It doesn't matter if you don't like or understand the appeal of baseball, for "Field of Dreams" ranks amongst the best feel-good dramas out there. Everyone involved in the film clearly has a soft spot for it, and their contributions stand out on this curiously half-hearted DVD.

It's hard to recall the last film that Columbia Tristar released without an anamorphic transfer (a process which carries extra coding to create a more detailed picture on a widescreen TV). Why they should not offer one here is very strange. The image quality is reasonable, but the deep orange reds around the baseball diamond do end up smearing into the overall softness of the picture.

The 2.0 surround mix does justice to James Horner's music score, while consistently offering up good atmospherics for the rear speakers. A remix into 5.1 would have been welcome here, but like the picture, the effort made with the sound is lacklustre.

Purely in terms of extra features does this DVD merit four stars. The presence of a feature-length 88-minute 'making of' documentary is strange, when the film itself is offered with such average picture and sound quality. It's an exhaustive look at the movie too, crammed with interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and entertaining anecdotes. In particular, all the work that went into creating the baseball field is fascinating.

There's a lot of pride attached to this movie, and it surfaces again in the audio commentary with writer and director Phil Alden Robinson, and cinematographer John Lindley. They cover a lot of the information already offered in the documentary, but add comments on the many practical problems that they encountered in the shoot, particularly in having to schedule the shoot around the speedy growth of a corn field.

Region: 2
Ratio: 1.85:1
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (surround)
Extra Features: Scene selection, 'making of' documentary, audio commentary with writer and director Phil Alden Robinson and cinematographer John Lindley, production notes, cast and crew biographies and filmographies, trailer, multiple languages, and subtitles.