A Happy Happy Feet on HD DVD and Blu-ray

[Sir Terrence]

As everyone knows, I love animation alot, especially well done animation with a good story line. If you throw great music in to the mix, that is great icing on the cake.

Happy Feet has it all. Well done animation, good story line(it starts a bit slow), and great music.

The storyline has several themes running through it all at once. You have the "its okay to be different" storyline, the love story between Mumble and Glory, and over fishing environmental angle. They all tie together very nicely, even the hated PC angle. I found that once that "latin" penguins came into the picture, everything just started moving forward. Their humor really cracked me up, and being latin and growing up in New York City, I would say everything about them was pretty on spot on in terms of humor and attitude.

On the Screen

This is a 1080p VC-1 encode and I'll be darned if I have seen better. This is reference material at the highest order. I viewed both blu-ray and HD DVD disc as both are indentical video encodes. Aside from subtle banding in the blue of underwater scenes, this is a flawless transfer. The detail in the feathers, black levels, subtle gradients of colors are all the absolute best I have ever seen on both formats, with the exception of Open Season on blu-ray. The source is pristine, and this is about a flawless a picture as you can get. Top honors go to this release!!

Through the Speakers

The HD DVD disc is blessed with an excellent Dolby TrueHD soundtrack, however the blu-ray version is cheated with a Dolby Digital EX mix at 640kbps. The Dolby TrueHD soundtracks is one of the best I have ever heard on HD DVD. It images high and wide, the bass is deep and powerful, the soundstage is wide and very deep, even in the center channel there is a sense of depth. The only problem I have with this soundtrack is the sound designers put some of the voices of of the largest characters in the LFE which made them sound unnatural on my system.
The Blu-ray soundtrack in comparison is flat sounding, lacks the bass of the trueHD encode, does not have the imaging or soundstage depth of the trueHD encode. It however with nothing to compare to stands fairly well on its own. The music sounded great on both, and is very entertaining to hear recognizable songs by well known artists. It serves this movie well.

Both formats visually are reference material, and the audio on HD DVD is as well. This is a must buy for some, and a rental for others as I am sure that some will find this movie boring and uninteresting. From what I have heard, some kids like it, and some didn't seem really interested in this movie, so it may be a hit or miss for some. I personally loved it.

[Sonnie]

I've been kinda up in the air about this movie, but it sounds like it might be worth checking out.

[FlashJim]

Don't hesitate to get it. Lots of 3D, especially in the beginning. This is definitely a Tier 0 title. My wife and I really didn't want to watch it, but the kids did. I'm glad we caved in.

My copy came yesterday. I ordered Happy Feet and The Matrix Ultimate Collection from Warner Home Video. I cancelled my Amazon order for The Matrix. I ended up getting both at Warner for $12 more.

[tbase1]

Happy feet is a tier 0 movie for sure.

[John Simpson]

The visuals in this movie make it a must for HD. I doubt we'll see anything with as much detail for a while to come.

As for the movie itself -- I'm all for saving the environment, but I would have preferred it if they ended the movie halfway through. As soon as I saw the real human faces the magic was gone...