Noddy - Catch A Falling Star [2003]

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant Kids Viewing.......2006-12-02

My daughter has been enjoying this DVD for the past 6 months or more (from about 18 months - she is now 26 months.) Her 6 year old cousin also finds it compelling viewing.
The stories are actually rather witty, with good characterisation - just as well, given the frequency we are subjected to it! Definitely recommended.
We also own Noddy's Summer Parade - by contrast very disappointing.

Poor quality and no new episodes.......2004-02-06

This DVD is a good example of how to take great computer generated animation and ruin it during the transfer to DVD. The picture quality is terrible (for a DVD). The bit rate (which shows the quantity of information used for the picture) is around half that of a typical feature film on DVD.

I guess that someone at the production company thought "hey, the kids won't notice". They probably won't and they probably won't even care.
The trouble is, this is a full price DVD (at time of writing) and the quality is VHS standard (just), which makes you think why bother with a DVD?

Other than the poor quality image, the episodes aren't new. They have been on television (five) for a while now.

On a more postivie note, there's a very simple game to play using the DVD remote. There's also a colouring game which you need a PC for.

If you (or rather your children) don't mind the poor quality, then buy this DVD. If you do, watch it on digital TV and save yourself some money.

Customer Reviews:

Rib tickling family humour with a touch of heart........2001-03-26

After my young son watched this film twice in one day I decided to watch with him, at the third showing!. `Dennis` is so typical of all children at that age, and I could see what my son found so amusing as he would tend to do the same things given half the chance. Having a bad guy also helped to keep the story going. For us adults though, Walter Matthau proves to be a real comic genius. Think of `Home Alone` but without Macaulay Culkin, thank goodness!.

Amazon.co.uk Review

Psst: don't tell anybody, but in Free Willy 2 the whale and all of his whale pals and relatives, are either computer-generated images or old-fashioned miniatures (models). The humans in this film are reasonably real, however, including Jason James Richter, returning to his role as the former delinquent whose advocacy for an imprisoned Orca whale turned his life around in Free Willy. You may recall that Willy jumped the aquarium fence, so to speak, at the end of that 1993 family film, and regrouped in open seas with the pod from which he had been cruelly snatched. This 1995 sequel again finds Willy in trouble at the hands of the civilised world, this time due to an oil slick and explosion that may very well kill him or cause him to be locked away again. Meanwhile, Richter's growing character has other problems, including a troublesome half-brother and the rumblings of puppy love. One way in which this film is superior to its predecessor is a greater range of visual opportunities, namely shooting out on the ocean instead of in the whale hero's old tank. Of course, it helps that master cinematographer László Kovács (Five Easy Pieces) is behind the camera. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews:

A Seriously Great Film........2000-09-06

Okay, so the whales are mostly CGI and models. Who cares? When I first saw it I thought they were real - and I'm a trainee whale biologist! On a story note the film is next to faultless. Yes the film runs on the idea of child and animal relationship saving the day, which can/has become a little lame in some films. In this film, though, the plot has been written to ensure this doesn't happen. As a general overwiew, Willy and his Pod (having been reunited in the original) meet up with Jesse and Ranulph, but become threatened by an oil-slick. The film could be deemed as extraordinary, but believable nontheless, as the deep relation between Willy and Jesse shows through (perhaps even more than in the first). Such a relationship with an eight tonne top level predator wouldn't have been deemed possible normally, but I know that this kind of relationship is possible given unusual circumstances, making it more believable. Particularly memorable is when Jesse subversively takes "his girl" (or soon to be) to see Willy. Amusing, too, are some of Elvis's interuptions in the film - though some of these(notably those which distracted from seeing any cetacean "action") did annoy slightly (though, on the first viewing, as I said, I thought the whales were all real, and so was keen to see as much of them as possible - bad film critic practice, though). Five stars, deservedly in my opinion,....

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