Don't make your children cry by getting them this DVD!

TECHNICAL FEATURES

Picture The drab colours featured in this animation feature are just as muted and miserable on DVD as they appeared in the cinema.

Sound Somewhat livelier is the 5.1 sound mix, which features excellent separation for the musical numbers and some suitably ghoulish effects for the ghost of Christmas future.

SPECIAL FEATURES

"Christmas Carol" - An Allstar Animation It's hard to get excited about this 24-minute behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie. The dreary presentation will not appeal to kids, and Simon Callow's shiny head will just scare the younger ones.

If you decide to go for the long haul, you'll find out it took 250 people to make the movie, and most of the animation was drawn by hand. Producer Nik Powell reckons we're coming to the end of that era in animation. Amen to that, seeing as all these animators only seem to have sludgy colours to pick from.

Dickens Featurette Shiny Callow bobs-up for a seven-minute featurette that uses much the same footage from the main 24-minute featurette.

Characters Featurette Why, it's pretty much five minutes of footage from the main 24-minute featurette! No wonder Kate Winslet looks so miserable. Nice hair, though.

Animation Featurette More of the same...

Song Featurette You guessed it!

Music Video Kate Winslet sings "What If". Presented in 2.0 stereo, you might as well play the second half of the end credits to get it in a far more impressive 5.1 mix.

Trailer At least this is in 5.1.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION:
Region: 2
Chapters: 16
Ratio: 1.85:1 (anamorphic)
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Audio Tracks: English
Subtitles: English
Captions: English
Menus: Static, with music
Special Features Subtitles: The only special feature with subtitles is Christmas Carol - An Allstar Animation. As most of the other featurettes are recycled from that, it shouldn't be a huge problem.

This DVD was reviewed on a JVC XV-S57 DVD player.