Sleeping Beauty (Blu-ray)

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Second, I didn't care much for Princess Aurora (Mary Costa) or Prince Philip (Bill Shirley). Even though she is quite beautiful and he quite masculine, their voice characterizations are rather bland and uninspired, and their attitudes are rather pedestrian, especially Aurora, who is really too Disney sweet for my taste. Now that I think about it, even the Prince seems drippy. I also didn't care as much for Maleficent (Eleanor Audley) as I should have, because she reminded me too much of Snow White's evil stepmother, the Queen, and seemed redundant; besides which I couldn't figure out what Maleficent's motivations were for cursing the baby princess. Maleficent just shows up and casts her wicked spell on the kid, no questions asked. I guess she was ticked off that she wasn't invited to the kid's party, or maybe she's just evil incarnate and doesn't care who knows it. The Disney studios themselves parodied all three of these characters to good effect in 2007's "Enchanted." Heck, I didn't even find the narrator (the usually reliable Marvin Miller, uncredited) very effective, his voice sounding too much like an ordinary television newscaster. Finally, I didn't care for the three little-old-biddy fairy godmothers (voiced by Verna Felton, Barbara Jo Allen, and Barbara Luddy). They seemed like annoying, dim-witted busybodies to me, "Arsenic and Old Lace" types, for all their goodness and virtue.

Moreover, I didn't care much for the mundane lyrics the Disney people put to Tchaikovsky's sublime orchestral music. I would have been content if Disney had merely presented the composer's music in its purely balletic form (which they do to some extent). Nor did I care for the overly precious little forest animals that Disney seemed determined to include in all of his productions. And I didn't care for most of the film's prosaic action--the old ladies baking cakes and making dresses, the lovers frolicking in the meadow, the two father kings quarreling. It's only in the last fifteen minutes that the movie shows any signs of life, and by then it's almost over.

I know all of this sounds blasphemous because most other critics consider "Sleeping Beauty" one of Disney's masterpieces. Maybe it is. Maybe it remains entertaining for most other adults and children, I don't know. When the Wife-O-Meter watched the movie for the first time in ages a few years ago on DVD, she walked out on it at the halfway point; this time, she stayed the course but remarked when it was over that she thought the only character with any personality was Maleficent. Well, I guess the villains always upstage the heroes and heroines, even a villain as stereotypical as Maleficent.

OK, I'm probably overreacting to what is still a fine family film. Yes, this particular cranky adult found the characters and action in "Sleeping Beauty" somewhat dull; yet I cannot deny I greatly admired the background art and color and the glorious BD picture and sound, so I find it hard not to recommend.

One trivia note: Once you see Maleficent's goons, you'll understand where George Lucas probably got his inspiration for Jabba the Hut's guards in "The Return of the Jedi." It might not bring much joy, but I thought I'd mention it.

John's film rating: 6/10

Video:
The Blu-ray image quality is resplendent, to say the least. Originally presented in Technirama 70 and Technicolor, Disney painstakingly restored the entire movie to its former glory frame by frame a few years ago, much as the studio did earlier with "Snow White." Disney claims that they cleaned and polished over 118,000 individual cells to give us the product we now have. It shows. Presented in its original 2.55:1 aspect ratio (rather than the 2.35:1 ratio on the previous DVD) on a dual-layer BD50 disc and using an MPEG-4/AVC codec, the video quality is glorious. The colors are deep and brilliant, often dazzling, and definition is razor-sharp. The transfer is clean and clear, with zero artifacts and the kind of deep colors and precise detailing that all of us dream about when we think of high definition. It couldn't be more perfect.

Audio:
Disney has remastered the sound, too, this time as an Enhanced Home Theater Mix in DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1. The sonics are very smooth, but there is not much to hear in the surround speakers beyond some pleasant ambient musical bloom and a few rear-channel effects. There is a fairly wide front-channel stereo spread, though, and a decent, if somewhat subdued, dynamic response. Although you'd hardly know this was a fifty-year-old movie soundtrack, you should not expect anything like today's state-of-the-art sound.

