus trailers on this disc are for: - “The Princess and the Frog” runs for 2 minutes and 33 seconds. - “Dumbo: The 70th Anniversary Edition” runs for 1 minute and 16 seconds. - “Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue” runs for 1 minute and 40 seconds. - “G-Force” runs for 1 minute and 36 seconds. - “Disney Movie Rewards” spot runs for 20 seconds. - “Santa Buddies” runs for 1 minute and 40 seconds. - “Ponyo” runs for 1 minute and 32 seconds. - “Mickey Mouse ClubHouse Choo Choo Express” runs for 40 seconds. - “Wizards of Waverly Place the Movie” runs for 49 seconds. - “PixieHollow.com” spot runs for 32 seconds. - “Disney Blu-ray” spot runs for 1 minute and 2 seconds. - “Disney On Ice” runs for 32 seconds. - “Sonny with a Chance” runs for 32 seconds.
Packaging
Packaged in a 2-disc Blu-ray case housed in a cardboard slip-case.
Overall
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