Tarzan - Special Edition

Fans of Disney's "Tarzan" rejoice! The new Special Edition Blu-ray release of the movie includes all of the special features of the original 2-disc DVD set, which has been almost impossible to find. The film itself is beautifully realized in widescreen and DTS 5.1 sound, and as I'm a quality picture snob, I refused to allow my 2-year-old daughter to watch this film until it was available in HD.

It was a hit. She devoured the movie in one sitting, and was clapping along to the songs. It's strange; I don't believe Phil Collins would have worked as an artist choice in any other Disney outing, but his unique blend of soft pop keeps an otherwise staid picture humming. The animation was always transitional; Disney's "Deep Canvas" was an interim effort between hand-drawn and completely digital animation (I'd be surprised if the hand animators on the project didn't say "Oh, shit" on a daily basis). But it's still effective 15 years after its original release. And the story, while predictable, has its moral priorities in good order for the kids, while offering numerous funny moments for the older set.

The aforementioned special features have been restored, including a wide variety of "making of" featurettes, multiple trailers, and deleted scenes. It's still rather fascinating to watch the Deep Canvas elements in retrospect, and some of the music videos are quite entertaining. This represents well over two hours of extras. Most of them are in traditional aspect ratio, and they suffer on today's HD screens, but that's to be expected.