Blu-ray Disc Review |
Release Date: AVAILABLE NOW Rating:   / Voices of: Jim Carrey (Horton), Steve Carell (The Mayor of Whoville), Carol Burnett (Kangaroo), Will Arnett (Vlad) Directed by: Jimmy Hayward & Steve Martino One Elephant. One World. One Story. Ahhhh…Horton, the silly big old elephant that had this crazy idea that he can hear a speck of fluff speak to him. We all remember this Dr. Seuss story, right? He insisted to all of his friends that he could hear voices on it, and made the solitary discovery that on that speck was Whoville, home of the little people called Whos. He vowed to protect it from danger even after all of his friends began thinking he was nutty. The Kangaroo, who likes to keep the jungle in line is a bit of an autocrat and puts a cap on new thinking and ideas. She eventually turns the whole jungle against Horton, and despite this, Horton doesn’t back down from his motto: “After all, a person is a person, no matter how small.” And on that speck is the mayor of Whoville who is also trying to convince people that he isn’t crazy. No one believes his claim that there is a world out there bigger than the one of Whoville and if they unite as a people, their voices can be heard too. While I glance at the image of this digital production, it’s hard to find a fault. Instead of actually looking for faults, I just enjoyed the movie for my second time. I saw Horton Hears a Who! during it’s theatrical run. It was played on film and was probably run more than 100 times before I got to it. Needless to say, this Blu-ray disc looks amazing in comparison. No wobbling, no artefacts, and contrast and colours are about as best as I’m going to see it with the equipment I play it back on. No compression artefacts are visible with this AVC encoding, and edges are much cleaner and defined. One could almost confuse the opening shot with the water droplet rolling off the leaf as reality. The CGI is excellent breathing life into Horton and the Mayor. Really, what more could I want? The aspect ratio appears slightly greater than 1.85:1. With animals running to the front of the room and back, bouncing from side to side, or the Whos shouting as loud as they can, the soundtrack is very active and fun to listen to. The sound designers created a good sense of space around all sounds so it doesn’t sound like a manufactured soundtrack. Some sounds sound like they are far away deep in the jungle of Nool. Contrast that with the swoosh of Vlad swooping down at Horton, and the soundtrack gets loud and full of bass. Bass-heads will love this soundtrack as Horton thumps along. The three front channels get a huge bass workout, especially the center channel. Those with full range speakers will appreciate the wide spread of bass among the front channels rather than it being confined strictly to the subwoofer. The subwoofer isn’t spared as gets a good pounding once in a while, too. I’d say the soundtrack is a bit overwhelming with bass, but because it is animation I can let it slide because it’s all fantasy and pure fun. TACTILE FUN!!: 4/5 TRANSDUCER ON/OFF?: ON Using a bass shaker of some sort will add another dimension to this soundtrack. If it’s not Horton’s crazy stampede-like walk, it’s some other moment that makes you feel the ground is moving beneath your feet and resonating through your body. I’d recommend using a shaker for this film – it’s fun!! The special features are a mixture of high definition and standard definition. The HD images are good, but my video processor didn’t always like them because of the amount of combing I saw with motion.
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