Jungle Shuffle 3D Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Jungle Shuffle 3D Blu-ray Movie Review

Jungle Stumble might be more like it.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 11, 2015

The new(ish) Comedy Central show @ Midnight, a show I watch more or less faithfully despite being so far outside of its target demographic that host Chris Hardwick might want to have one of the show's hashtag wars built around “#WTF are you doing tuning in?,” has had occasional segments devoted to supposed children’s programming where the characters are so outré as to virtually guarantee nightmares in the typical toddler. Maybe it’s at least partially due to the fact that Jungle Shuffle 3D features coatis, odd, snout nosed and long tailed creatures which are often mistakenly thought of as monkeys when they’re evidently more related to raccoons, but this film’s central characters are at least minimally disturbing at times in this film, not just due to the general design aesthetic but also (perhaps more so) due to the at times bizarre rendering tactics employed by the animation team, gambits which make the little “furry” creatures look like they’re molded out of polystyrene. That aspect, especially when added to a tired and familiar storyline that has been done before (and better) in any number of higher budgeted animated fare, makes Jungle Shuffle 3D a middling effort that will probably appeal most to the youngest viewers who haven’t yet passed over into that cynical age that first makes them the target demographic for @ Midnight and, later, a peer of mine.

Jungle Shuffle proudly announces its lineage on the cover of this new Blu-ray, proclaiming it is from the same creative team that gave the world The Reef. As I mentioned in the review of that particular animated “extravaganza,” there was the unmistakable whiff of a better known and frankly just plain better film wafting through the tale of little Pi, namely another “fish out of water” tale, Finding Nemo. In the case of Jungle Shuffle, the filmic referent might perhaps be more appropriately designated as Rio, itself hardly a model of plot innovation.

Much as with the story of Blu, Jungle Shuffle details a hapless animal trapped by nefarious hunters and transported to a new location. In this particular instance, it’s a young purple coati named Sacha (Alicia Silverstone). (Interestingly virtually all online data about this film— data which is admittedly fairly scarce—lists Jessica DiCicco as voicing Sacha. Perhaps Silverstone was brought on board fairly late to revoice the character with the hope that her marquee value might sell a few tickets or Blu-ray discs. My unshakable hunch is this will be a failed tactic.) Sacha is in love with hapless Manu (Drake Bell), a well meaning but accident prone orangish coati who is banished by the coati king (Tom Arnold) and has learned to fend for himself in the forest.

Once Sacha is taken by some hunters working for a manic mad scientist who is attempting to genetically create a “super chicken” that will take supermarket meat departments by storm, Manu of course goes on a quest to rescue his love. He’s helped by the Hispanic sounding Chuy (Rob Schneider), a blue monkey who had been imprisoned by the same bad guys who captured Sacha, but who escapes during a botched rescue attempt by Manu. Also on board is a dark jaguar named Balaam (Chris Gardner), who is trying to rescue his spouse from the clutches of these same evil madmen.

There is absolutely nothing even remotely surprising about what happens, and in fact so much of Jungle Shuffle is so relentlessly derivative that it almost—almost—defies description. To take just one admittedly minor but telling example: take a look at one of the bad guys as detailed in the fifth screenshot accompanying this review. Look familiar? Well, if not, I recommend a quick rewatching of Toy Story 2, with an emphasis placed on Al, the nefarious toy collector voiced by Wayne Knight. When an animated film can't even come up with its own character designs, there's not enough "shuffle" power around to rearrange the cards in an attempt to distract from plot points and characters cobbled together from other "decks."

Jungle Shuffle 3D Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Jungle Shuffle is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm with both MVC (3D) and AVC (2D) encoded 1080p transfers in 1.78:1 on the same disc. This is one of the most oddly animated films to come down the pike in quite a while. Some elements, as in a raging river that Manu and Chuy end up in, are rendered in an almost photorealistic way, but the bulk of this presentation is really clunky looking, resembling a not very well done videogame more than a feature film. While not macroblocking in the traditional sense, there's something somewhat similar on display when huge "clumps" of visual data emerge from various characters or simply lie there statically while the rest of the character moves. It's a totally weird thing to watch and makes the shiny, rubbery looking surface of the supposedly "furry" coatis look almost hallucinogenic at times. The best thing about this high definition presentation is no doubt its extremely bright and often quite winning palette. The film exploits a huge range of tones, from the playful hues of Manu and Sachu to more restrained colors for characters like Balaam.

The 3D presentation is average at best, with most depth being achieved with rote "tricks" like a piece of foliage being placed in the foreground, something that supposedly gives immediate depth to the image. Unfortunately, that's about all the depth that's offered in a lot of shots in the film—namely, one isolated element, sometimes in shadow, placed in the foreground, with all other elements seeming to exist in the same plane behind that foreground object. There's very little here that actually invites the eye well into the frame and instead there's more of a bifurcated ambience on display, one that's split fairly evenly between foreground and background.

Jungle Shuffle 3D Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Jungle Shuffle's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix has moments of decent immersion, courtesy of things like jungle noises and the roar of the hunters' all terrain vehicle storming through the underbrush, but this is a fairly low key soundtrack, one that tends to deliver dialogue front and center and without a lot of nuance or overly detailed discrete channelization. The lackluster score, including a couple of songs, does little to up the sonic ante, though at least fidelity is solid, with no problems to report.

Jungle Shuffle 3D Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements on this Blu-ray disc.

Jungle Shuffle 3D Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Jungle Shuffle has color going for it, and that bright array of hues may be enough, if just barely, to make this a decent time killer for the youngest tots in the family. Kids older than even 8 or so will probably find this a pretty predictable bore. While the 3D component is lackluster, the basic image quality is good, though the actual animation may, in best @ Midnight style, provoke those aforementioned nightmares.