Extras:
This is one of Disney's Platinum Editions, so the Blu-ray set is beautifully packaged in a two-disc box, further enclosed in a fancy, colorful, embossed cardboard slipcase. Also of interest, the set includes a third, bonus disc--a DVD of the movie in standard definition. Disney thought of everything.

Disc one contains the feature film plus a flock of bonus materials. First up is "Cine-Explore," a picture-in-picture commentary with filmmaker John Lasseter, film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, and animator Andreas Deja. Next up is what appears to be the same commentary but in audio only along with the film. After that is "Dragon Encounter," a five-minute exploration of Maleficent's dungeon, with plenty of surround sound; and that's followed by "Grand Canyon," a twenty-eight-minute, 1958 pictorial interpretation of Ferde Grofe's musical suite in CinemaScope that ran before "Sleeping Beauty" in movie theaters of the day. Then, we get a music video, "Once Upon a Dream," and a "Disney Song Selection" of five tunes from the movie. Additionally, there are "Princess Fun Facts," pop-up bits of trivia, and BD-Live, where you can connect to the Disney Network.

Finally, disc one contains a series of "Sneak Peeks" at other Disney titles (at start-up and in the main menu); thirty scene selections; English as the only spoken language; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Disc two contains the rest of the extras, and I'll let Jim tell you about them:

"Picture Perfect: The Making of Sleeping Beauty" (43:32) covers every aspect of the film's conception, pre-production, production, and legacy. There are rare shots of live-action models juxtaposed against their cartoon doubles, and a treasure trove of anecdotes and factoids that are brought to life by talking heads whose love for the project is still very evident. Chief among them is Costa, who helps us understand the whole relationship between the animators and live-action models, and who tells wonderful stories about her interaction with Disney.

The "Original Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough Attraction" and "History of the Walkthrough Attraction" take viewers on a virtual tour of the park attraction, with a behind-the-scenes look at how the special effects were created and used in the castle. It's a nice bit of Disneyland history.

"Enchanted Dance Game" lets you choose whether to learn how to waltz via footstep patterns or click on an icon to dance with the woodland animals. This game wouldn't activate on my dvd player, but it played on my Mac. The woodland dance asks viewers to watch a waltz sequence with four animals and repeat the pattern. There's not much dancing and not much waltzing--just the bare minimum of movement. The waltz lesson encourages kids to get up, and they can dance as the prince or princess (yeah, like boys are going to do this). Kids are to follow the footsteps to get a basic box pattern down.

A "Fun with Language Game" offers instructions that are so slow I almost fell asleep trying to pay attention, and there's no way of by-passing it. You choose from a mop game, dress game, and cake game, where the s-l-o-w voice-over continues. It's obviously geared for pre-schoolers, and it shows an object with a word and repeats it so kids can learn basic words. And as I "played" this on my computer, it wouldn't allow me to close out until the lesson ended.

Also on disc two: "Eyvind Earle: The Man and His Art" (7:33), a feature on the man behind the backgrounds, and "Four Artists Paint One Tree" (16:08), that shows how he taught his style and how it was incorporated into the production. In the first one, it's fascinating to hear how Earle bicycled from L.A. to New York in 42 days and painted a painting a day, then sold them at an art show. There are also plenty of art galleries that cover all aspects of the production and publicity, four deleted songs that stand out as being absolutely wrong for the film, storyboard sequences, "Malificent's Challenge," and "The Peter Tchaikovsky Story" (from a 1959 Disneyland TV broadcast).

Parting Thoughts:
It's John again, and pay no attention to my comments on the film. Listen to Jim instead; he's far more sensible than this old grump. As I say, "Sleeping Beauty" should still work for most viewers, even though I was more disappointed in it than I thought I would be when I saw it again after a four-decades lapse. I found the story so modest and straightforward, the action so commonplace and derivative, and much of the art work so rigid and direct that the movie made little impression on me beyond its excellent restoration and its superb Blu-ray reproduction. Still, the beauty of the picture and sound can go a long way toward making one forget any of the film's possible drawbacks, so high-def lovers can rejoice.

The 7/10 film value listed below is an average of Jim's 8/10 and my 6/10.

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