Puppies & Kittens Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		1.5
Audio		1.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.0

Puppies & Kittens Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 1, 2019

Puppies & Kittens has been on the Blu-ray marketplace for nearly a decade, but now was the right time to buy it (and review it!). My sixteen-month-old daughter Laura has started to really enjoy looking at and interacting with animals. She absolutely adores one of the family cats, the one that usually, but usually reluctantly, allows Laura to pet and hug her (Laura is very much a hugger). She has enjoyed a DVD called Kitten Party that we bought for her, so that naturally led to browsing Amazon to see what else was available in the "animals on television" genre (she also enjoys a recording of Hallmark Channel's Kitten Bowl, though she is only allowed screen time in extremely small doses). That led to the discovery of Puppies & Kittens, Lichtung Media Ltd.'s Blu-ray that promises "187 minutes of kittens and puppies." The disc does deliver that, but what it doesn't say is that it's puppies and kittens playing in (or better said laying around on) some super-bright white play area, filled with white Styrofoam balls (and a few colorful toys too). Or maybe it does say that. The puppies and kittens will "enchant you," the back of the box says, which may be Lichtung's code for "put you to sleep."

It's like an insane asylum for puppies and kittens.

The movie offers three basic choices, selectable at the very boring, textless, and soundless main menu screen. Users may check any of three checkboxes on the right-hand side which allows the selection of a video containing just puppies (the top box), just kittens and puppies (the middle box), or just kittens (the bottom box). On the left-hand side is the "play" button. "Puppies Only" runs for 52:51. "Puppies and Kittens" runs for 18:46. "Kittens Only" has a runtime of 2:03:57. And then it's the animals in that bright white area and nothing else. As the program ends, the same segment repeats on loop if only one is checked.

The puppies only segment begins with the pooches mingling around the middle of the frame and exploring the camera, which is always a fun animal pastime. They quickly grow bored of that, though, and congregate more towards the middle and back when a human off-camera begins throwing the white styrofoam balls into the play area. Some of them try to climb out of whatever enclosure they are in (Mrs. Liebman guess some sort of swimming pool with steep sides painted white) but gain no traction. There is some play with the balls, but the bulk of the runtime sees the puppies congregating at the top of the screen, worn out from having so much fun, huddled together and trying to sleep in a pile of fluffy bodies.

The middle segment features both species. It's mass hysteria! (not really). There is a moment at about the 2:35 mark when one of the pups pees towards the top of the screen on one of the slopes. It rolls down into a puddle, which is one of the most exciting moments in the collection (see screenshots #5). The dogs then proceed to huddle up around the pee. A few minutes later (the 6:17 mark to be exact), one of the dogs poops on the right hand side of the screen (I decided not to take a screenshot of that). The segment does begin with some action. The puppies are mostly gathered at the top while the cats linger around the bottom. The first curious puppy gets a rude swipe from one of the cats, but afterwards it's a fairly peaceful coexistence between the species. Other than that, there's not a lot of interaction. The gray kittens are a bit more bold than the others, wandering into the puppy zone on occasion. One of them switches sides and remains with the puppies for the duration, at least until they abandon him or her for the top-left corner, leaving kitty there alone to smell around where the pee was (the kitten does join them again at the very end). For the most part this is a segregated species video.

"Kittens" are obviously the workhorses for the disc if one goes by sheer runtime, appearing for more than double the screen time of their canine counterparts. The kitties are dropped into the empty white space with a few colorful balls of yarn to begin, and the white styrofoam balls are quickly introduced at a very slow rate. The kitties play with them a bit but are mostly content to linger about and not do much. About 47 minutes in a new crop of kittens appears, exclusive to the back end of this segment. The set also adds a few cat tree-type toys, which are, of course, white. The new kitties are a little more playful and enjoy the perches they have been given, but...wow...this whole thing is just so dull.

What was Laura's reaction? She was thrilled for the first few moments. She screamed and laughed and pointed and tried to hug the kitties (when she wants to hug someone or something on TV she hugs the entertainment rack). She lost interest rather quickly, within seconds, actually, and proceeded to prance over to the window and look outside instead. I would call her back and she would smile at the TV for a few seconds, but it did not hold her interest. She much prefers Kitten Party, live-action cat and dog videos online, or some of the basic early development musical animations on YouTube.

Puppies & Kittens Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The 1080p video image is not particularly attractive. The white dominant play area, which is slightly reflective, appears blown out, the highlights too bright and that it takes up the majority of the screen leaves the image struggling to look interesting, even with the animals maneuvering about it (oddly, the second half of "kittens" looks as if someone figured it out and fiddled with the brightness, just making the frame a bit darker overall rather than the white less garish). The package does promise that this is the "first complete 4K production in 4096x2048 resolution" but the on-screen 1080p image is fairly soft and bland. The kittens and puppies lack razor-sharp resolution, instead appearing as, sometimes, undefined masses of fur, particularly the kittens that largely huddle around the bottom of the screen. Sharpness does improve in the middle of the frame and up towards the top. Colors are adequate, but one would expect both individual fur colors and the colorful balls of yarn to pop more than they do against the white background. There appear to be some compression artifacts but it's actually hard to tell in the blinding white blank spaces. This is just a visual bore. It's very poorly designed and even more than the oftentimes tired and lazy animals it's the minimalist background that does the production in. The filmmakers more than likely believed that the white background would isolate the subjects, but...nope. It's a mess all the way through.

Puppies & Kittens Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Puppies and Kittens features a DTS 5.1 soundtrack, but the rear channels do not seem to be active (producing no audible sound even with an ear pressed up against them). For the puppies only segment, the accompanying Jazz beats sound horrendous. The low end is entirely unkempt, notes are muddy, and the music in its total is harsh and scratchy. The track is made entirely of piano play for the puppies and kittens and kittens-only segments, which does not sound terrible but it is lacking realistic, transparently lifelike clarity. At its worst, it sounds muddled. At its best, it sounds passable. That's about it. No dialogue, no ambient effects, and the puppies and kittens are muted, so hisses and swats and sounds of play are not audible. Mute it for "puppies" for sure. The others sound decent enough.

Puppies & Kittens Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Despite the "Special Collectors Edition" verbiage -- repeated several times on the front and back -- no extras are included.

Puppies & Kittens Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The above-linked Kitten Party is vastly superior. More diverse backgrounds, more playful and curious animals, good music, and frankly better picture quality despite being on a DVD. Puppies & Kittens is serviceable if one is just looking to have puppies and kittens appearing on the screen, but even at under $5 the content is very difficult to recommend. Most televisions these days have built-in YouTube apps, and selecting any random video that's returned from a search for "puppies & kittens" will probably yield more entertaining results. Add that the video quality is poor, the music is shrilly (and loud at reference volume), and no extras are included, and this one is an easy pass. If it were a one-of-a-kind, sure, it might be worth it, but there's far better similar content on the marketplace.