5.7 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The sequel to "Spy Kids," exploring the further adventures of Carmen and Juni Cortez, who have now joined the family spy business as Level 2 OSS agents. Their new mission is to save the world from a mad scientist living on a volcanic island populated by an imaginative menagerie of creatures. On this bizarre island, none of the Cortez's gadgets work and they must rely on their wits--and each other--to...
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa PenaVega, Daryl Sabara, Steve BuscemiFamily | 100% |
Adventure | 43% |
Fantasy | 41% |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Digital copy
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Whether you’re old enough to have seen them in their original theatrical exhibitions, caught them on their regular television broadcasts, or are part of a younger generation that got to love them in any of their home video releases (including on Blu-ray), the films of Ray Harryhausen hold a special place in a lot of film lovers’ hearts. In fact, included in the boxed set of Blu-rays of Harryhausen films is a great documentary where any number of stellar Hollywood directors, many of them modern icons, talk about their long histories with Harryhausen films, films which imprinted themselves on these craftsmen’s minds when they were very young. As I mentioned in my review of the first film in this franchise, Spy Kids, writer-director Robert Rodriguez seems like perhaps the least likely creator-helmsman to ever come up with the premise for the film, let alone invest it with such joie de vivre and heart. What may strike some as equally as unexpected is the Rodriguez seems to be yet another major director with a deep love of Harryhausen’s often wild and wacky film world(s), and that love shines through huge swaths of the second film in the Spy Kids universe, Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams. This sequel, which might be thought of as a sort of Spy Kids Meet Dr. Moreau (kind of like those old Abbott and Costello monster movies), is, if anything, even more manic than the first Spy Kids film, and is stuffed to the gills with fantastic gadgets, props and sets. The unexpected overwhelming success of the first Spy Kids film meant that Rodriguez had a fairly carte blanche offer from Miramax for the second film, and yet Rodriguez, always the iconoclast, stated he didn’t want more money, just more ideas. And Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams is like a Rodriguez fever dream, a quasi-hallucinatory journey through an internal (and actual literal external) amusement park, where even if things don’t make perfect sense and character takes a back seat to spectacle, there’s always a new ride to experience and in Rodriguez’s film, waiting in line hardly ever comes into play.
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The film is suitably dreamy in its high definition Blu-ray premiere, which means both that the image is robust, beautifully saturated, but also just slightly surreal a lot of the time. Rodriguez uses huge amounts of CGI, and while the effects are generally quite good, some of them can be a bit on the soft side. The best effects here are the homages to Harryhausen, which for the most part look sharp and very well detailed. Some of the green screen works shows its seams (literally a couple of times, with haloes and flares), but overall the film's effects have aged extremely well and look very good to excellent here. Colors are about as lurid as in the first Spy Kids outing, and are just this side of blooming territory a couple of times. But fine detail is abundant, the film's natural grain structure has largely been preserved, though a hint of DNR seems to have been applied. Sharp eyed videophiles will notice some very minor edge enhancement in a couple of the outdoor location shots.
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams' lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is yet another carnival ride of astounding effects, fun score and well positioned dialogue which create a virtually nonstop roller coaster of immersion. From the opening sequence in the amusement park, we're surrounded by crowd noises, goofy but inventive sound effects and clear and well mixed primary dialogue. The film just careens through one great sonic sequence after another, with everything from underwater foley effects to the sound of metallic helmets being magnetically sucked into a spaceship all filling the soundfield with a riot of invention. Fidelity is superb throughout the track, and surround activity is nicely consistent, even in some of the quieter dialogue moments when occasional sound effects are granted discrete channelization.
The Harryhausen films may strike some as quaint, especially to modern day eyes raised on nonstop CGI wonderment. Will future audience see these Rodriguez films as equally quaint? Probably not, if for no other reason than that they're so incredibly busy all the time. In fact, Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams is such a whirlwind that it almost overstays its welcome, at least for those who are easily tired. But in the long run, the film is so full of wacky invention (and inventions) that its lack of real character or even frankly a very coherent plot tend to fade into the background. This is just a slight notch down from the first Spy Kids outing, which at least had a relatively fresh premise to plunder, but not by much. The Blu-ray looks and sounds fantastic and comes Recommended.
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