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Wild (The)
R1 - America - Buena Vista Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Cameron Murray & Noor Razzak (8th October 2006). |
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The Film
 After a harrowing "24" (2001-Present) marathon I felt that watching and then reviewing a nice Disney film would be a nice change of pace, I was half correct and half sadly mistaken. "The Wild" is Disneys answer to "Madagascar" (2005), with zoo animals escaping from a zoo in order to rescue Samsons son Ryan (Kiefer Sutherland and Greg Cipes respectively). The cast of this little Ditty is impressive with actors that you would recognize and will kick yourself for not picking up on their voices. While the story is largely predictable and not incredibly emotionally engaging for kids I would suspect that it will still be a treat. The story starts off in the New York Zoo, where Samson is the king of his domain and his son Ryan lives in the shadow of his roar, as Ryan (one can only assume) hasn't reached puberty. After an incident that Ryan starts (nothing quite like stampeding to put a dampner on a zoo-wide curling event), Samson has a few terse words to say to Ryan which spurs Ryan to make a break for the wild. Almost as soon as he makes this decision he regrets it, and cries out for his dad to save him, unfortunately Samson is unable to stop the truck that Ryan is hiding in and is forced to watch as his son is taken away from him (It was at this point I started having flashbacks to "24" Season One). Samson has no choice but to try and rescue his son with his unlikely band of cohorts including a Bridget the giraffe (Janeane Garofalo), Benny the squirrel (James Belushi), Larry the snake (Richard Kind) and an English Koala, Nigel (Eddie Izzard). Now along the way they meet a plethora of other animals, including Canadian Geese and Crocodiles/ Alligators, until they reach the wild and meet a group of Wildebeests who wish to make a leapfrog maneuver and reach the top of the food chain becoming carnivores, and they believe that this can only be achieve this by consuming Lions thereby usurping them as the kings of the Jungle. The story feels quite loosely thrown together and little to no respect shown for the reality of predator-prey type relationships, but I guess that is what suspension of disbelief is for. The cast makes the suspension of disbelief easier to swallow with their performances. Kiefer Sutherland hardly had to stretch himself to fulfill this role and I get the sneaking suspicion that he may actually have needed to tone down his dramatics to not scare the little children. Belushi is fun as the squirrel side kick who, at times, has to do a verbal bitch slap on Samson as he knows the big Lion better than anyone including the secret that he is keeping from everyone. Izzard is perhaps the stand out performance for me in this movie with his very dry English delivery of his lines and the fact that he plays an English koala which I assume they decided that he was shipped from an English zoo and not that they didn't realize that koalas come from Australia. The movie is made by Disney, stylistically what can you expect. Its good they've done it a thousand times before so its unlikely that you're going to see anything new. The CGI animation was impressive particularly when it came to capturing the animals motion, not so much there main actions which at times were quite cartoony, but more when they were walking into a scene or off into the background it had a startling realism to it. The performances in this movie were fun, but unfortunately it seems that Disney is just going through the motions when it comes to the story and seems to have lost their edge when it comes to trying anything new. I know the Disney style has worked for years, but sometimes you want to see something a bit new. In short if you want a movie that you can plonk the kids down in front of and walk away then this is probably a good one it won't necessarily have you laughing along with it like a "Shrek" (2001) or "Monsters Inc." (2001) but it should keep the kids out of your hair for 80 minutes or so.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 1.78:1, this anamorphic transfer taken from the original digital source is fantastic. Sharpness is consistent, although some scenes appear softer than most. Otherwise detail is excellent, colors are vibrant and pop off the screen, I found that black levels were deep and bold. I could not spot any major flaws such as edge-enhancement which has managed to find its way onto many Buena Vista releases. Otherwise this is an excellent transfer that will look good on whatever display you choose to watch it on.
Audio
Three audio tracks are included in English Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1 and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1. For the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its original English soundtrack and found it just as pleasing as the image transfer. The dialogue is clear and distortion free, and the surround channels are active and intense when required and subtle enviormental surrounds are effectively placed through the space. Music is rendered beautifully allowing the viewer to be enveloped in the entire experience. This is a quality sound mix that matches the stunning visuals extremely well. Optional subtitles are included in English for the hearing impaired only.
Extras
Buena Vista Home Entertainment has included a few minor extras that includes two short featurettes, a collection of deleted scenes, a music video plus some bonus trailers. Below is a closer look at these supplements. 5 deleted scenes are first up and can be viewed with optional audio commentary by the film's director Steve "Spaz" Williams and producer Clint Goldman. These scene have a "Play All" option or can be viewed individually. The scenes are a combination of rough animation and storyboard elements and in their commentary they discuss the reason why the scenes were dropped and also provides some brief background on the scenes. The 5 scenes included are: - "Benny's Weird Dream" which runs for 43 seconds, Benny dreams about his love for Bridget. - "Back at the Zoo" runs for 1 minute, Benny complains about being left behind. - "Bridget and Larry Doomed" runs for 36 seconds, surrounded by Wildebeests they share an awkward joke. - "Back on the Boat" runs for 1 minute 15 seconds, the animals argue about leaving Samson behind or if they should go back for him. - "Thumbman" runs for 1 minute 12 seconds, Nigel freaks out on the boat. Next up is Music & More: "Real Wild Child" a music video by the band Everlife, which runs for 3 minutes 28 seconds, this is a rock song that is featured on the film's soundtrack. The video is a generic rock clip with the girl rockers edited with some clips from the finished film. Backstage Disney is the following section that includes 2 featurettes: - "Eddie Izzard Unleashed" which runs for 3 minutes 28 seconds. Here we see some footage of Eddie recording his lines during the sessions. Most of his stuff was improvised and we can see his comic genius evident in this clip. - "Meet Colin: The Rock Hyrax" runs for 2 minutes 17 seconds, this funny clip sees a Disney staffer taking his role as one of the animals a little too seriously. bonus trailers are also included on this disc for: - "The Little Mermaid" which runs for 1 minute 37 seconds. - "Meet The Robinsons" which runs for 53 seconds. - "Cars" which runs for 1 minute 8 seconds. - "Air Buddies" which runs for 30 seconds. - "Twitches" which runs for 1 minute 3 seconds. - "The Fox And The Hound" which runs for 54 seconds. - "Cinderella III" which runs for 1 minute 2 seconds. - "Get Ed" which runs for 32 seconds. The first four previews are start-up trailers and can be skipped. Overall I was disappointed with the lack of substantial extras on this disc, a decent making-of documentary and even an audio commentary would have gone a long way.
Packaging
This disc is packaged in an amaray case that is housed in a cardboard slip-case.
Overall
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