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Released by: Universal Studios
Released on: 6/7/2011
Director: Jean-Jacques Mantello
Cast: Some Sharks And A Sea Turtle
Year: 2011
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The Movie:
Hot on the heels of IMAX's disappointing Sharks 3D comes this equally disappointing sister feature, Ocean Wonderland 3D. Once again, this is basically just a series of images from the ocean world set to music and really, really bad narration from your friend and mine, the talking sea turtle.
Is there any more to it than that? No, not really. Like Sharks 3D, it was produced by the son of the great Jacques Cousteau but it has none of the insight that Cousteau's work always brought to the table. Obviously geared towards a younger audience (though you wouldn't know it based on the packaging, the forty minute (yep, forty minutes is all you get) feature does at least have a slight environmental angle for those who appreciate such things. It's all Conservationism 101, however, basically letting us know that man's interference has hurt various parts of the undersea ecosystem without really getting any more specific than that.
We do, however, get some beautiful camerawork that makes this watchable - you might want to turn the sound off and listen to some classical music or something while you watch it, the results would probably be more enlightening and would definitely be more atmospheric and rewarding in that regard. Getting back on topic, however, here we get some neat footage of eels, who swim eerily to and fro and look like sea monsters. We see some playful dolphins playing playfully as dolphins are wont to do and we see a spooky shark looking like he wants to eat you. There are plenty of shots of various coral reefs and the associated wildlife that calls those reefs home and some nice shots of manta rays flapping their weird manta ray wings and looking for all the world like they're flying underwater.
These little snippets of undersea life are pretty cool and it's all shot very nicely with a great eye for composition and detail. With that said, we've seen a lot of this type of material already, some of which has been done with far more insight and educational value. If you've got kids around who are interested in the ocean, then this is a good way to get them further interested in the subject but outside of that, there isn't really a good reason for anyone but the most hardcore of 'undersea footage aficionados' to bother with this one. Yeah, it looks great, but so do countless other undersea documentaries, many of which run far longer, give you more bang for your buck, and have proven to be far more interesting than Ocean Wonderland 3D.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Universal's AVC encoded 1.78.1 1080p high definition widescreen transfer is a spiffy one with nice color reproduction and strong detail. Obviously there's going to be an abundance of blue here as it's all been shot under water and thankfully those blues are reproduced very nicely. Texture is good, you can really see all the detail on the skin of the various creatures that pop up in the feature and the coral reefs and shipwrecks that pop up here and there, and the disc is well authored in that there are no problems with any compression artifacts (probably helped by the fact that the running time is so short) nor is there any obvious noise reduction or edge enhancement. Viewing options are provided in 2D and 3D but you have to have a 3D compatible player and HDTV to take advantage of the later format. Since Universal didn't include one of those with the disc, we're obviously talking about the 2D version here.
Wow, Universal has loaded up the disc with an English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track as well as Italian, Castilian Spanish, French, Japanese and German DTS 5.1 Surround Sound tracks and Dutch, Russian, Czech, L A Spanish and Polish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound tracks. The quality of the English track is pretty good, though the surrounds are really only used for the score, there isn't much in the way of sound effects here so don't expect the mix to be particularly exciting. It sounds fine though, the score is clear and distinct and there are no problems. If you like subtitles then you're in luck, because this disc has them in English SDH, French, German, Italian, Castialian Spanish, L A Spanish, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Complex Mandarin, Thai and Korean.
Extras? Not a one, unless you count menu screens as extras.
The Final Word:
All style, no substance, this is good if you're eight years old and have a short attention span but unless you fall into that category you can probably live life to the fullest without ever having seen this one. The visuals are nice, but the content itself is strictly dullsville.
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