Rating summary
| Movie |  | 2.5 |
| Video | | 2.5 |
| Audio | | 2.5 |
| Extras |  | 0.0 |
| Overall |  | 2.0 |
The Babe Blu-ray Movie Review
Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 11, 2021
Mill Creek has released the 1992 John Goodman film 'The Babe' to Blu-ray. The film was previously released to Blu-ray by Universal in 2017. This release includes
essentially identical video and audio presentations but loses the few supplements included on the Universal disc.
A young Baltimore lad named George Ruth is taken to an orphanage where he's burned by a stigma of being "incorrigible." He's not particularly
good at anything and is often derided by his fellow orphans, but one day it's discovered that he can smack a baseball farther and harder than
anyone
else. The Baltimore Orioles come calling, hoping to take the now young adult in an effort to salvage their abysmal season. Ruth (John Goodman)
eventually lands with the Red Sox where his star grows. But when the team's owner finds himself in debt following a flop of a stage production,
he's
sold to the New York Yankees where his stardom explodes and home run balls fly over the fence at a rate never before seen in the game. The film
follows Ruth's exploits on and off the field, exploring his natural talent, lust for women and food and drink, and penchant for getting himself into
trouble both in uniform and around the city.
For a full film review, please click
here.
The Babe Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
This Blu-ray release of The Babe appears to be mostly identical to the Universal disc. Close inspection reveals perhaps microscopic, or at times
modest, changes in textural finesse and grain management, likely from differences in authoring between the releases. These are clearly
sourced from
the same master, though this Mill Creek disc struggles with some obvious, albeit usually minor, compression artifacts that didn't plague the Universal
disc quite this much; a scene in the 17-minute mark serves as a good example. Please click here for a review. While not fully identical, the Universal release
review
essentially suits this release again with the caveat of some compression issues here not entirely present there.
The Babe Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
Mill Creek presents The Babe on Blu-ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack, the same encode utilized with the Universal
release. Again, as with the strikingly similar video presentation, listeners would be hard-pressed to notice any major difference. Please click here for a review.
The Babe Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
No extras are included. The Universal disc included four featurettes and a trailer. This release does ship with Mill Creek's "retro VHS" slipcover.
The Babe Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
The Babe isn't a failure of a film, but it's a disappointment all the same. It capably captures Ruth's life highlights, but the film is hardly a
Ruthian effort, not narratively, not structurally, not in John Goodman's performance. The picture lacks cohesion and a sense of dramatic intensity,
happy to
simply throw memorable moments at the screen in a chronological order. Mill Creek's Blu-ray is not seriously altered from the Universal disc. It's
missing the quartet of featurettes (and a trailer) but the video and audio qualities are not drastically altered. Those who don't mind the supplemental
absence would be well served by picking this version up.
