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Hannah Montana: The Movie - Deluxe Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (29th September 2009). |
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The Film
 Veni, Vidi, Vici. I have been given the Disney Channel movies. I have seen the Disney Channel Original Movies. I have conquered the Disney Channel movies. These movies are not remotely made for me, but I wouldn’t even recommend them to those who they are made for. Fans of “Hannah Montana” (2006-Present) cannot be dissuaded by any review, I’ve seen their reactions in the “Hannah Montana Best of Both Worlds” (2008) tour, these are the sort of fanatics that are blinded by devotion to the artist, no internet critic can dissuade them. These movies are terrible, from The Jonas Brothers to Demi Lovato to the cast of the “High School Musical” Trilogy (2006-2008), they follow the same general formulaic plot. Because of their formulaic similarities, equally bad music to my ears and zealot fan base, I’ve developed somewhat of an iron stomach for these movies. I can waste an hour and a half and not loose brain cells, I’ve developed coping mechanisms. “Hannah Montana: The Movie” (2009) could be seen as another iteration of these movies, whose plots and scripts are probably developed in the same mad scientist’s lab that takes the genetic material to build these Disney stars. Just as the characters of the other movies find themselves out of place, Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) has found herself out of place between her worlds of Hannah Montana and living her regular life as Miley, slowly realizing that Hannah is starting to take over her regular life. In order to reclaim his daughter from her super celebrity, Robby Ray (Billy Ray Cyrus) takes his daughter back to their hometown of Crowley Corners, Tennessee to readjust to being Miley. There Miley meets farmhand Travis (Lucas Till) on her Grandmother’s ranch and quickly falls in love. Unfortunately for Miley and Hannah, she’s come under the scrutiny of a British tabloid trying to find out her secret. How dangerous. What risk for Miley. Nearly the same plot as “Camp Rock” (2008) that had Demi Lovato trying to hide her secret life from the other campers at Camp Rock. Pretty identical to “High School Musical” (2006) when Zac Efron tries to hide his musical aspirations from his basketball team. Don’t play like you aren’t just making the same movie Disney. Though I have trouble seeing how they wouldn’t acknowledge it considering how much money they make, there’s no need to turn out a real creative product when you can simply just recreate the same movie over and over with your different breeds of actors. I know your game. The cast acts their parts out exactly as you would expect them to, the Cyrus’ act like the Cyrus’, though sometimes I get the vibe that Billy Ray is using the "Hannah Montana" branding to throw his career back into the mix considering how much singing he does in the movie in addition to Miley. The new additions for the movie are a bit off putting, the kid who plays Travis has obviously hit puberty something fierce, but isn’t quite done with puberty yet. He’s got big hands and a deep voice with a gangly body, which are a little weird to watch, but makes me feel better that he wasn’t just cloned into adolescence and may, in fact, be an actually born and bred human. No “Gattaca” (1998) genetic engineering here. Plus seeing Melora Hardin (Jan from “The Office” (2005-Present)) is a little weird seeing her making eyes at Billy Ray rather than Michael Scott. It disappoints me a little to see Barry Bostwick here, especially with no singing considering he helped become a huge part of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975) but at least he’s making money after “Spin City” (1996-2002). Of all the songs though, something nearly pierced my armor and took me down like Achilles. The song ‘Hoedown Throwdown’ that is essentially a country Vanilla Ice song that says ‘That’s How We Roll’ in a line dancing song. For a brief moment I lost composure, but quickly regained my ironclad composure. Close Cyrus, so close, but you can not break me. Plus Taylor Swift makes a musical appearance. Insert Kanye West joke here, I’m sure it will be timely. Now I’m gonna let me finish and say that “Hannah Montana: The Movie” is as bad as you'd expect if not worse. There’s no real plot to speak of or character depth, but that’s not really what the whole franchise is about. It’s really about creating a tween pop icon that can appeal to a large audience of rabid fans and draw them directly from sold out arenas to theatres. Based on the $150 million world-wide gross it looks like it worked. The Disney Channel Original movies make millions to only spawn the next breed of Disney stars to emerge after controversy or puberty has ravaged the careers of their last crop of stars. Bring it on Disney.
