Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 27, 2015

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure is in some ways a standard-fare Barbie movie and in others just a little different. This movie adds four cute and cuddly puppies to the roster because...they're cute and cuddly. They double the number of primary characters and add some sass to any already sassy selection of teens, preteens, and youngsters who, in this film, are sort of like the Barbie universe equivalent of The Goonies. On the other hand, this movie tones down the blinding barrage of pinks and purples -- it's not this bad, anyway -- and turns up a classic kid-friendly adventure story. It's nice to see a Barbie movie step aside from color bombardment while still maintaining an approachable style that banks on simplicity but satisfies with charm.

Adventurers.

Barbie (voiced by Kelly Sheridan) and her sisters Chelsea (voiced by Alyssya Swales), Skipper (voiced by Kazumi Evans), and Stacie (voiced by Claire Corlett) are returning to Barbie's childhood home of Willows, a quaint small town that holds a big secret. Their grandmother (voiced by Joanne Wilson) surprises the girls with four little puppies they name Taffy (voiced by Chelsea Miller), Honey (voiced by Amelia Shoichet-Stoll), DJ (voiced by Taylor Dianne Robinson), and Rookie (voiced by Bronwen Holmes), respectively. The girls quickly bond to the puppies and the puppies to the girls. When they go digging through Barbie's box of childhood memories, they discover an old treasure map said to mark the spot of a long buried assortment of riches that could make them wealthy and save the town from its pending financial ruin. The girls and the puppies set out to discover it, but they're followed by a couple of no-good carnival workers (voiced by Michael Daingerfield and Sam Vincent) out to steal the treasure from the girls and get rich beyond their wildest dreams.

The core plot leaves nothing to the imagination and the mystery isn't all that mysterious -- what does it say about the people of Willows that they couldn't sort it out for all those years? -- but the movie should prove entertaining to younger kids who will appreciate the sense of adventure and the way the movie manages a fairly large and diverse scale within the confines of an otherwise intimate, small-town mystery. The various challenges and obstacles are solved easily but with a fair bit of spunk and spirit mixed in to add to the excitement. Willows is vintage small town USA and lends itself well to the treasure hunt narrative. It's smartly designed and the various secrets, while not exactly hard to identify before the characters make the necessary connections, are hidden from the characters just well enough make the plot at least a little bit believable.

The film's main characters -- humans and puppies alike -- lack much in the way of distinguishing characteristics. Young Chelsea is an expert puzzle solver, something the movie identifies in its opening minutes and that comes in handy later on. Barbie, who is the oldest and leads the initial charge in the search for treasure, is the most mature of the bunch and serves as a de facto leader and heart of the group while the grandma character represents the soul. The puppies are fun but don't add much to the movie beyond cuteness and comic relief. They can talk, too, but only to other dogs. The film's villains are typical of the type. They're two bumbling, stumbling goons who are always a step behind but who remain hot on the girls' trail for the duration. Their motives are simple, as are the girls' for that matter, but the movie does the obligatory "good deed" at the end, anyway, where everyone walks home happy, though perhaps with a bit less coin than they anticipated when they began the search.

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure features a 1080p transfer that's representational of the series' recent output on Blu-ray. Colors are the highlight, with (not as many as previous installments) pinks and purples the most eye-catching, each standing out in a rather monochromatic, non-nunaced sort of way but offering some brilliance to the image. Bright blue skies over Willows and greenery around town are also nicely cheery, as are various façades downtown. Black levels are reliable, particularly later on when the action shifts to a substantially darker location. Details are fine. The image is a hair soft by nature but character definition, grasses and leaves, animal hair, and various brick and concrete details around town satisfy with crisp definition and plenty of intimate textures, at least as intimate as is inherent to the animation. Minor banding and aliasing interfere throughout but the transfer nevertheless holds up well in all areas.

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure features a well-rounded DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Musical definition impresses, whether score or sugary Pop tunes. Instrumental definition and separation are highlights, and surround and LFE details give the music a fuller and richer posture. The track is littered with good supportive details and ambience. Horns honk off to the side, laughter flows through the back channels, bikes power over wooden planks, city traffic springs to life, and a fountain spits out water, all with impressively realistic detail and stage placement. Various heavy effects are potent and well defined even with the added oomph, including a piercing town bell and crashes late in the movie. Dialogue is smooth and center focused. It enjoys positive, wide echoing around the stage when produced in a cavernous location near film's end.

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure contains a few brief supplements. A DVD copy of the film and a voucher for a UV/iTunes digital copy are included with purchase.

• Music Video (1080p, 2:46): "The Greatest Day"
• Bloopers (1080p, 2:49): Some funny moments from the (digital) "shoot."
• Motion Comic (1080p, 1:57): "Tiny Dancer." Super Sparkle uses all of her powers in the search for one dancer's missing lucky bracelet.
• Previews (1080p): Barbie & Her Sisters Puppy Rescue (video game), Barbie Spy Squad, Barbie Rock 'N Royals, Barbie in Princess Power, Barbie and the Secret Door, Barbie The Pearl Princess, and The Barbie Movie Collection.

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure doesn't overwhelm the audience with pink and purple but instead presents a more balanced, and slightly more cuddly, Barbie adventure movie. It's not particularly creative and the characters aren't memorable, but there's a charm to both the movie's simplicity and the honesty with which it goes about its business, which is to make viewers smile. Those smiles won't be quite so wide on adults as they will be on the kids, but the target audience should love the movie and, as far as Barbie flicks go, it should prove tolerable for adults. Universal's Blu-ray release of Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure features attractive video and fine audio. Supplements are on the light side but are typical of a Barbie release. Recommended.