Family Home Theater

THAT THING YOU DO! (Blu-ray)

April 6, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Entire Family, Musical, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade: B+
Entire family: Yes
1996, 108 min., Color
Rated PG for some language
Fox
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Featured audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Bonus features: C+
Trailer

Somehow I missed That Thing You Do! when it came out in 1996, but now that it’s out on Blu-ray this musical comedy from Tom Hanks (who wrote the screenplay, directed, and appeared in the film) seems like a great choice for family movie night. Call it a sanitized version of The Commitments.

It’s also a love letter to the Sixties and one hit wonders, filled with plenty of old-time products, signage, fashions, and attitudes—a richly atmospheric film about a time when every unknown rock group was hoping for the same meteoric rise as “British Invasion” pop groups like The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and Herman’s Hermits.

Guy (Tom Everett Scott) works at his father’s appliance store in Erie, Pa., but his love is music and his dream is to play the drums again in a band—this time a more successful one. He gets his chance when the drummer (Gioivanni Ribisi) from a local garage band breaks his arm and the group need a fill-in for a college talent show they’re competing in. Guy ups the tempo on the band’s only good, original song and forces them to snap it up, turning a ballad into a pop song that leads to better and bigger things . . . for a while. More

THE BIBLE: THE EPIC MINISERIES (Blu-ray)

April 3, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater Drama, PG-13 rated 1 Comment

Grade: B+
Entire family: No
2013, 10 episodes (440 min.), Color
Unrated (would be PG-13 for graphic violence)
Fox
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Featured audio: DTS-HD 5.1
Bonus features: C+
Trailer

The Bible: The Epic Miniseries carries a blue-and-white Dove symbol on its back cover, but it’s awfully tiny and doesn’t actually say “Family Approved.” After watching this popular HISTORY Channel series, I know why. If it were a motion picture, The Bible would have to be rated at least PG-13 for the incredible amount of graphic violence it depicts. The cameras capture throat slitting, beheadings, stonings, beatings, and the same kind of sword slashing, stabbing and hacking (with splattering blood) that we get in a movie like 300.

1 Samuel 17: 51 tells how David took Goliath’s sword and killed him, then cut off his head. But reading it is one thing; seeing him holding up the head like a trophy is another. If you read the Bible there’s an awful lot of fighting and killing, but it’s pretty matter-of-fact. 2 Samuel 8:5 tells us “David slew twenty-two thousand men of the Syrians” and verse 13 adds that he won a name for himself in battle and upon his return “slew eighteen thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt.” But train the camera on battle after battle, and . . . well, you get the picture.

That’s the first thing that strikes you about this series. The second is that the production values, the casting, the writing—even the segues that help span huge chunks of the book that had to be omitted—are all quite good. The CGI effects are terrific in this big-screen quality production. In fact, the only thing that reminds you it’s television are annoying “Previously on” and “Next on” montages that bookend each episode and run excessively long. But at least you can skip over those. More

H2O: JUST ADD WATER – SEASON 3 (DVD)

April 1, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Drama, Entire Family Leave a comment

Grade: B+
Entire family: Yes
2008, 26 episodes (650 min.), Color
Unrated (would be PG for thematic elements)
New Video
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Featured audio: Dolby Digital 2.0
Bonus features: C+
Trailer

This Australian-made TV series aimed at teens and ‘tweens has turned into a worldwide phenomenon, and I can see why. The plots may be as straightforward as you’d expect from a 30-minute comedy-drama, character development is basically a composite profile gained from spending time with these people week after week, and crises tend to be resolved fairly quickly. But there’s an addictive quality to H2O: Just Add Water that’s hard to pinpoint.

Only two seasons with a 52-episode arc were planned, but fan demand forced the producers to come up with a third series—this final installment.

As with the first two seasons, these are not stand-alone episodes, but rather a continuing storyline. H2O: Just Add Water is about three Gold Coast teens who end up transformed by an event at Mako Island, so that every time water touches any part of their skin they change into mermaids. It sounds gimmicky, but the mermaid angle really adds a fun level to an otherwise typical teen and family comedy-drama.

In this series, as in Lost, there’s a mysterious island that holds a secret, and like Bewitched those with powers use them secretly and try to conceal them from others. That leads to both comic situations and also tension over whether they’ll be discovered. And of course there’s a bit of The Little Mermaid and Splash in this series.

