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Free Willy: Escape From Pirate's Cove
R1 - America - Warner Home Video Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (16th April 2010). |
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The Film
 In the direct-to-video world, having a bankable name is almost more important than having an actual product. Parents and kids will be more likely to pick something up from a Redbox, Netflix, Blockbuster or even Best Buy with a familiar sounding title even if it has nothing to do with the original or actual product. How do you think The Asylum, makers of “The DaVinci Treasure” (2006), “Street Racer” (2008) and “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes” (2010) make their money? Unless you can get a bankable actor or name on the product, the best name is imitation or sequels to other known products. With “Free Willy: Escape From Pirate’s Cove” (2010) you have little to nothing to do with the original “Free Willy”(1993) or it’s sequels, other than a killer whale and a child who loves it. This time though the “Free Willy” name is there because calling the movie “Bindi Irwin’s first movie” probably would have attracted less buyers. Maybe. In an opening sequence that you would think might hit a little close to home for Bindi, Kirra Cooper (Bindi Irwin) is living a happy and animal full life with her veterinarian father in Australia when he is suddenly involved in an accident and becomes unable to care for her. With no family left in Australia Bindi makes the trip to South Africa to stay with her grandfather Gus (Beau Bridges) who runs a run-down amusement park in Cape Town. At first Kirra is depressed to be there and wishes only to go home until one night after a big storm causes a baby orca to wash into pirate cove where it becomes trapped in the cove. But since it’s a baby, scientists recommend that the orca not be sent back into the ocean on it’s own, though Kirra thinks differently. Gus starts seeing the dollars roll in as Willy the orca becomes a major attraction, while Kirra keeps trying to train it for eventual release. Largely a mundane children’s film, Bindi Irwin keeps about her same personality that her family has on their different animal planet shows. A wonder and genuine interst in animals that shows, but stilted acting and a way of speaking in anything beyond animal work. Bindi is good with the animals and seems to be enjoying herself in montages involving her and animals, but everything involving drama is fairly obviously not her forte. Beau Bridges on the other hand cleverly mumbles his way through the role, even though he’s an okay enough actor it doesn’t seem like he’s really trying in the film. Maybe it’s because he remembers that this is where his career has come while his brother Jeff is winning Oscars. I guess family doesn’t all follow the same path. But the animal show quality level continues with the writing and directing of Will Geiger, who wrote the ‘teleplay’ according to the box art along with story by Cindy McCreery. The fact that Geiger is credited with a teleplay rather than screenplay actually makes a whole lot of sense considering the amount of montages, and what sounds like low cost musical rights, its put together for airing on Discovery Kids after a marathon of “Bindi the Jungle Girl” (2007-2009). The movie lacks any sort of decent pacing, slowing and speeding up when it feels like it, almost to fit everything in before a commercial break. Geiger’s directing isn’t anything to be interested in either considering half the movie is a series of ineffective montages. When I come back after facing a movie like this, rather than harping so much on what’s negative about the film that isn’t that good, I like to think about the positive. The villian in the film wasn’t a bumbling buffoon with hijinks and silly sound effects, he’s a greedy South African who wants to buy Willy for his amusement park. I’m down with corporate greed as the villains in kids movies. Also the film seemed to have been actually filmed in Cape Town and used South African actors, I’m glad they didn’t just make it in Canada and try to pass it off. Bindi has been living the dream for every little kid who just loves animals and wants to work with them for the rest of their lives and so casting her in an animal movie makes sense. But between her inability to really pull off the dramatic scenes, the lazy writing and directing of the film and it’s use of papyrus font for the credits when there’s a perfectly reasonable free willy font that they should have used, there’s too much grating on my nerves here.
Video
In the 1.78:1 anamorphic ratio of the film, it has the quality of a made-for-TV film, somewhere between a TV show and a low budget movie. Geiger’s visual style isn’t very good and just tends to drift around the action, having some odd slow motion shots that don’t look so great. The colors in the film aren’t too bold and it has the feel of lower quality film. Honestly there’s not much wrong with it visually other than the directing problems and the lower quality of the original filming, there aren’t any interlacing problems on the DVD or real glitches in the transfer otherwise, even if it isn’t the greatest source quality.
Audio
Likewise the English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio track that dominates the film is so filled with poorly used music that doesn’t quite match up to the recording quality of the dialogue and sound effects within the film. The music seems to blare out while the audio is at a reasonable level and nothing seems to quite match up. It doesn’t help that all the music clips used in the film are really bad and cheesy, so when they start pumping at you at different audio quality than the rest of the film it’s just that much more frustrating. There’s also a French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track with English, French and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
With two versions of the film (The disc comes with both widescreen and fullscreen versions of the film), three featurettes, deleted scenes, an outtake and bonus trailers, there’s a moderate amount of special features on the single disc set. “On the Set of Free Willy: Greetings from South Africa” featurette runs for 7 minutes and 38 seconds, working as the making-of clip for the film, where Bindi and her mother take you behind-the-scenes of the film talking about what Bindi liked best about the movie and working on the set. Beau Bridges praises Bindi and all the acting tips that Bridges gave her. It’s a pretty mediocre little featurette, Bindi seems like she had a good time even if I didn’t. “Meet My Wild Costars” featurette runs for 3 minutes and 9 seconds, in this clip Bindi takes the viewer on a tour of the different trained animals that were used on the film, more excitement from Irwin about all her animal costars with a brief talk about training animals. “Bindi’s First Movie Video Diary” featurette runs for 4 minutes and 27 seconds, a bunch of quick behind-the-scenes shots during filming of Kirra and the rest of the cast having fun on set and enjoying themselves. “Kirra talks to Willy” outtakes runs for 1 minute and 30 seconds, Kirra makes a fish talk in trying to get Willy to eat it and she does a bunch of different takes in different voices and she eventually starts laughing. There are only two deleted scenes, playable together for 2 minutes and 7 seconds or separately. They are: - “Kirra Makes Dinner” runs for 29 seconds, Kirra makes dinner for her grandpa and then goes to see Willy. - “Kirra and Sifiso feed Willy” runs for 1 minute and 38 seconds, Kirra and Sifiso try to get Willy to eat some fish. Bonus trailers are: - “Where the Wild Things Are” runs for 1 minute and 59 seconds. - “The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest” runs for 1 minutes and 23 seconds. - “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” runs for 2 minutes and 5 seconds. - “Imax Under the Sea” runs for 1 minute and 1 minute and 10 seconds. - “Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra Doo” runs for 30 seconds. - “Scooby-Doo First Frights” runs for 59 seconds.
Overall
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