Sleeping Beauty Platinum Edition Blu-ray

By Samantha Clark -- Video Business, 10/7/2008

Disney is celebrating the 50th anniversary of this animated classic in style, with its high-definition debut and as the inaugural title for the studio’s BD Live features. And the studio has outdone itself. From the wonderful menus, which are patterned after nature screensavers but with the kingdom of Sleeping Beauty as the backdrop (the main menu even has a current temperature widget for “Your Kingdom”), to the special features and the restored movie, this disc package will become the new high standard for Blu-ray releases.

Aiming squarely at encouraging families to invest in Blu-ray, Disney’s BD Live features are front and center on this release. When you pop in the movie disc, before you even get to the menu, you’re walked through the registration for Disney’s BD Live Network. Registration, or “Creating a Household,” takes about 20 minutes, but you’re played soothing music reminiscent of what you might hear while standing in line for a ride in Disneyland. Registration requires a person whose age (18 or older) can be verified with use of e-mail, social security number or driver’s license number, and you must agree to three terms of use.

Not every BD Live feature is up and running yet, but Disney has come up with some fun ideas. The one that will perhaps be the biggest hit with kids is the Movie Chat feature, which allows registered “True Friends” to chat to each while they watch the film in their separate houses. Games can be played against others online or in private, with other people in your household. Sleeping Beauty’s games are movie quizzes on Easy, Medium and Hard, with questions that have to be answered within a timeframe and points awarded for timeliness as well as being right. They’re not the average DVD trivia games, which tend to be quite easy. To win at Hard, users really need to know their stuff, because the questions are such as, which Sleeping Beauty song is the only one to not include George Bruns in the credits?

The rest of disc one includes an audio commentary; “Cine-Explore,” which is a video commentary, pop-up photos and pop-up interviews all rolled into one; the scary “Dragon Encounter,” in which you get trapped in the wicked witch’s lair but have help from the three good fairies; a Grand Canyon short; five music videos; and “Princess Fun Facts,” which is pop-up trivia played during the movie. And that’s just disc one!

Disc two (the menu of which shows the dark side of the kingdom) offers three more games: “Maleficent’s Challenge,” a twist on the old “Person, Place or Thing” game; “Briar Rose’s Enchanted Dance Game,” in which users can learn how to dance or dance with woodland animals; and “Sleeping Beauty Fun With Language Game,” a find-the-item game that teaches English words to the youngest viewers.

The “Backstage Disney” section offers even more goodies. First up is a virtual tour of the original Sleeping Beauty’s Castle walk-through attraction at Disneyland. With the help of the three good fairies, users can get more immersive into the ride experience and learn about its behind-the-scenes secrets, including sections that were cut early on because they were so much fun they slowed traffic. (At the end, a placard promotes a new Sleeping Beauty ride coming soon to Disneyland.) The featurette “History of the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walk-through Attraction” gives even more insight, including the fact that many parts of the tour were boarded up into the walls when the castle was renovated. The development of the movie itself is examined in the featurette “Picture Perfect: The Making of Sleeping Beauty,” which includes vintage footage, concept art and behind-the-scenes stories from those involved. Another featurette explores artist Eyvind Earle, who, we learn, was abused as a child, but grew up to be an amazing artist and color stylist for Sleeping Beauty and other Disney classics. And the “Sequence 8” featurette features interviews with animators and artists on what made Sleeping Beauty such a challenging movie.

Also offered is an alternate opening and deleted scenes, demonstrated with storyboards; storyboard sequences for two scenes; art galleries; a featurette on the restoration and enhancement of the movie’s sound for the Blu-ray release; and vintage Disney short films.

Shelf Talk: Disney plans to use this Blu-ray release to bring families to the format, and the studio just might succeed. The movie looks gorgeous, but the special features, especially community-building BD Live features, will entice new fans. Initial copies even include a DVD version of the movie so that the young ones can watch it on the standard player in their room while the grown-ups view their BD copy on the Blu-ray player in the living room.

Animated, color, G (nothing offensive), 75 min., BD $35.99, reviewed on a PlayStation 3 with 118-inch Carada screen, Sony VW60 projector and HDMI connection
Extras: featurettes, deleted scenes, art galleries, storyboards, games, commentaries, BD Live
Director: Clyde Geronimi
First Run: 1959, $9.5 mil.