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Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue Blu-ray Disc Review

TINKER BELL AND THE GREAT FAIRY RESCUE (2010, Blu-ray released September 21, 2010 – MSRP $39.99)

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue Blu-ray DiscAll right, Disney. I’ve just about had enough of this. If you insist on making a string of eminently watchable kids movies based on a famous book from the 19th Century, the least you can do is make it a bit less emasculating for the male movie reviewers out there. I’m starting to get all self-conscious of the ridiculous amount of enjoyment I’m deriving from these damn Tinker Bell movies!

It was almost a year ago that I got my first taste of the new and improved, 3D animated Tink and her Grrrl pals (read my review of Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure here). I couldn’t believe then how much fun the film was and how well put together it turned out to be. And here we are, a full orbit of our planet around the sun later and I find myself amazed anew – these damn Tinker Bell movies are great!

I mean, the newest fairy on the block, Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue is no Taxi Driver or even Raiders of the Lost Ark but it certainly has its merits. The strong points of the film have less to do with the rescue mounted by Tink’s fairy pals when she finds herself “captured” by a little human girl (little being relative, of course – to the fairies she’s a giant!) and more to do with the fact that we can now see ourselves in the story. Through the young girl’s eyes, we can relate. She and Tink become fast friends, having tea parties and flying about the rafters of her bedroom – what little girl hasn’t fantasized about such things?!

The plot is, of course, far more involved, with a neglectful father finding and stealing a fairy for study, and a band of inventive, adventurous fairy pals, winding their way through a giant’s world populated by over-sized tableware and hungry, evil cats. As the film draws to a close it brings the series as near as it has ever been to its J.M. Barrie roots with a scene that strongly echos things to come for Tink with the Darling children in Peter Pan (outside of her vindictive turn against Wendy Darling – a temperamental, nasty side of the character that has been subdued in these revisionist tales). It’s a real treat for fans of the classic tale and the classic Disney animated adaptation.

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue both looks and sounds stunning on Blu-ray! While not quite reference quality, you’ll really have to pick some nits to find fault with the technical elements of the disc. The digital-to-digital transfer is, of course, a perfect representation of the animation as it was created in the computer with the only fairy in the ointment being some almost unnoticeable artifacting in the compression. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is dynamic and immersive enough but lacks the oomph to really make a statement.

Special features on the disc are, for the most part, limited to content that my 4-year old niece will appreciate – “Fairy Field Guide” interactive trivia game, the “Design a Fairy House” featurette and Bridgit Mendler’s “How to Believe” music video. Thankfully, there are 15-minutes worth of deleted scenes, most still in the storyboard phase, with one pretty cool cat-chase scene nearly in finished, final animated form!

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  1. [...] READ MORE: Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue Blu-ray Disc Review [...]

    Posted by Blu-ray Holiday Gift Guide 2010: Animation on Blu | December 18, 2010, 3:09 am

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