Plot: What’s it about?
After some fairy dust gets stolen, it’s up to Tinker Bell and her friends to track it down. The fairies fly to a pirate ship to recover the dust. There are various attempts at retrieving the pixie dust, but the outcome is pretty clear early on. I suppose it’s enough to impress the youngsters which this is clearly aimed at. They should be more than pleased as this offers the expected charms of an animated Disney feature. While this never made it to theaters, it will still please fans of fairies and pirates alike. There are also musical moments and plenty of good natured humor. After all, this is G rated material. Needless to say, I was left mostly unimpressed, but I am not the target audience for this sort of thing. Sometimes you have to put things into perspective.
I won’t list the various cast members who loan their voice to this feature, but Mae Whiteman voices Tinker Bell, and Todd Hiddleston voices James. Visually speaking, the film is more than impressive. We’re always treated to nice and colorful images and that should at least make this more tolerable for the parents who are forced to watch this with the young ones. I can’t say that much else impressed me, however. None of the musical numbers made an impression on me and most of the fairies seem pretty interchangeable. It does move at a brisk pace and that will likely keep the young ones awake during its running time. Fans of this sort of thing will enjoy checking this out.
Video: How’s it look?
The image is always a nice treat. There are plenty of nice and colorful moments. The CGI looks quite nice throughout. I can’t compare this to many other titles of this nature as I haven’t seen many, but this looked nice consistently. The image is AVC encoded with a 1.78:1 ratio. There are really no flaws here that I noticed. Disney continues to do strong work with their titles. I can’t speak of a 3D version nor if one is available. I just wanted to mention that.
Audio: How’s it sound?
The DTS HD track also impresses with the constant action involving us all the way. The songs have a nice pop to them, the action is impressive and the vocals are always strong. All the channels stayed reasonably active throughout with no concerns to report. There’s a nice bass on numerous occasions as well. This track will impress fans and is a nice companion piece to the strong visuals.
Supplements: What are the extras?
- Second Star to the Right: The legacy of Never land – This is a brief (4:45) feature that gives a basic rundown of how the story came about. Despite the brief running time, there’s actually some decent information here.
- Deleted Scenes – These come with introductions, they’re not finished, but we see the storyboards for them.
- Crocumentary (Get it?) – This is another brief feature about crocodiles. It was fun to check out.
- Animated Shorts – 2 shorts are presented here
- Sing-Along songs – We get two songs here.
- The Making of “The Frigate That Flies” – We hear a little bit about the voice acting here. Several interview clips are shown.
- Previews
- DVD/Digital Copy
