Review of Aristocats, The

Introduction

Carrying on the recent trend of transferring all the Disney animated classics to DVD comes the 20th title in the series, The Aristocats.

As is usual with the older Disney movies, the main strength of these films are strong story lines combined with wonderful animation will ensure these film are enjoyed by many generations to come. This film was made in 1970, and it must have been some 15 years since I last saw it, all the better for being on DVD. I have always resisted buying the Disney classics on VHS, as the format could never do justice to these films, and thus these DVD releases have been worth waiting for.

The story revolves around beautiful Duchess (voiced by Eva Gabor) and her three kittens (Marie, Berlioz and Toulouse) who live in 1910 Paris at the magnificent aristocratic home of Madame. The kittens are the epitome of cuteness, Marie the little lady and Berlioz are the musical pair, and fat little Toulouse is the artistic one.

Madame has no family, and so plans to leave her entire estate to her cats when she dies, with the money passing into the hands of her greedy butler Edgar on the cats’ death. However Edgar cannot wait that long, and thus hatches a plot to kidnap (or should that be ‘catnap’?) the four felines away from Madame so he will inherit on her death. Whether he plans to murder Madame also, is not actually disclosed. Well, this is a cute Disney flick!

The cats meet streetwise alley cat Thomas O’Malley who helps the lost family to get back to Paris and to meet some of Thomas’ musical friends Scat Cat and his band.

The film will appeal to kids and adults alike, and features several songs such as “Ev’rybody Wants To Be A Cat” and “Thomas O’Malley Cat”

Video

Sadly the film is thirty years old now, and it shows.

I cant believe that a better quality source print doesn’t exist somewhere in the film archives. The video is full of pops and blemishes throughout the film. OK, we have to make allowances for this due to the films age, but there seemed far too many for me to believe this was the best one Disney had.

Generally the image is dusty and suffers from grain.

Audio

Audio is only Dolby Surround 2.0.

OK we know the original soundtrack wasn’t in a full 5.1 Dolby Digital mix, but you get the feeling that Disney do not regard this film as one of their most memorable classics. If they did, then no doubt some time and effort would have been spent on a full audio 5.1 remix, and finding a clean source print.

It is these kind of signs that make me wonder if we will see an ‘Aristocats – Special Edition’ sometime in the near future, with a ‘wonderfully restored picture and remixed sound’ from a new unblemished master they just happened to ‘find’.

Features

Static menus lead the way to a few extras. You get the original theatrical trailer, and two useful extras that can be educational to young children also, that could help with their reading.

The Interactive Read-Along is a new story book feature where the user can choose to have the DVD read you the story with text, or you read the text without the narration. The story book opens in true Disney style, and newly drawn pictures (i.e not captured from the film itself) on each page are accompanied by the text of the story. The pages turn when read. This takes the reader through the whole story of the movie in about 20 pages.
The Interactive Trivia Game is a multi choice quiz that is completed on the DVD player’s remote.

Finally you get to see several trailers for forthcoming releases. Now Disney has been criticised recently about their habit of forcing you to see these trailers every time you put the disc in the player. You can skip past each one, but it can take about 8 button presses to get to the main menu. Disney are abusing this feature of the DVD standard here for their own purposes. Fair enough to have the trailers selectable from the Extras menu, but to force them on the audience every time the disk is played is unacceptable.

Conclusion

This is a classic Disney feature, but is not one of their most memorable efforts. I really could not remember much of the story before I saw it, whereas the same could not be said for Jungle Book or Cinderella.

Kids will like it whether it’s on DVD, VHS or whatever. It is a shame that the same time and money has not been spent on this DVD release as they have on some of their other titles, as it could have been so much better,

At the moment there is no Region 2 version to select, but given that more and more Disney flicks are appearing over here, it can’t be long. Lets hope they make a better job of it!