Stuart Little 2 (2002)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Features:

• Running audio commentary by director Minkoff and visual effects supervisor Jerome Chen
  
• "Show and Tell" viewing mode with behind-the-scenes goodies
  
• Featurettes: A Touch of Evil and Life in the Fast Lane
  
• Stuart Little's Big Adventure Read-Along
  
• Interactive Game: "Stuart's Circle of Friends"
  
• Music Video: Celine Dion's "I'm Alive"
  
• Stuart Little 2 PS2 Game Promo
  
• A playable level from Infogames new game for Stuart Little 2
  
• DVD-ROM:
  
• Record your own Stuart Little read-a-long
  

Released by: Columbia Pictures
Rating: PG
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes

My Advice: Rent it...if you've got kids

Stuart Little (Fox) and his family have a new little sister and things at home are going just great. However, even though things at home are going great, things at school are quite a bit different. Since he is a mouse, he's not finding it quite as easy to adjust to high school as he thought it would be. Even his big brother George (Lipnicki) is caving under the peer pressure. Things are going pretty rough for Stuart when Margalo (Griffith) lands, literally, in his life and he finds himself on an all-new adventure to save her from her own private version of Fagin named Falcon (Woods).

Well, this sequel was not as bad as I thought it would be. First of all, the fact that they got almost all of the original cast back helped...a lot. It's very obvious that this group of people had a wonderful time working together. Davis and Laurie are very convincing as an updated version of Ozzie and Harriet and Lipnicki works very well with them just as before. They all three work very well with the all the CG characters that are in this movie. Stuart would not be the same little mouse if Fox wasn't voicing him. So, the main problem with the movie is this: the story line leans too much on its Oliver! references, but doesn't acknowledge them as such. Don't get me wrong, Griffith and Woods work very well in their roles of Margalo and Falcon (who would be Oliver and Fagin in another dimension), but there are just too many similarities to that other story that are ignored. I didn't know whether I was wathcing a movie about Stuart Little saving Margalo or Margalo looking for a savior. The lines were too blurred.

As for the DVD, at least there is a filmmaker's commentary track, even though they didn't really seem to notice that they were recording a commentary track for a children's movie, which would probably be watched by children. Not that there's any naughty words, but its just that they spend a lot of time using "big" moviemaking words that kids are just not going to get. For adults, the commentary track is interesting, but only moderately so. There is also an option that allows you to go through the movie and access little vignettes about how they put the movie together. As far as I can tell, the original DVD release of The Matrix is the one that started this "tradition" and it's a great idea, but it's a bummer that you have to sit through the movie just to get to these little vignettes. It would have been nice to have the option to catch them separately from the feature.

There are two featurettes that you can get to without going through the movie again. The first is about creating the evil character of Falcon. It covers the animation process, including selecting what type of bird the villain would be, and the casting of Woods as the voice of the villain. There is a very thin interview with he and the rest of the crew about his character, and that's about all you get. Again, here you get the idea that they really couldn't decide who their target audience was with this one. It's a little too "grown up" for the kiddos, but too cheesy to be of interest to the grown ups. The Life in the Fast Lane has many of the same problems that the other featurette has except that it doesn't contain any interviews with the cast at all. Rather it is literally a fly-through of the filmmaking process.

The read-along section is really well done. It gives you the option to read through it both with and without narration. The option without narration is designed to encrourage parents to read it with their children while it plays on the screen. It's nicely done. Then there is the Celine Dion video which seems like a waste of space. This is an opinion that I have of most music videos, though. The game on the DVD called Stuart's Circle of Friends is really not all that exciting. All you do is solve six very simple riddles about the characters in the movie and then you are rewarded with being in Stuart's Circle of Friends for life! I couldn't solve it, so I fell into Stuart's Pit of Outcast Losers where I will remain until I die. The preview for the PlayStation 2 game looks like it is pretty typical of most gaming console formats. You are Stuart running around the world solving little puzzles and defeating enemies to achieve your goal. The preview is just like watching someone else play the game...and just about as exciting.

The DVD-ROM features are pretty cool. There is a feature that allows you to record your own vocal track to the scenes in the movie and edit them together. This is where they got the target demographic right. The interface is incredibly easy to use and it even helps you to set up your microphone and equipment. The Read Along uses the same engine to allow kids to record themselves reading through a Stuart Little story that is shown on your computer screen. Again, the interface is very well done. The demo of the Infogames game is pretty good, it plays like pretty much every other 2D Mario Brothers game has for the past fifteen years, but it's great for kids. There is also a link to the official Stuart Little website.

On the whole, I would say that this movie is worth watching at least once, but not worth keeping on your shelf permanently. At least this release has both wide- and fullscreen versions of the film available, unlike the release of the first film.