| Platinum Edition Disney Movie •••½ Picture/Sound ••••½ Extras •••• |
Walt Disney's canine love story is given the full treatment in this splendid two-disc 50th-anniversary edition. Picture quality is beyond reproach. The Victorian-era characters and settings are presented without a ripple, a blur, or any grain. This 1955 film was the first animated feature in CinemaScope, and it's best seen in the extremely widescreen 2.55:1 transfer. The 1.33:1 version, created for theaters that didn't have CinemaScope projection equipment, is also here, but its frames are as crowded as a pan-and-scan version. Two mixes are offered: the restored original 3.0 and a Dolby Digital 5.1 Enhanced Home Theater Mix. The latter has warmer sound, more bass, and a few convincing surround effects, but the original is cleaner and clearer, with a better-focused soundstage. Extras are plentiful, interesting, and varied. My favorite is a Disneyland broadcast segment in excellent color that shows Peggy Lee, Sonny Burke, The Mello Men, and Oliver Wallace recording the soundtrack music. You also get deleted sequences and a very different storyboarded version of the film from 1943. [G] English, Dolby Digital 5.1 and three-channel stereo; French and Spanish, Dolby Digital 5.1; full frame (1.33:1), letterboxed (2.55:1), and anamorphic widescreen; two dual-layer discs.
