THE MOVIE

Elmo, the cute little red puppet from Sesame Street now has his own movie. All his Sesame Street friends are present as well. There’s Bert and Ernie, the Count, Big Bird, the Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch and even Super Grover, not to mention the humans who also live on Sesame Street (Maria, Bob, Gordon, etc). Vanessa Williams also drops by (Chapter 21) to sing a song for Elmo.

The story revolves around Elmo and how he accidentally loses his best friend, his blanket in Oscar the Grouch’s garbage can. He embarks on a huge adventure to find his blanket which takes him into Grouchland, a place where everyone is grumpy. His blanket is stolen by Huxley, the man who lives in Grouchland and wants everything to be his. The Sesame Street gang get worried about Elmo and go to his rescue.

Anyway, Elmo rescues his blanket from the evil Huxley, and Big Bird, Oscar and his grouchy friends save Elmo. There’s a good message in there for kids about sharing in the end so it’s good to see that they haven’t lost their educational theme. Bert and Ernie constantly interrupt the film, which, I imagine is aimed at kids with short attention spans, but they have a couple of good lines which will appeal to adults.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

The video transfer was acceptable. The picture is nice and crisp, you can really notice the different textures of all the puppets (Bert and Ernie or Big Bird compared with Elmo). Colours are bright, although maybe a little too much at certain points in the film. Colours of the computer generated puppets are a little out of whack, but this is a kids film, I don’t think the target audience is going to be too worried. I didn’t observe any artifacts which you might expect because of the compression required to fit both the full screen (4:3) and widescreen (1.85:1) formats on the disc.

Audio:

The opening music sounds oddly familiar, as though it’s been used before in another children’s movie. There is a lot of music in this film. You are treated to a musical interlude every 10 minutes or thereabouts. Elmo’s voice is audible at all stages of the film, although this is to be expected since the volume of effects from the main and surround channels isn’t what you would call excessive. There were no audio synch problems on this disc.

Your subwoofer will get a well earned rest as the low frequency output is minimal, although during the musical interludes you will notice the soundtrack becomes a bit more dynamic, with increased bass and use of the surround channels. Some of the surround and bass highlights are as follows.

- Chapter 01 - The audience counts backwards from ten.
- Chapter 02 - More audience interaction.
- Chapter 03 - Thunder outside Elmo’s room.
- Chapter 07 - More thunder as the Count struts his stuff.
- Chapter 10 - Helicopter landing.
- Chapter 16 - Elmo in the cave.
- Chapter 21 - More thunder (they love their thunder sound effects at Sesame Street).
- Chapter 22 - Elmo blows raspberries.

THE EXTRAS

1. U.S. Theatrical trailers.
2. Introduction with Elmo and Bug.
3. Animated scene selection menu.
4. Making-of featurette.

When you load the disc you are prompted to select an aspect ratio, either full screen (4:3) or widescreen (1.85:1). There is a quick animation before the main menu loads, and there is also some animation when you load the extra features or the scene selection menus. One good thing which I haven’t seen before on DVD was the inclusion of not only the theatrical trailer for The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, but trailers for other children’s films such as Muppets in Space, Matilda, Fly Away Home, Madeline, Matilda and the upcoming cinema release Stuart Little. The introduction with Elmo and Bug has the traditional Sesame Street look about it, colours are nowhere near as bright as the movie. The making-of featurette is a laugh with Elmo and Bug talking about the movie as though they are genuine actors.

SUMMARY

The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland is a great movie for the kids and even big kids. Those of you who are young at heart will love it. Elmo is one of the Sesame Street characters you can’t help but like.