6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 3.3 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Sandy Ricks is sent by his mom to Coral Key, a rustic island in the Florida keys, to spend the summer with his uncle Porter Ricks. Sandy dislikes everything about his new environment until a new friend comes into his life, a dolphin named Flipper, that brings uncle and nephew together and leads Sandy on the summer adventure of a lifetime.
Starring: Elijah Wood, Paul Hogan, Chelsea Field, Isaac Hayes, Jonathan BanksFamily | 100% |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
BD-Live
Mobile features
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Everyone loves the king of the sea, ever so kind and gentle is he! Tricks he will do when children appear, and how they laugh when he is near! They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning! No one you see, is smarter than he. And we know Flipper lives in a world full of wonder, flying there...
If you just belted out "under, under the sea," chances are you're old enough to remember watching the original Flipper television series during its initial 1964-67 broadcast run or in syndication in the '70s and '80s. What you may not remember is the 1963 film of the same name that started the five-year friendly dolphin craze. It's this Flipper storytellers Ricou Browning and Jack Cowden mined when developing their mid-90s remake of the same name. The rest of the pieces fell into place. A talented young leading-man-to-be, a grizzled '80s icon (Mick Dundee himself), Jaws cinematographer Bill Butler, equal parts levity and pathos, and accessible family fare kids were bound to love. Unfortunately, the eventual 1996 film's screenwriter and director, Alan Shapiro, wasn't one of those pieces. With just one feature film under his belt (The Crush), Shapiro delivered something more akin to a respectable TV movie than a classic silver-screen family adventure.
"I can't recall the taste of food, nor the sound of wood or touch of grass. No veil between me and the ring of fire."
Flipper's 1080p/VC-1 transfer isn't the sharpest catalog fin slicing through the waves, but it does deliver a clean, colorful, sufficiently faithful presentation worthy of mild praise. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. Bill Butler's summery seaside hues are lovely, skintones are fairly natural (even though faces appear muddy every now and then) and black levels dive deep. And detail? Again, we aren't talking about the crispest catalog picture around, but I suspect it's an accurate rendering of Butler's original photography. Edge definition is firm and stable (without the help of any egregious edge enhancement), overall clarity is commendable, the film's tempered grainfield is intact and textures are reliable. Yes, some slight ringing haunts a number of shots, and yes, minor delineation issues come to bear on a trio of poorly lit nighttime scenes. Even so, both problems are minor and neither one proves to be a substantial distraction. Likewise, some negligible wear and tear dots the print, as do bursts of elevated grain, but the technical encode is on point, meaning there isn't any significant artifacting, banding, aliasing or other oddities to deal with. Of all the Universal catalog transfers that made their high definition debut on February 15th, Flipper's faithful presentation is the best of the bunch.
By source or by way of the mix, Universal's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track isn't quite as impressive as its video transfer. Don't get me wrong though: it still gets the job done. Dialogue is clear and intelligible, effects are crisp and well prioritized, and voices rarely float above the soundfield (when they do, ADR is almost always the culprit). Rear speaker activity is quiet but mischievous, directionality is subdued but playful, and LFE output, though frothy at times, injects some much-needed power into Porter's boat engine, the island's violent storms and the weight of rolling waves. On a less positive note, effects tend to be a tad tinny (sometimes to the point of being brittle) and the soundscape has an artificial air about it. Still, little is out of sorts. Flipper has the unmistakable gait of a modestly budgeted, mid-90s production and Universal's lossless track doesn't depart from it.
Like Univeral's other February 8th catalog releases, Flipper doesn't include a single special feature.
Flipper is too slow for young children, a decent drama for eight to eleven-year-olds and a good choice for families who've exhausted their supply of better family films. Just beware: it's slushy, formulaic and predictable. At least its Blu-ray release has more to offer, namely an unexpectedly strong video transfer and a solid DTS-HD Master Audio track. There aren't any special features to be had, but Flipper fans won't bat an eye.
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