Stuart Little 3: Call Of The Wild (DVD)
APPROX. 75 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2005 - MPA RATING: G
" As my colleague John J. Puccio would say, this one is strictly for the kids.
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As a children's cartoon it has all the elements that will lead to repeat play. But, truthfully, it just doesn't capture the world and the tone of E.B. White's book the way that the first two films did. Laurie and Davis were fun to watch because of their expressions and body language, and the live-action element coupled with animation reinforced the idea of a normal-but-not-quite world in a way that an all-animated feature just can't approach. There's also an annoying idiosyncrasy in the style of animation, with predominant shading on all the characters that keeps shifting with movement, but not always with the logic that would explain shadows given a source of light. The kids won't notice, but I was annoyed by the inconsistency of shading on the animated characters.
Video: "Stuart Little 3" is mastered in High Definition and presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. The quality is decent, with sharp edges on the borders of even pulsating colors like the bright reds.
Audio: The audio is English Dolby digital 5.1 or French Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, and the difference between the soundtracks is noticeable mostly in terms of how robust and resonant the sound is—with the 5.1 providing a much fuller sound. Subtitles are in English and French.
Extras: Like the film itself, the bonus features are strictly for the kids . . . and young ones, at that. A "Help Stuart Escape" interactive game is basically a series of 10 trivia questions about the film that can be played at beginner, intermediate, and expert levels—though, frankly, I didn't notice all that much of a difference in difficulty levels. Another game, "Monty's Monstrous Appetite," gives players a "code" of sounds on a set of plumbing pipes and asks the little ones to fetch milk for one sound and a can of tuna for the other. It will be a nice challenge for pre-schoolers, but children older than that will just shrug or say, "So?"
"Stuart's Summer Journal" is a read-along story that can be played either with or without narrator, and it's pretty typical as read-alongs go. The "Reeko's Funk" music video is culled from the film, but it's really a catchy song that I can picture many children requesting. The last significant bonus feature is a "Learn to Draw" extra that shows kids the basics of sketching Stuart, Snowbell, and Reeko. One nice thing about it is that it's slow enough to actually be used as a teaching device, and a voice asks would-be artists if they want a step repeated. Rounding out the extras is a Wendy's public service announcement promoting adoption (does that give you a hint of the audience that this was pitched toward?) and previews of other Sony offerings for kids.
Bottom Line: As my colleague John J. Puccio would say, this one is strictly for the kids. But if you can deal with the loss of live actors and 3-D realistic looking CGI animals from the first two films and accept the average-looking 2-D animation, there's still a lot of positives that make "Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild" a worthwhile addition to the family DVD collection.
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