4.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
The hyperactive red-headed bird enters a turf war with a big city lawyer wanting to tear down his home in an effort to build a house to flip.
Starring: Timothy Omundson, Eric Bauza, Thaila Ayala, Graham Verchere, Jordana LargyFamily | 100% |
Animation | 89% |
Comedy | 68% |
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
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 1.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Woody Woodpecker is one of those handful of indelible cartoon characters that has been around forever (since 1940, to be exact) and delighted generations of television viewers with a lovable design, familiar antics, and a trademark refrain. The character hasn't undergone a tremendous evolution in that time, remaining fairly faithful to Walter Lantz's design even through the transition to several different television programs, but it's not a surprise that the character takes a step backwards in the cringe-worthy live action/digital animation hybrid film Woody Woodpecker. Here is a painfully unoriginal and unimaginative movie that removes the characters' innate charms and replaces them with nonstop bodily function humor and a trite storyline that involves disrupting his natural habitat, a greedy lawyer and his glam girlfriend who despises being in "God's country," the lawyer's estranged son, a kindly park ranger, and a pair of bumbling poachers. The script is unequivocally unoriginal, cobbled together from lame and leftover ideas that together yield one of the most unsurprisingly unwatchable films of 2017.
Can't catch me!
The digitally photographed Woody Woodpecker delivers intensely bold natural greens and a fully saturated broader palette at that. The film opens in Woody's tree trunk home, filled with wooden objects and accents, and shifts to lush forest area where leaves, moss, terrain, and all variety of natural elements present with intense hues. Additional colors -- blue dresses and denim jackets, Woody's red feathery head, storefronts around town -- all yield firm, bold shades that give the image a visual punch. Details are very strong. Every texture is sharp and revealing, whether natural formations, manmade structures around town, skin details and facial hair, or clothing lines and seams. The image is plagued by a fair amount of noise which is often visible even in bright daylight exteriors. It's otherwise a screen-commanding picture.
Woody Woodpecker's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack handles sonic duties capably and, usually, enjoyably. Natural ambience filters into the stage from all directions throughout. Listeners will appreciate light breezes, chirping birds, and rustling leaves as part of the general landscape. Additionally, workplace din follows suit with heavy machinery, chatty workers, and the general sounds of a building site pulling the listener into the construction process. The 5.1 configuration features these elements emanating from all speakers but never to an overpowering level. Sound traverses the stage with impressively seamless flow, maneuvering from one speaker to the next, at the 14-minute mark when Tommy first meets Woody, complete with some positive low end compliments when the woodpecker uses a trash can as a drum. Falling trees, whirring chainsaws, and the sounds of Woody zipping around the stage shape one of the more diverse and intense action scenes in the film in chapter three at the 22-minute mark. Bass and detail are not overpowering in such scenes, but there's ample weight to the heaviest effects. Music enjoys robust clarity and good stage width with minor surround support. Dialogue is clear, detailed, well prioritized, and center-focused.
Woody Woodpecker contains three featurettes. The special features must be a accessed in-film via the pop-up menu; no top menu screen is
included. The release does not ship with DVD or digital copies or a slipcover.
Movies don't ring much more hollow than Woody Woodpecker. The charming, classic cartoon character crashes and burns in this live action/animation hybrid that recycles trite script components and scrapes on through a predictably dull story with stock characters and uncreative action in support. The visuals are decent enough but there are much better movies of this type out there, including The Smurfs and Yogi Bear. Universal's Blu-ray does offer very good video and audio as well as a few extras. Skip it.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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