Video
Visually the film is about as impressive as you would expect from a high budget Disney movie as the 1080p 24/fps 1.85:1 AVC MPEG-4 encoding looks super clean clear in the transfer. There are no real problems with grain or any other typical problems, the film looks as squeaky clean as the film is. The colors come through nicely and the black levels are pretty good. Suprisingly the colors don’t pop as much as the other Disney movies, but its more out of a natural color contrast than the more “Pleasantville” (1998) style of color matching that Disney often does.
Audio
Similarly the squeaky clean audio is presented in an English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit and in full levels so you can really get the full effect of Hannah Montana's music and weird head hitting noises throughout the movie. All of the audio is really crisp, but so over produced that you can hear all of the lines that were recorded later on and added back in to the film, supposedly for comic effect but it just sounds a little bit off. Still though, the audio is crystal clear across the high quality mix that provides clarity that your ears needed to get the full effect of the thousands of screaming pre teen fans of Hannah Montana in the movie. There are also French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks with English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
Like most recent Disney sets, the “Hannah Montana” movie set comes in a 3-disc triple pack edition, 1 blu-ray, 1 DVD and 1 digital copy. A great plan in terms of distribution to get it on every format without appearing too greedy. Still, it’s packed with special features including a commentary track (surprising), deleted scenes, music videos, bloopers, a few featurettes and bonus trailers. DISC ONE: First up is the audio commentary with director Peter Chelsom where he talks about green screening this movie into scenes from the 3D concert movie. He makes sure to bring up his his ‘silly moments’ and ‘crazy ideas’ like having Miley hit in the head with a coconut. How hilarious. This is a really boring commentary, just very plain comments about ADR or pointing out what’s filmed on a sound stage or not, but with no spice or excitement. Kind of like the movie itself. He talks about Tyra’s acting abilities, but is just generally a boring track that’s uninformative so everything he says seems so obvious it makes him seem like an incompetent director. That’s a little harsh, but it reflects how boring and simplistic his directing is. Next are the deleted scenes, 5 in all, playable together for 10 minutes and 36 seconds or separately. These come with director introductions from Peter Chelsom: - “Intro” runs for 41 seconds, Chelsom talks about how these scenes were cut just for time, the film is the director’s cut of the film. - “Jackson: ‘I’m Pretending to Be At University…’” runs for 4 minutes and 31 seconds, Chelsom explains the introduction of the scene, Jackson explains he doesn’t really go to college but he really works at the cousins petting zoo. Comedy ensues. - “How Are We Going To Get Hannah Down to Crowley Corners?” runs for 1 minute and 37 seconds, Chelsom expresses some regret for cutting the scene, Miley and father discuss how to get Hannah Montana to their town. - “Oswald and the Hannah Wigs” runs for 2 minutes and 25 seconds, Chelsom again talks about cutting the scene for pacing reasons, meanwhile they distribute some wigs to distract the reporter. - “Oswald, the Ostritch and the Alligator” runs for 1 minute and 20 seconds, Chelsom says the scene sounds like a European movie, explaining how they shot the scene, while in the scene Oswald is pestered by an Ostrich and an Alligator in his motel room. There are 7 music videos in all, playable all together for 26 minutes and 44 seconds or separately listed below: - “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus runs for 3 minutes and 53 seconds (this video is Standard Definition) - “Back to Tennessee” by Billy Ray Cyrus runs for 4 minutes and 22 seconds (also Standard Definition) - “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home” by Hannah Montana runs for 3 minutes 51 seconds, HD. - “Let’s Get Crazy” by Hannah Montana runs for 2 minutes 59 seconds, HD. - “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus runs for 4 minutes and 6 seconds, HD. - “Bless This Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts runs for 4 minutes and 17 seconds, HD. - “Crazier” by Taylor Swift runs for 3 minutes and 