Everyone knows Elmo; the worlds favourite little red shag pile puppet from Sesame Street. Well it’s Elmo’s turn to be the star of the show. Elmo goes through a traumatic experience involving Zoe, Tele, and some singing socks in the lead up to him losing his favourite blanket. Bert and Ernie do a good job as sub narrators ensuring that the audience (aimed at 2-6 year olds) can keep up with what’s happening during the film. As bad as losing his blanket is, Elmo is then faced with the fact that Oscar has deposited his blanket in his trash can. As Elmo goes into fits and shoo’s everyone away he decides that Oscar wouldn’t mind if he just quickly got his blanket from the trash can. While he’s inside however he inadvertently opens the door to Grouchland, where he is sucked down a psychedelic type time tube to Grouchland. (Very much in the style of the old Dr. Who) Here he is faced with another challenge, the invincible Huxley (Mandy Patinkin) who is the ruler of Grouchland and has a very interesting theory: that everything is his, including Elmo’s blanket. The rest of the film is based around Elmo’s adventures in his pursuit of retrieving his blanket from Huxley. He meets lots of interesting little friends along the way and also the Queen of Trash (Vanessa Williams).

The Jim Henson puppets put in a dazzling performance, only brought down by the performances of the other live actors who have a great tendency to overact, but then I guess that’s what the littlies like.

So How Does This Transfer Hold Up?

VIDEO
Typically this is another fantastic looking transfer from Columbia Tristar. Also a very great find as a Single Sided Dual Ratio disk. Included on one side is the 1.78:1 widescreen version and the pan and scan version. Technically there is a not a lot of faults here at all. (And not that the target audience would notice anyhow)

There are some slight problems with edge enhancement and a little grain during some of the blue screen shots. On the other side of the scale we have some fantastic colours. The kind of thing that appeals to kids, bright and vibrant colour schemes, on furry little puppets. Not really my thing, I have trouble keeping my eyes focused with so much going on, on the screen all at once. In all the transfer was impressive, very very sharp and very very bright, certainly something to rake in the targeted audience.

AUDIO
The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is also very impressive. The surrounds are used quite a bit for background children noises and some great encompassing sound effects. Not a lot of use of the base channel but this is probably due to the targeted audience not being the sort of group who could handle booming base in a category of an enjoyable children’s film. At times it is difficult to understand Elmo but I think that is more due to the way he speaks rather than any audio problems. All other dialogue is clear and easy to understand.

The Musical Score from John Debney is also very cute. Lots of great singalong tracks for the kids and some great sound effects to add some depth to the film, while supporting Elmo’s voice as the main event.

EXTRAS
Well, considering this is a children’s film, the extras are quite adequate for a change. There’s a very attractive animated menu to start off the film. Then the Theatrical trailer for the film presented in a 4x3 pan and scan ratio. While it is a tad annoying on Video, it’s quite rare on a DVD to see trailers for other recent films. Here we get trailers for Muppets from Space, Fly Away Home, Matilda, Madeline, and Stuart Little. (Which I will be venturing to the cinemas to see very soon) All are presented in Pan and Scan and are in a mixture of audio formats from 5.1 to 2.0.

There is also an introduction to the film presented by Bug and Elmo, I’m certainly questioning why this would be inserted in the special features of the film and not included at the beginning instead.

Then we have a short Featurette on the making of the film, which are mainly short interviews with cast from the film. I would have been a lot more interested in the actual making of the puppets and sets more than hearing from crewmembers.