Two new characters are introduced this season. Bella (Indiana Evans) replaces Emma (Claire Holt) as the third mermaid, and of course that means a new love interest has to come into the picture. Enter Will (Luke Mitchell), a competitive free-diver whose passion is collecting rocks and shells and other bounty from the sea. Mermaids Rikki (Cariba Heine) and Cleo (Phoebe Tonkin) return, as do their sometimes boyfriends Lewis (Angus McLaren) and Zane (Burgess Abernethy). More

REAL STEEL (Blu-ray combo)

March 31, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, PG-13 rated 1 Comment

Grade: B+
Entire family: No
2011, 127 min., Color
Rated PG-13 for some violence, intense action and brief language
Touchstone/Disney
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Featured audio: DTS-HD MA 7.1
Bonus features: C
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD
Trailer

This Rocky-with-robots tale stars Hugh Jackman as a former fighter who operates a robot boxer in a near-future world in which robots have taken over the ring. He’s a ne’er-do-well who stays one jump ahead of creditors, but suddenly has to look after his kid. The two of them bond over robot boxing when it turns out the kid (Dakota Goyo) takes after his father.

Producer Steven Spielberg convinced director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) to build and use real robots to minimize the use of CGI, and the results are impressive—so stunning that the film earned an Oscar nomination for special effects. It’s a blockbuster film, but one with heart. Though Jackman’s character gets beaten up by a group of men at one point, that’s the only scene that pushes the rating. Otherwise, it’s all robot violence—no blood, just hydraulic fluid. And some language—hells and damns, mostly.

While it seems a lot more family-friendly than its rating, younger children may find certain scenes upsetting. At the center of the story is a difficult family structure, complete with dead-or-deadbeat parents and a custody struggle. There is also a scene of violence far beyond what’s seen in the boxing sequences, in which both father and child are in danger. Our 11 year old who’s sensitive to violence said she “liked almost everything about this movie” except for “the fighting with the real people.”

My guess is the PG-13 rating comes in large part from that scene, because the rest of it is a fun popcorn movie that will likely appeal to kids interested in robots/droids, video games, and the action genre. Picture a mash-up of boxing films, Fight Club, and demolition derbies—with some Star Wars and Transformers thrown in for good measure—and you’ll have a pretty good image of Real Steel. More

ADVENTURES IN ZAMBEZIA (Blu-ray combo)

March 30, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater Animation, G rated 3 Comments

Grade: C
Entire family: No
2011, 83 min., Color
Rated G
Sony
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Featured audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Bonus features: C
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD
Trailer

I loved animated films as a kid, and still do. But as with live-action films, there still has to be an interesting (and hopefully original) plot, characters we care about, and strong, believable dialogue. The fact that it’s animated only adds another requirement: the animation has to be good.

Adventures in Zambezia (aka Zambezia) satisfies only the last condition. The animation of this full-length feature from Triggerfish Animation Studios (South Africa) is competent, though weaker scenes like the flight sequences will remind you of video-game graphics and the art design of frames often seems cluttered.

But big-name voice talents like Leonard Nimoy, Jeremy Suarez, Abigail Breslin, Jeff Goldblum, Samuel L. Jackson, Jenifer Lewis, and Jim Cummings seem wasted because the story is so contrived and structured to be so constantly in motion that we never really get the chance to form any sort of attachment to the characters—which means we don’t care about them. More

SHANE and THE ODD COUPLE are coming to Blu-ray

March 30, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater News Leave a comment

On June 4 families can add two G-rated classics to their collections: the classic Western Shane, starring Alan Ladd as a mysterious stranger who helps a rancher and his wife fight the likes of Jack Palance (and becomes a hero to the rancher’s boy in the process), and The Odd Couple, the 1968 film adaptation of Neil Simon’s hit Broadway play, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Amazon is already accepting pre-orders.

