5.7 | / 10 |
Users | 3.7 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.7 |
Kate and Humphrey are two young wolves from a National Park in Canada who find themselves shipped halfway across the country by the park's rangers. While Humphrey is a streetwise, fun-loving Omega wolf, Kate is a sleek and sophisticated Alpha wolf and considers herself Humphrey's superior. Thrown together in a foreign land, and faced with a journey of over a thousand miles to get back home and restore peace on their warring home turf, the two must overcome their differences and learn to look out for each other.
Starring: Justin Long, Hayden Panettiere, Dennis Hopper, Danny Glover, Larry MillerFamily | 100% |
Animation | 84% |
Comedy | 63% |
Adventure | 61% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy (as download)
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
The world of children’s entertainment has exploded so dramatically over the past couple of decades that fare that once would have been thought of as at least passably charming and agreeable now looks like something akin to the cookie cutter cartoons that used to populate Saturday morning network broadcasts. For those who indeed grew up on the three major networks, with offerings largely from mills like Hanna-Barbera, the choices that exploded first with cable, and then with the renaissance of major animated films since the 1980’s has been truly astounding. Cable and satellite television are literally stuffed to their animated gills with channels devoted singularly to the art of hand drawn and/or computer generated images, and everyone from Disney to Pixar to Dreamworks to numerous other studios has released a slew of often top rate animated fare over the past few decades. In fact, that’s part and parcel of what ails Alpha and Omega. For audiences used to the almost guaranteed excellence of a Pixar release, Alpha and Omega comes off as a somewhat shoddy also ran, something that might appeal—albeit fitfully—to the youngest viewers in the house, but which will leave older kids and certainly most adults wondering when the final credits roll is going to start. Plagued by less than brilliant animation (something rather surprising, given that the film was released in 3D, where every jot and tittle would be visible) and even less brilliant writing, Alpha and Omega is the filmic equivalent to the Hanna-Barbera series that populated broadcast television around 40 or so years ago: pleasant enough time killers with virtually no redeeming artistic or literary merits.
It's perhaps hard to give an even relatively objective view of Alpha and Omega's AVC encoded 1080p image (in 1.78:1), if only because the animation is often so disappointing. From a purely technical standpoint, this is an absolutely fine transfer, as one would expect of a product crafted completely in the digital domain. What is bothersome here is the lack of detail in the animation itself. Those used to the furry brilliance of the creatures in, say, Monsters, Inc., will wonder what the "fur renderer" in Alpha and Omega spent his time doing, for it certainly doesn't seem that much time was spent on actually rendering fur. Colors here are bland, often monochromatic, and backgrounds especially don't seem to have been given much thought or care. Maybe Crest was going for some sort of ultra-stylized look, but if so, they failed. This is one of the most generic looking pieces of animation in recent memory.
Much better is Alpha and Omega's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. One of the few elements which unquestionably works in this film is the charming score of Chris Bacon. While Bacon does have a tendency to "Mickey Mouse" (pun probably intended) his cues, his music is nonetheless largely charming and brings an added dimension to the often resolutely 2D emotional and storytelling world of Alpha and Omega. The entire mix here though is pleasing, with nice immersion in foley effects, dialogue and score. There's not a lot of bombastic, showy stuff going on in this soundtrack, but fidelity is excellent, surround activity above average for a relatively modest effort like this is, and all in all, there's a good deal to keep the listener engaged throughout the film.
Alpha and Omega gets a resounding Gamma (that would be a C in modern terms) with regard to its minimal supplements:
The fact is Disney and Disney/Pixar, and to a lesser extent DreamWorks, have set the bar so high for animated fare that "good enough" isn't, well, good enough anymore. Alpha and Omega is a slapdash affair with poorly realized animation and a predictable storyline. Tots and very young kids will probably be reasonably entertained, but everyone else would probably be more entertained by learning the Classical Greek alphabet.
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