Sludger (David Thewlis) is an aardvark with rhythm, drumming the earth to make the ants rise
out of their hide-outs, so when his talent becomes recognised by his caterpillar
friend Feldwick (Henry Goodman) they set off to Beak City and promote
him as "Hamilton Mattress - Drummer Extraordinaire", the name coming
from a poster advertisement for beds, "Everyone loves a Hamilton mattress" -
and so if everyone loves those then they must love him, right?
But that's about it. He goes over there, wows the crowd, meets a couple of
baddies who are effectively and quickly dealt with... and everyone lives
happily ever after.
While the animation is as you'd expect, the storyline is woefully lacking
(a drumming ant?) and there's very little in the way of humour.
Robbie the Reindeer
had a fair bit, but neither matched the full-on standard of
Wallace and Gromit
so for now these are just pretenders to their throne.
Unlike
Robbie the Reindeer
though, this film didn't take a year to reach DVD after broadcast. It's actually
being shown on BBC1 this Christmas, so despite the DD5.1 soundtrack you may
as well watch it first to see if it'll be worth a purchase afterwards.
Hamilton gets his name.
The picture is the best thing about this release. Completely free of artefacts
and in crystal clear anamorphic 16:9 widescreen. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound
is fine enough and has its moments but it's not an action-packed event.
The sound is clear enough, although some of the tunes seem a bit muffled, but
no more than I remember.
The extras are in 4:3 and start with The birth of an Aardvark, 9
minutes of chat with the crew along with non-anamorphic clips, including co-writer
John Webster explaining how he believes aardvarks have had a raw deal
in the media, never getting a look in. Enter the Aardvark is a 16-minute
"behind the scenes" featurette with more clips and chat as before.
Raiders of the Lost Aardvark is the name for seven very brief deleted
shots which are presented cropped to 4:3, totalling 100 seconds, while there's
another featurette, Who Said That?, which looks at the voice-over artists.
Add to this a 100-second Trailer, a 60-second Early Promo (both
16:9 non-anamorphic), a weblink (see below) and 2 Audio Commentaries -
one straight and one comedy.
There are no chapters to the 30-minute film, nor any subtitles, but the main
menu and inbetween links are animated and scored.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