THE SANDLOT (20th Anniversary Blu-ray combo)

March 28, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Entire Family, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade: B+
Entire family: Yes
1993, 101 min., Color
Rated PG for some language and kids chewing tobacco
Fox
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Featured audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Bonus features: C-
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD
Trailer

The Sandlot always struck me as a more kid-friendly version of Stand by Me. It’s a frame story narrated by an adult who recalls one extraordinary childhood summer and a very special best friend. However, instead of a quest to find a dead body, it’s a signed Babe Ruth baseball the kids are after, and what stands in their way isn’t a bunch of older hoodlums with switchblades, but an enormous animal they call “The Beast.”

More than coming of age, The Sandlot is about baseball . . . or the love of baseball. So what better timing than to release a 20^th Anniversary Blu-ray the Tuesday before the 2013 season openers?

The year is 1962. Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry) has just moved to a small neighborhood outside L.A. with his mother (Karen Allen) and new stepfather (Denis Leary). Isolated and friendless, he finds his whole summer changing after a boy who lives across the street takes him under his wing. More

Next new-to-Blu round of Disney titles: June 11

March 25, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater News 1 Comment

Disney announced three titles new to Blu-ray for June 11, 2013 release, and each film comes with a sequel: Lilo & Stitch (and Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch), The Emperor’s New Groove (and Kronk’s New Groove), and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (and Atlantis: Milo’s Return). The combo packs will contain a Blu-ray featuring both films and a DVD for each film, with an SRP of $29.99 U.S./$35.99 Canada.

LINCOLN (4-Disc Blu-ray combo)

March 24, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater Drama, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

Grade: A-
Entire family: No
2012, 150 min., Color
Rated PG-13 for intense war violence, carnage, and brief strong language
DreamWorks SKG
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Featured audio: DTS-HD MA 7.1
Bonus features: C-
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy
Trailer

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is both a sprawling character study and a behind-the-scenes story of how the United States came to abolish slavery. Rated PG-13, the film contains really just three scenes that are too graphic for younger children: the opening Civil War battle sequence, which is extremely violent; a scene mid-point where Robert Lincoln refuses to go inside a hospital with his father, but witnesses something far worse than wounded soldiers outside; and a scene near the end when Lincoln rides a horse through a battlefield filled with dead soldiers.

If you shield young ones from those scenes, and maybe plug their ears for the punch line of a story involving a picture of George Washington hanging in a bathroom, they’d be able to watch Lincoln—though I can’t imagine any of them lasting very long. For one thing, Lincoln is two and a half hours long, and that’s enough to challenge the attention span of even the most dedicated young history buff. Lincoln is also a slow-moving dialogue- and character-driven film that’s as leisurely paced and deliberate as our 16^th President reportedly was in everything. Meanwhile, the parts that adults will find most interesting—the backdoor politicking, bribery, threats, and coercion that were used to gain a voting majority—will be too complicated for young children to grasp. More

BARBIE IN THE PINK SHOES (Blu-ray combo)

March 21, 2013

James Plath, Family Home Theater Animation, Children's, G rated Leave a comment

Grade: C+
Entire family: No
2013, direct-to-video, 75 min., Color
Not rated (would be G)
Universal
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Featured audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Bonus features: D
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy, UV
Trailer

This one’s for family movie night only if your children are ballet loving girls under the age of 12.

Universal and Mattel have been recycling plots for their animated direct-to-video Barbie movies since the very beginning, when they riffed off a Tchaikovsky ballet to create Barbie in The Nutcracker (2001). With Barbie in The Pink Shoes—the 24^th full-length feature in the popular series—they return to ballet.

It’s based on The Red Shoes, a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a girl whose dance shoes take control and keep her dancing and dancing, though she wishes them to stop. Andersen’s is a cautionary tale for vain and selfish children, but in Barbie in The Pink Shoes the shoes are more like the ruby slippers that transported Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Here they’re pink, and our light-footed heroine is magically beamed into the “real” ballets that she’s been dancing (or has wanted to dance) for years.

Barbie plays Kristyn (voiced by Kelly Sheridan), a ballerina who aspires to be a prima donna. Her dance company’s artistic director gets on her for dancing how she feels, rather than classically with the routines that were choreographed for her. Her friend, Hailey (whom, I confess, reminds me a bit of Velma on Scooby-Doo!) is close enough to her when she puts on the magic shoes from the prop room that she too is transported inside the world of ballet: Giselle, Swan Lake, and (sort of) The Nutcracker. More