15 seconds, HD. The first featurette is “The Hoedown Throwdown Home Experience” which breaks down into two sections: - “Everybody Now…” runs for 14 minutes and 39 seconds, breaking down the Hoedown Throwdown sequence in terms of acting, where the choreographer compliments Cyrus while Cyrus brags about her photographic memory. There are some big behind the scenes shots and they talk about putting together the whole sequence from initial choreography through the filming of the sequence, including doing the Hoedown Throwdown in some different locals, and also going through the entirety of the dance in different sections. - “Learn the Moves” is just a breakdown of the second section of the first featurette, literally it’s the same footage from the second half. Just shown again. “Find Your Way Back Home” featurette runs for 15 minutes and 6 seconds, where Miley takes the camera on a tour of Franklin Nashville, signing some autographs with fans, hanging out with her mom and showing off some of the different things and memories that she has within the mall area and the city. If you ever wanted to see Miley serve ice cream and play with kittens, this featurette is for you. “I Should Have Gone To Film School – With Jason Earles” featurette runs for 15 minutes and 18 seconds. Earles takes the featurette through the behind-the-scenes of the production, but like with any Disney Channel original featurette it has to have a teen host to relate to their audience and try and infuse it with a little humor that isn’t funny at all. It’s a guide for kids mostly, since it pops up with the different duties of the people he interviews on the set of the film, running them through their respective responsibilities and everything. “Fun With Hannah & The Gang” is a blooper reel which runs for 3 minutes and 53 seconds like any other blooper reel with funny faces, and everything good and clean Disney style. “DisneyFile Digital Copy” is a basic beginner’s guide to digital copy featurette which runs for 1 minute and 4 seconds. Finally there are 2 BD-Live Disney features for Radio Disney and the Country Store. Bonus trailers on the disc are: - “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Diamond Edition” runs for 1 minute and 44 seconds. - “The Princess and the Frog” runs for 2 minutes and 40 seconds. - “Disney Blu-Ray” runs for 1 minute and 13 seconds. - “Disney Movie Rewards” runs for 20 seconds. - “Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience Extended Movie” runs for 1 minute and 11 seconds. - “Earth” runs for 2 minutes and 9 seconds. - “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” runs for 1 minute and 29 seconds. - “Santa Buddies” runs for 51 seconds. - “Up” Runs for 2 minutes and 32 seconds. - “Disney Parks and Resorts” runs for 32 seconds. DISC TWO: This is a DVD of the film, here the special features are the same as above, just with a few things missing. The DVD includes the audio commentary, the deleted scenes, the “Find your Way Back Home” and “Film School” featurettes, the “Fun With Hannah & the Gang” blooper reel and “The Climb” music video (the 3 minute 53 second standard definition version) along with “DisneyFile Digital Copy” of the film. The only unique featurette on here is the “Dylan and Cole Sprouse: Blu-Ray is Sweet” advertisement for Blu-ray that runs for 4 minutes 45 seconds. It’s weird to see it here considering it comes packaged with the Blu-ray, but lets you know that this DVD is really the full DVD released, only packaged with the Blu-ray. Bonus trailers on the disc are: - “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Diamond Edition” runs for 1 minute and 45 seconds. - “The Princess and the Frog” runs for 2 minutes and 33 seconds. - “Sonny with a Chance” runs for 49 seconds. - “Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie” runs for 47 seconds. - “Disney Movie Rewards” runs for 18 seconds. - “Disney Blu-Ray: Magic in High Def” runs for 1 minute and 11 seconds. - “The Princess Protection Program” runs for 32 seconds. - “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” runs for 1 minute and 27 seconds. - “Disney Friends for Change” runs for 47 seconds. - “Earth” runs for 2 minutes and 8 seconds. - “Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience Extended Movie” runs for 1 minute and 9 seconds. DISC THREE: This is simply a digital copy of the film.
Packaging
Packaged in a deluxe Blu-ray case housed in a cardboard slip-case.
Overall
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