Cat.no: 055 126 2

Cert: U

Running time: 83 minutes

Year: 1997

Pressing: 1998

Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)

Chapters: 15 plus extras

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Languages: English, German, Dutch

Subtitles: English, German, Dutch

Widescreen: 1.85; Fullscreen: 4:3

16:9-enhanced: Yes

Macrovision: Yes

Disc Format: DVD 10

Price: £17.99

Extras : Scene index

---

Director:

Peter Hewitt (Tom and Huck)

Producers:

Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Rachel Talalay

Screenplay:

Gavin Scott and John Kamps

Music:

Hans Zimmer

Cast:

Ocious P. Potter: John Goodman (The Babe, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, The Flinstones, King Ralph, Matinee, Raising Arizona, True Stories)
Pod Clock: Jim Broadbent (The Avengers, Bullets Over Broadway, Princess Caraboo, TV: Blackadder's Christmas Carol, Inspector Morse, Murder Most Horrid, Only Fools and Horses)
Homily Clock: Celia Imrie (In The Bleak Midwinter, TV: Absolutely Fabulous, Hospital, Pat and Margaret, Victoria Wood: Acorn Antiques)
Exterminator Jeff: Mark Williams (101 Dalmatians, TV: The Fast Show)
Officer Steady: Hugh Laurie (101 Dalmatians, Cousin Bette, Peter's Friends, Sense and Sensibility, Strapless, TV: Alfresco, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster)
Pete Lender: Bradley Pierce (Jumanji, Touch of Truth)
Victoria Lender: Doon MacKichan (TV: Brass Eye, The Day Today, Knowing You Knowing Me With Alan Partridge, Smack the Pony)
Arrietty Clock: Flora Newbigin
Peagreen Clock: Tom Felton
Spiller: Raymond Pickard
Joe Lender: Aden Gillett
City Hall clerk: Ruby Wax (TV: Girls On Top, Ruby)

---

Running the household in which they live are the Lender family (hmm..spotting the connection ?) who are being forced out of their home by their devilish solicitor Ocious P. Potter who claims that their late aunt's will does not entitle them to live in the house and the entire estate falls into the hands of his company.

Now what's the betting that the Borrowers, who'd rather continue to live there as well than have to seek new premises, will do everything in their little power to ensure the point of closure falls in their favour ? Yes, it doesn't take the brains of Einstein to work that out.

The picture quality isn't quite perfect, with some artifacts noticeable at times, but on the whole the encoding does a remarkable job given the difficult task of handling a print that's full of harsh red colours. A bad encoding job would quite easily have resulted in a picture resembling a ZX Spectrum crashing but not so here as it's almost always a joy to watch. One slight hitch - and I tried this point several times - six minutes into the film just before Jim Broadbent, as Pod, talks to his daughter Arrietty Clock, the picture freezes for a split-second while the sound continues. Since it happens every time at the same point I figured it can't be my DVD-ROM player acting up. The set design throughout the film is fantastic.

The disc contains fullscreen and widescreen formats, the latter being presented in anamorphic format - thus allowing extra resolution for widescreen televisions - and, like Spiceworld, is presented in 1.85:1, just a bit wider than the 16:9 (1.77:1) quoted on the back cover, thus replicating the original cinema ratio. The widescreen version has an average bitrate is a very good 6.58Mb/s, while the fullscreen version gains a bit with 6.87Mb/s, both peaking at over 9Mb/s.

The sound is spot-on with loud and over-emphasised sound effects in a film that doesn't know the meaning of the word 'subtlety'. The sound comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 for English, German and Dutch, downmixing to Dolby ProLogic for those without the requisite equipment.

Extras :

Chapters :

Languages & Subtitles :

Three is the magic number for this disc. It's the number of dialogue channels in Dolby Digital 5.1 - English, German and Dutch, with subtitles for the same. Both of the former include subtitles for the hard of hearing as well which means that any major sound effects are also included within square brackets and displayed onscreen.

Menu :

The menu is static and I have no problems operating it, but there's not much to it in general and it's rather bland. The copyright info can be bypassed by accessing a previously bookmarked scene.

Overall, this is an engaging film for children and having recently bought a house myself, it makes you wonder when certain items go missing without explanation, presuming the missus hasn't got to them first. After seeing the film I think Mark Williams and John Goodman could make a great revival of Laurel and Hardy after their initial meeting.

However, although the film is fairly entertaining for adults the choice to buy can only be made on the strength of the film and not on the non-existent extras - a real shame since a behind-the-scenes commentary would have been a major bonus in explaining how the special effects were created. On the plus side, this release contains subtitles unlike the region 1 DVD which doesn't even have those.