Mighty Joe Young

The likes of King Kong, Godzilla and the T-Rex in Jurassic Park have made audiences watch in awe how these mammoth animals stomp across the screen and cause havoc and destruction with everything in their path. When Hollywood wants bigger and better, the special effects people deliver bigger, better, smoother, more realistic and seamless effects that fool our eyes into believing the impossible.

Mighty Joe Young is Disney's attempt at the giant gorilla theme. We begin our journey just over a decade ago in the jungles of Central Africa where Dr Ruth Young and her daughter Jill (Charlize Theron) are studying the behaviour of a group of apes when Jill notices that little Joe is twice the size of the other apes his age. Their expedition is interupted when poachers enter their area and kill both Joe's mother and Jill's mother, Ruth, not after Joe bites off the thumb and forefinger of the head poacher.

12 years later, Jill Young continues the preservation of the local gorillas in the region. Enter Gregg O'Hara (Bill Paxton), a zoologist who has heard the legendary tale of a 15 foot gorilla who guards the remote mountains and sets out with a bunch of 'trackers' to find the legend. He finds him alright and Jill as well. They soon realise that Joe is no longer safe here and take him back to California where a preserve has been set up for him, but all goes wrong when Joe, intelligent as he is, recognises the original poachers who killed his mother and embarks on a journey to escape his wood-be poachers.

Overall, this is an exceptional transfer, but not perfect. We are presented with another anamorphic transfer from Disney that is sure to please all with widescreen sets. The image detail and sharpness is exceptional and does the detail of the African jungle justice.

The only downfall of the transfer is that the first few scenes are a little on the light side. Black levels suffer as a result and colour depth is not as it should be, which tends to give us a washed out image. It's not overly noticeable, but as the picture steadily improves from there on you do notice it when flicking back through the chapters.

Other than that, I can't fault the transfer and it is very encouraging to see such quality finally coming from Disney. If only they could do something about the extras. There were no MPEG artifacts and I didn't notice the layer change.

When you see a huge creature on the screen you immeadiately cast comparisons back to Jurassic Park, which has set the standard for big, thumping sound. Granted, Joe is not the size of a T-Rex, but he would surely come close in weight which is where I was expecting the bass to take effect. It did, but I expected a little more.

Dialogue is always clear in the semi-quiet to quiet scenes but once Joe rumbles onto the screen or anything else is causing havoc in your other speakers, the dialogue seems to take a back seat which is a slight disappointment. No audio synch problems were observed.

Absolutely nothing. I think that if Disney are to make changes in their presentation of DVDs, like going anamorphic, they need to make efforts in ALL areas, not just one section at a time.

A simple making of or special effects featurette would have been nice.

Mighty Joe Young is a good movie, decent for adults but a lot more fun for the kids. It's predictable, but then again I assumed it would be so I sat back and enjoyed watching Joe and how far we have come in this digital era of special effects.