6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
When Clawdeen Wolf gets the chance to apprentice for the legendary fashion designer Madame Ghostier, she and her best ghoul friends immediately pack their bags and hop on a plane to beautiful Scaris, France. As Clawdeen competes against two worthy opponents, Skelita Calaveras and Jinafire Long, her pals Frankie Stein and Rochelle Goyle uncover clues to a spooktacular secret hidden deep beneath the cobblestone streets.
Starring: Laura Bailey (II), Cam Clarke, Debi Derryberry, Erin Fitzgerald, Kate HigginsFamily | 100% |
Animation | 93% |
Comedy | 59% |
Supernatural | 8% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
French: DTS 5.1
Spanish: DTS 5.1
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 2.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
"Scaris"="Paris" and "City of Frights"="City of Lights." Get it? More Monster High puns. Yay! Mattel's teenage "monster" franchise has become such a, well, monster hit that the dolls, backpacks, lunch boxes, T-shirts, and other assorted memorabilia are pretty much all anyone sees at the likes of Wal-Mart and Target anymore, never mind down the hallowed halls of elementary and middle schools all over the country. And it's all thanks to puns. No, these aren't sharp characters; they don't operate in pinpoint, deep stories; and the lessons they learn aren't complex. It's a safe bet that the pun comes first and the story comes second. If "Paris" can become "Scaris" (which also doubles for "scare us," how clever!) and the characters can go "fright seeing" and visit such landmarks as "The Eiffel Terror," then, hey, there's a movie right there. Toss in some fashion design -- the "ghouls" of Monster High are always hip and happening and slaves to the latest trends (until the realize the power of individuality at the end of one movie or special and go back to being slaves of trends in the next movie) and voilą! A Monster High movie is born.
Fashionable.
Monster High: Scaris, City Of Frights once again arrives on Blu-ray, as discussed above, with a dull, muddy 1080p transfer that's hardly an improvement over DVD. The animation is inherently hideous, producing dreary colors that don't pop. Even what should be bright, vibrant hair accents, clothing hues, and other loud colors fail to move the needle even a smidgen. Details are equally poor. Raw definition is lacking; there's a soft, muddy texture to the entire image. Everything from wooden desks to clothes and from Scaris' streets to character hair yield only the most simple textures. The transfer suffers through some minor, but annoying, bits of aliasing and jagged edges; a perfect examples is evident on the edges of airplane seats in chapter four. But the biggest problem is that the movie looks like a DVD. It's a fully unattractive image that screams "cheap," and for something as popular as Monster High it's a wonder this passes for quality animation.
At least Monster High: Scaris, City Of Frights sounds pretty good. Universal's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is active and energetic, offering a cheery, lively, and spacious musical presentation that handles Pop tunes and score alike with equal attention to detail and room-filling goodness. The track presents quite a few effects to varying degrees of heft and presence. Light jet engine hums help support flight scenes while crashes, booms, howls, and other more dominant effects enjoy solid aural definition and placement. Dialogue is clearly defined and grounded in the front-center speaker.
Monster High: Scaris, City Of Frights contains no film-related supplements but does feature two episodes of Ever After High. Inside
the Blu-ray case, buyers will find a DVD copy of the film as well as a voucher for a UV/iTunes digital copy.
Monster High: Scaris, City Of Frights, and the series as a whole, is so manufactured, trite, and repetitive that it's a wonder it's as successful as it is. Add that the animation (most of the time) stinks, the characters are nearly empty beyond their pun-infensted names and the world in which they live, and that every movie seems to simply rework variations of the same theme, and the result is an epic failure that's still managed to soar in the marketplace. This thirty-something guy just doesn't get it, apparently, but he does get that the Blu-ray's picture quality is disappointingly dull but limited to whatever the dreary, sloppy source provides. The lossless soundtrack isn't bad. Supplements are comprised of a couple of episodes of the next big thing reviewers will love to hate. Skip it.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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