Darkness falls Sadly, it seems

Darkness falls

Sadly, it seems the only reason Happily NEver After was even made was to con kids out of their lunch money, promising a land of enchantment and Shrek-like delights. Dont fall for it. Well, at least Happily NEver After looks good. Lionsgate has produced a rather spiffy 1080p/MPEG-2 transfer for the film, which quite frankly is more than the films lackluster animation deserves. A direct digital-to-digital telecine, the image is appropriately flawless. The movies color palette is somewhat unique in that it is so on dark side reds are crimson, blues just shy of midnight and that certainly makes for a vivid, eye-popping look. Hues remain rock solid and incredibly rich, almost to the point of being distracting in a positive way. Detail is first-rate, with an often tremendous sense of depth. Happily NEver After almost always looks three dimensional, with excellent sharpness and detail in the shadows superior. Unfortunately, there is a bit of obvious noise in a few shots, usually on flat surfaces that feature intense, solid patches of red or blue. There is also a slight bit of banding on smooth gradients. To be fair, these compression problems are dont occur very often, but they are noticeable enough to prevent Happily NEver After from earning what would have otherwise been a perfect score for video. Happily NEver After also sounds quite swell. Lionsgate has produced a true DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 1 surround track for the film with optional English and Spanish Dolby Digital 1 surround tracks also included, each at 448kbps. Even though current Blu-ray hardware is only capable of extracting the DTS-HD tracks 5mpbs core, the films sound design is still lively enough to make for an engaging experience. The surrounds are frequently active with a variety of discrete sound effects, from the whoosh of a broom to the Wizards many darkness falls spells. Pans between channels are quite effective and near-seamless, while the accuracy of directed sounds is generally excellent. Dynamics hold their own nicely, with strong and tight low bass that never breaks down even at high volume levels. Dialogue is nicely rendered as well, and I never had trouble understanding darkness falls the usually indecipherable ramblings of Andy Dick. However, the soundtrack is not truly exceptional. The score in particular is quite weak, with most of the music spread across the front channels. A completely immersive, 360-degree soundfield is also never really achieved discrete effects tend to sound a bit too isolated in the mix, and thus gimmicky. But while I never felt a true wall of sound this go around, hopefully when Blu-ray hardware finally can decode DTS-HD fully, this track will really come alive. Despite Happily NEver Afters poor box office showing, Lionsgate hasnt skimped on the extras, gifting the film with a spacious BD-50 dual-layer disc, and porting over all of the extras from the standard-def DVD release of the film. Of course, why anyone would actually want to know about the making of Happily NEver After remains a mystery. Things kick off with a suite of three featurettes. Journey of the Characters in the Enchanted Forest 16 minutes and Creating the Happily Story: Bringing NEver After to Life also 16 minutes are straightforward EPK-like materials. Director Paul J. Bolger is our tour guide, giving us a peek at the development of the characters in the movie. I suppose I can give some praise to the films animators, who as it is shown at least tried to bring a new spin to the proceedings by updating and modernizing hairstyles, clothes, etc. Otherwise, there is little here of interest. The third featurette is about 5 minutes of From Storyboard to Fairy Tale: A Comparison, which provides a before-and-after split-screen montage highlighting various scenes from the film. Bolger darkness falls for a screen-specific audio commentary. This is one of those commentary tracks that is tough to judge, because though Bolger is a pleasant, thoughtful speaker, he is either unaware or unwilling to admit that the film he toiled away on for years is downright awful. In any case, he covers the typical bases, going over some of the same points he touched on in the featurettes, but offering further detail on individual performances from the voice talent, and some of the changes/deletions made to the final cut. Still, this is one long 87 minutes. Next we have the Lost in Fairy Tale Lane deleted scenes and the Happily NEver After? alternate ending. The quality is a spotty, and none of the excised material adds much that is missed. In total, the footage runs about 6 minutes. Finally, for the kiddies, we have three Games from the Department of Fairy Tale Security Munks Fairy Tale Fix, Mambo and Munks Magical Matchmaker and Create Your Own Witches Broom. Pretty standard stuff, with basic graphics and simplistic gameplay. Magical Matchmaker is probably the most fun Im using the term loosely, allowing you to pair off various characters in the film, with amusing results. Still, its hard to imagine even the youngest tots getting much replay value out of these games.