Blu-ray Review: Enchanted

THE MOVIE: 4 stars out of 5

I have to admit when I saw the trailer for this film, I was not impressed. Looked like another one of those silly sappy kids type films that would appeal to a certain narrow section of the market and would be a bore for adults to sit through. Boy can impressions based on a trailer be wrong! This is a very nice film, funny and rather witty, with Disney rather surprisingly poking fun at some of their classic animated films. The acting is quite good as well with just the right amount of overacting by Susan Sarandon as the evil Queen Narissa.

In a nutshell, this film is a combination of Snow White and Cinderella with a bit of King Kong thrown in. The film stars the very engaging Amy Adams as Giselle who meets her own Prince Charming named Price Edward (James Marsden) in the animated land of Andalasia. However, the Prince’s mother, Queen Narissa will lose her throne to her son should he marry. She therefore hatches a plan to dispatch her to the real world of New York City. However, Guisell’s chipmunk pal Pip sees what happens and reports it to the Prince who travels to New York to rescue her. In response, the Queen puts a plan into action to have her killed. Of course, her plan involves the use of a poison apple.

As noted above, I really enjoyed this film as did the whole family. It is a fast paced, fun and enjoyable film. Recommended.

THE VIDEO: 4 3/4 stars out of 5

Encoded with AVC, Enchanted is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2:35:1 with the exception of the very beginning which is window boxed at 1:85:1. As has become the norm with Disney on their recent releases, this is an excellent looking transfer. This film boasts excellent colors and color fidelity with a bright and bold image and beautiful primary colors. Skin tones are excellent as well as is image clarity. Black levels are deep and rock solid producing a wonderfully three dimensional image. Detail is excellent as well, including shadow detail. This is a top notch transfer and will thrill fans of the film and movie fans in general.

THE AUDIO: 4 5/8 stars out of 5

In somewhat of a departure for Disney Blu-Ray releases, the high rez track on Enchanted does not have an uncompressed PCM track but includes a Dolby True HD track encoded at 48 kHz/24 bit, which, for the most part, sounds excellent. Dialogue is very clear and well placed in the mix. The overall sound of the film is smooth and open with very good bass response. Surrounds are used very well to produce a nice immersive sound mix. A number of the songs on this release were nominated for Oscars for best original songs and sound terrific. The sound effects in this film are very well presented as well, especially the scenes with rains storms and a scene with an elevated train which sounds like it is rumbling past your room on the right. Very convincing. The only downside I could find with this release was a bit of thinness in the dialogue track which lacked the robustness of the best sounding encodes which is why I dropped the total score for the audio just a hair under the video.

IN CONCLUSION

This is a very engaging film and one the whole family will enjoy with excellent audio and video to boot. Recommended.

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