Elf (Blu-ray Review)

November 30th, 2008 Blu-ray-au Posted in Blu-ray Movie Reviews | Comments Off

Elf (Blu-ray Review)

” I am just a cotton headed ninny muggins”

I am going to be honest, as crazy as this sounds, I really liked Elf. It has all of the ingredients of a good family oriented Christmas comedy. It?s bright, light, funny, charming, but does not seem trite, forced, or play to the lowest common denominator.


Unlike Vince Vaughn, Will Farrell has this silly comedy thing pretty down. He has not been one hundred percent successful in pulling it off, in the case of Bewitched and Semi-Pro, he had nothing to work with in t…

Video

Elf comes to Bluray in an eye popping 1080p/VC-1 encode framed at a 1:85:1 aspect ratio that renders the vibrant hues of the North Pole, Santa?s workshop, and the city of New York beautifully. The print master appears spotless, with no film based artifacts to be found anywhere. The colors are strong, deeply saturated, without any chroma noise or bleeding. Contrast is spot on, and black levels while inconsistent, are very deep and inky. Images are sharp, three dimensional, and aside from a few s…

Audio

Unlike so many of Warner?s releases, Elf is graced with a pretty impressive 5.1 Dolby TrueHD soundtrack encoded at 16/48 kHz. Also included are an English, German and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack the English at 640kbps, and the remaining at 448kbps. Dialog is clean, clear, and always discernable over the sound effects and music, so no prioritization issues here. LFE is well used to support the sound effects, and bass in the main channels. However there is not much output below 40hz o…

Supplements

Extras on this disc consist of carry over from the Infinifilm DVD. All are presented in standard definition video.


Audio Commentaries – are a pair of audio commentaries, one with director Jon Favreau and a second with actor Will Ferrell.


Production Featurettes (SD, 39 minutes) – ?Tag Along with Will Ferrell? follows the comedian on a typical day of shooting, ?How They Made the North Pole? looks at the design and implementation of the arctic sets, ?Li…

Final Words

While the picture quality of this film has some serious issues, I can recommend this movie on the strength of its content. The issues do not deter anyone from enjoying the movie itself. Elf is a funny and entertaining Christmas movie for the kids, and adults as well. For those who enjoy a good Christmas comedy and are a fan of Ferrell, this is a must buy.(don?t forget to click through the bluray.com link to Amazon). For those who have never seen this movie before, I would recommend you rent f……

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