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Spiderwick Chronicles (The)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin & Noor Razzak (30th June 2008). |
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The Film
 After Freddy Highmore’s performance in “Finding Neverland” (2004) he was praised by critics for his acting talent at such a young age and became a child star, but one of the great dangers for a star at any age is over exposure, a bad territory that Highmore finds himself coming closer to by playing both Jared and Simon Grace in “The Spiderwick Chronicles” (2008). Jared and Simon’s mother Helen (Mary-Louise Parker) recently decided to move in to an old relative’s estate after her divorce, taking her daughter Mallory (Sarah Bolger) and two sons with her. Jared is apparently very upset with the move and has a history of acting out, but when pokes holes in the kitchen wall after he hears a noise in the walls he discovers an old dumbwaiter that leads to a hidden room that contains the Field Manual made by Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn) that reveals a magical world all around his old home. There’s a lot of mythology like any other fantasy movie, but “The Spiderwick Chronicles” has an annoying tendency to favor exposition over discovery, with characters making odd long declarations of what they are and their tendencies or special abilities. These magical creatures are all digital; continuing the sad trend away from puppeteering and practical effects, to movies that like to throw in computer-animated characters with celebrity voices, and here again “Spiderwick” is no exception. Seth Rogen voices a hobgoblin named Hogsqueal, who looks like a bipedal pig with a Seth Rogen-beard, Martin Short voices a brownie named Thimbletack and Nick Nolte voices the evil villain Mulgarath. Nolte does an okay job of playing the villain voice, but for the most part all three celebrity voices are too recognizable as themselves. As for the main live-action actors, Highmore, Highmore and Bolger, all three play American teenagers, but none are from the U.S. Bolger does a good job of pulling out an accent, but the whole film Highmore’s voice sounds off. At times it feels like he’s trying to pull off the tonal difference of the twins too hard, trying to make them sound too much like different people that it just gets really annoying after a while. Otherwise, the two/three teens do a fair job of interacting with their digital environments. There isn’t much to say about Mark Waters’ directing, there are a few cheesy shots with two Highmore’s that seem to have no other purpose than making it look like they’re twins, rather than just the same person. Waters’ experience in directing is mostly children’s movies or romantic comedies, so he does exactly what he needs to do in showing a children’s fantasy story, but there isn’t a lot of wonder captured by the camera, he leaves it mostly to the digital effects to show off the fantasy world rather than really bringing the viewer in with his directing. Overall, a fine movie for parents to show their kids, but not something they can necessarily sit down and watch as a family and enjoy as it’s not much more than Nickelodeon throwing its hat into the children’s fantasy-adventure-movie based on a children’s fantasy-adventure novel genre. The Digital effects and monsters aren’t bad, but for the most part it feels like it’s all been done before and done better.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 this image is delivered to us in high-definition 1080p 24/fps and has been created using AVC MPEG-4 compression. The result is a rather lush and splendid image, for the most part the image is sharp, although some shots appear a bit soft especially ones that feature a lot of special effects. The image is clean, detail holds up exceptionally well, these fantasy films are virtually made for HD presentations. Skin tones appear natural, blacks levels are bold and appear to have limited noise which is great, and colors are nice and vibrant.
Audio
Three audio tracks are included in English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 as well as standard Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks in French and Spanish. For the purposes of the review I chose to view the film with its TrueHD soundtrack. The result is excellent, although I'd have preferred Paramount use a PCM track this TrueHD does the trick. Dialogue is clear and distortion free, ambient and environmental surrounds are natural and well mixed within the space, furthermore the action and fantasy sequences are punchy and exciting, with a vibrant and active sound mix. Optional subtitles are included in English for the hearing impaired, French, Portuguese and Spanish.
