Hook - Collector's Edition

Since his commitment to release his titles on DVD, the Spielberg collection is slowly making it's way to our beloved format. His latest offering is his classic fairy tale adventure called "Hook". This is not your well known Peter Pan tale, which alot of people expected, but more a "What if?" scenario. What if Peter Pan grew up and didn't know what fun was anymore?

Peter Banning (Robin Williams) plays the role of a Corporate Executive who's lost touch with his family values. On a trip to visit his wife's family in England he soon finds out that the stories he heard as a boy were actually true and that Grandma Wendy is more than just that.

On the night when the parents are out at a function to open up a new orphanage, the children are stolen from their beds and it is up to Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts) to bring Peter back to Neverland to save them from the evil Captain James Hook (Dustin Hoffman).

It's a different twist to the original tale, bring a more human approach to the fantastical adventure which somehow dimishes it's impact. The dvd presentation on the other hand is a mixture of good and bad which probably reflects the enthusiasm they felt for the movie.

This is an excellent presentation from Columbia Tristar given the age of the film. The film is presented in it's original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and with a 16x9 anamorphic transfer onto dvd, preserving as much detail as possible for the home theatre market.

One noticeable plus in the transfer is the black levels which although not totally deep, do contain a decent amount of shadow detail without any visual degradation. There was no mpeg artifacting present at all given that the transfer seemed to be of a consistently high bit-rate.

Color saturation was spot on without being too rich giving the image a very filmlike appearance with very accurate flesh tones. The contrast ratio of the image is a little lower than that found in some other titles but this does add to the film-like appearance that we all strive to achieve at home.

In the opening scene during the play, there are dark blues and oranges fighting for a presence on the screen. On any other format we'd see a fair amount of color bleeding yet this format shows just how good our TV's can be.

The only downside would be that the image comes across too soft which is noticeable in long shots as detail of minor objects becomes non-existent. The lacking sharpness can either be attributed to the original print of the telecine process used. No amount of edge enchancement would have improved the picture other than making it plainly obvious that the image has been digitally altered which was a good decision on the part of the compressionists.

There's a problem in the presentation here. There are three Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks presented on this disc with the original theatrical release being presented in Dolby SR so the original elements don't favor a full 5.1 mix. This is the exact impression I get with the audio.

There doesn't seem to be a real presence of surround throughout the movie. I had the volume up at a decent level when viewing the feature but it felt lacking in the surrounds where it could have benefitted from a proper remaster if they were going to the effort of encoding it in 5.1. Bass response was very flat throughout, which is not surprising given the mild action that ensues.

You'll find that the dialogue throughout the movie varies in some instances from soft whispers to normal levels but it doesn't seem to vary with any increase in ambient and effect audio throughout the movie meaning that some dialogue was being drowned out.

The musical score is performed by John Williams and finds its way into the rear speakers to create an enveloping sound stage, even though the rears sound mono. Overall, I wasn't too impressed with the audio on this disc.

There is a good collection of extras on this disc that should keep collectors happy, although it is missing an audio commentary which would have been a nice addition.

• Behind the Scenes - This is a nice short feature that includes interviews with Spielberg and the rest of the cast, with clips from the movie and other behind the scenes bits and pieces
• Animated Menus - The menu system is fully animated. The opening sequence is a little long but nothing that is unbearable with almost every other menu screen exhibiting fully animated images.
• Cast & Crew Biographies - A look at the cast and crew with key career highlights.
• Photo Gallery - Normally a photo gallery is just a series of stills but this feature is all animated with simple dissolves and background music to let you sit back and relax at a reasonable pace.
• 4 Theatrical Trailers - I've always said "If you've got the space left, fill it with trailers" but that's just me. On here we are presented with trailers to Hook, Bicentennial Man, Muppets From Space and Stuart Little
• DVD Interactive Game - Now, this is NOT a dvd-rom feature but a game that you play on your stand alone player with your remote. You have to travel around the Island and try and retrieve some missing treasures. For the life of me, I couldn't get past a few sections which makes me think if the disc I had was faulty or if I was missing something simple. Nice idea but I'd like to see more of the game than I got to see.

I think the premise of this story is good with the script and execution lacking any emotional pull. I suppose a child would find it much more interesting but would probably not understand why Peter Pan is so old.

Excellent sets and costume design make for a very good looking movie yet it fails, to me personally, on a few levels. I didn't enjoy it in the cinemas and the dvd just allows me to bring it home. It's not a bad movie, it's just not a very good movie like it could have been.