6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.7 |
Lance and Walter. One is a super cool and charming spy, and the other invents the super cool gadgets Lance uses. When an event happens, they must learn to rely on each other like never before in order to save the world.
Starring: Will Smith, Tom Holland (X), Rashida Jones, Ben Mendelsohn, Reba McEntireFamily | 100% |
Animation | 90% |
Adventure | 73% |
Comedy | 48% |
Action | 3% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French (Canada): Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English SDH, French, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The animators at Blue Sky came up with an unexpected “superstar” in the form of Scrat, the acorn hoarding kinda sorta squirrel like creature in the Ice Age: 5 Movie Collection. Scrat became so popular after the first Ice Age, in fact, that he (it?) became Blue Sky’s mascot, featured prominently in both a series of appealing shorts as well as the film’s production masthead. Blue Sky may have another extremely odd star waiting in the wings, with an emphasis on wings, since this bizarre creature, known as Crazy Eyes in Spies in Disguise, may be a pigeon by definition, but is in many ways simply a flying Scrat. Spies in Disguise actually has a whole flock of pigeons marauding through its story, since the central conceit of this unabashedly silly romp is that a superspy named Lance Sterling (voiced by Will Smith) is turned into a pigeon courtesy of a “Q wannabe” named Walter Beckett (Tom Holland), a kind of hapless shlub who has toiled in the weapons department of the spy agency where Lance is the big man on or off campus. Walter, however, has a pacifist side, and so he keeps inventing weapons that tend to get the job done without creating untold carnage, something that actually irritates the heck out of Lance, who wants to blow the bad guys up, no questions asked. Spies in Disguise doesn’t have a lot of narrative momentum, opting for some contrived plot mechanics that put Lance (in bird form) and Walter on the run from an agency cop named Marcy Kappel (Rashida Jones), who is under the mistaken assumption that Lance has stolen a super secret drone technology that kind of feeds off the atmosphere and so is unstoppable if it’s programmed to go after something and destroy it. Of course, Lance has already figured out that an arch villain named Killian (Ben Mendelsohn) not only has the drone, but has scanned Lance’s face and is able to morph himself into Lance’s form, a disguise that allows Killian to infiltrate various top secret locations and, well, blow things up without asking any questions, in a behavior which is kind of ironically exactly like the real Lance.
Spies in Disguise is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1.
This is a winning looking presentation all the way around, with some really wonderfully vivid uses of color, appealing (if kind of derivative of other Blue
Sky efforts) character design, and some nice attention paid to textures, something that comes across very well in terms of consistent fine detail levels
on this Blu-ray disc.
There are some patently goofy effects throughout this film, including the manic sequence where Lance first transforms into a pigeon, which has all sorts
of hallucinatory and, later, "point of view" shots which some may find as hilarious as I did. Other sight gags include a gadget of Walter's that works like
a ray gun of sorts but which turns its targets into rubbery melted versions of themselves, or a kind of sticky pink goo Walter calls Serious String (as
opposed to Silly String), and some of the texturing in these moments can really look very inventive.
By the way, this is yet another animated feature originally released theatrically in some markets in 3D, but which is evidently only being granted "flat"
presentations in 1080p and 4K UHD, a phenomenon I just mentioned a couple of days ago in our
Ne Zha Blu-ray review. There are a number of fun "dimensional"
effects in this presentation which seem to have been designed with 3D in mind, like Walter's "protective glitter" (watch the film and you'll understand)
exploding supposedly out of the frame. Things may not be traditionally dimensional here in terms of an actual 3D presentation, but I found the
delineation of spatial planes to still be excellent even in this flat presentation.
I'm not giving myself any "wiggle room" for the 4K UHD presentation's Dolby Atmos track (which I haven't heard as of the writing of this review), but I don't think even many ardent audiophiles will find much if anything to complain about with regard to the 1080p Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track, and for my money it rates a solid 5.0 on its own merits. From the first moments of the opening sequence, there's both consistent engagement of the surrounds, but also really fun discrete channelization and boisterous bursts of LFE to keep things rumbling. The film has a number of standout moments in the big action showdowns, including some marauding drones (which will be fun to hear in Dolby Atmos, I'm sure), but there are ambient environmental sounds (interior and exterior) that are regularly utilized to fill in the background. Dialogue, effects and score are all rendered with excellent fidelity and wide dynamic range.
Note: All of the galleries offer either Manual Advance or Auto Advance options. The timings above are for the Auto Advance option.- Color Keys and Moment Paintings (1080p; 1:03)
- Character Designs (1080p; 1:23)
- Locations (1080p; 00:48)
- Props and Gadgets Concept Art (1080p; 00:58)
If you simply surrender to this film's very peculiar sense of lunacy, it may provide you as many laughs as it did me. In revisiting this a second time kind of vicariously vis a vis taking screenshots for this review, I actually once again laughed a couple of times simply thinking about the frankly stupid premise this film exploits. That said, I'm one of those guys who likes stupid comedy, so of course individual mileage may vary. Technical merits are excellent, and if you're fan of dunderheaded humor like I am, Spies in Disguise comes Recommended.
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