Extras
Paramount has a fair amount of special features, all of which are identical to the DVD release (with the exception of bonus trailers not on this disc) in the form of featurettes, deleted scenes, trailers, TV spots and some interactive features. Below is a closer look at these supplements. The first featurette is “Spiderwick: It’s All True!” which runs for 7 minutes and 6 seconds, tells the viewer the entire contents of the film are true and the viewer needs to gather ingredients from the movie like tomato sauce, honey, crackers, and spread salt around to keep them safe. Warning to parents who have children that want to believe in this sort of thing: don’t let them watch this featurette. The director stares directly into the camera the whole time and comes off as a little creepy, but goes over the long mythology and bestiary involved in the movie. Next is “It’s a Spiderwick World!” featurette which runs for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, and discusses the origins of the world of “The Spiderwick Chronicles” with co-creators Holly Black and Nick DiTerlizzi. Apparently Black and DiTerlizzi got the inspiration from a letter from 3 children that described a fairy world they saw. Mildly interesting, but overly-confident about how great their movie is. “Spiderwick: Meet the Clan!” featurette which runs for 13 minutes and 55 seconds, discusses the casting and post production involved in Highmore as the brothers and give many of the actors a chance to talk about their role and the story. Some of the big name voice actors, Nolte, Short and Pearlman don’t show up for the making of, but Rogan makes an appearance to discuss his character. “Making Spiderwick!” featurette is next and runs for 20 minutes and 54 seconds goes into the set construction and production design that went into the movie, practical and computer generated, as well as the fencing lessons that Bolger took, even to the scoring of the movie. I feel like they could have broken this up a little more since it goes through so many different areas of production. “The Magic of Spiderwick!” is the next featurette which runs for 14 minutes and 25 seconds and covers Industrial Light and Magic’s creation of the digital characters and what they were based on. “A Final Word of Advice!” featurette runs for 1 minute and 52 seconds. Waters again stares oddly into the camera and reassures the viewer it’s all true. Also on the disc is “Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide” that is an interactive menu with links to 10 of the magical creatures and objects seen in the film. There’s also a “Field Guide: In-movie mode” that is a pop-up guide to the mythology of the movie that will come up when said creature or idea appears. These last two features are a little redundant considering the first 7 minute featurette has already covered this. Then there are the 4 deleted scenes which include: - “Mom & Jared” runs for 59 seconds, Jared walks into the house upset. - “Boys in the Bedroom” runs for 2 minutes and 13 seconds and shows Jared and Simon talking about the Spiderwick field guide after the sister’s hair gets tied to the bed. - “Messy Kitchen” runs for 3 minutes and 1 second. The three siblings debate the book, Jared gets blamed for the mess in the kitchen. - “Meet Lucinda” runs for 2 minutes and 3 seconds and plays as an extended version of Jared and Mallory visiting their aunt. Next are the 9 TV spots that aired on Nickelodeon: - “A Guide to Seeing the Spiderwick Chronicles” runs for 30 seconds and is just a mini-trailer with some advice for what to bring to the movie. - “Cinema Spy,” runs for 1 minute and 2 seconds, and is just a brief and cheesy interview with Highmore. - “Confessional Jared” runs for 31 seconds, another mini-trailer featuring a warning by Highmore in-character. - “Confessional Mallory” runs for 30 seconds, same as above but with Bolger. - “Field Guide – Tomato Sauce” runs for 29 seconds, a quick field guide entry/trailer. - “Field Guide – Seeing Stone” runs for 30 seconds, another field guide entry/trailer. - “Field Guide – Creatures” runs for 30 seconds, again, guide entry/trailer. - “What if You Had a Seeing Stone?” runs for 31 seconds, a short ad with almost no movie footage. - “The Spit Spot” runs for 34 seconds, talks about the ways to see the Spiderwick world. Finally there are the 2 theatrical trailers for “The Spiderwick Chronicles” that include: - “Good v. Evil” runs for 2 minutes and 5 seconds. - “Secrets” runs for 2 minutes and 34 seconds.
Overall
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