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Stuart Little
DVD Review by Yanman |
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"Little high, Little low, Little hey, Little ho!" The hardest part about writing a review of this movie, will be avoiding the overuse of the word cute. Based on the 1945 classic children's book by E.B. White, "Stuart Little" is a heart warming family story. Michael J. Fox provides the distinctive voice of Stuart, supported by a distinguished troop of voice artists including Nathan Lane, David Alan Grier, Bruno Kirby, and Stan Freberg.h George Little (Jonathan Lipnicki of Jerry Maguire fame) has asked his parents (Hugh Laurie and Genna Davis) for a little brother. When adoption day finally arrive, George's excitement is converted to doubt when his parents bring Stuart (a talking mouse) home instead of a boy. Gone are his hopes of teaching his little brother to "play ball, wrestle, and spit", his 3 inch size new "brother" just makes these matters impossible Moreover, if George has his reservations, just imagine how Snowbell, the family cat feels (voiced by Nathan Lane). After being told to not eat him, and being teased by the other cats in the neighborhood for having a mouse as an owner, Snowbell and friends plot to rid themselves of the newest member of the Little family. Just as George and the rest of the family are starting to get use to Stuart's "uniqueness," the cats put their sinister plot into motion. Two mice show up posing as Stuart's long lost parents, and convince the Little family that Stuart should be with other mice. When the scheme is uncovered, the whole family chips in to search the big city (New York) looking for their smallest member. Will they find him before the cats make him lunch? Stuart Little's world is a stylized one, "a world where no one seems shocked by a talking mouse," part of that stylization is the use of very intense colors for costumes and backgrounds. While this makes for some brilliant visuals, it is also very hard to compress, and some of the backgrounds unfortunately do show some compression artifacts. Otherwise, the anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen video looks good, and gets our "above average" rating. The 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack has its moments of filling the room with thrilling sound, one scene that stands out is when Stuart is caught in the washing machine, listen as he echoes around the room. There are right around 20 extras on this DVD, making this a fine example of how to do right by DVD. Extras include a trivia game, bloopers & gag reel, HBO making of special, music videos, visual effects featurette, two commentaries, and a whole lot more. If you have a little one of your own that is always asking, "how'd they do that" (or you're interested yourself), then the extras here will answer all those questions and more. Stuart Little is cute, wholesome, fun, a movie for the whole family.
Plan to spend much more than just the 85 minutes running time to watch the
movie, with this amount of extras you could watch all day. "Turn it
off." "Why would I turn it off, it's my favorite show…"
This DVD was reviewed on Yanman.com's Reference Theater #1, using a Toshiba SD-5109 DVD player, Toshiba TW56X81, and M&K 750 THX Speakers. Panamax protects all systems at Yanman.com. |
Stuart Little: Widescreen Presentation Based on the 1945 classic children's book by E.B. White Also available in a Standard addition! Staring: Michael J. Fox Directed By: Rob Minkoff Running time: 85 Min Bonus Materials
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