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One of the sweetest and most tender Disney pictures of the golden era, Bambi teaches everyone that oh so wonderful lesson that we enjoy learning over and over again: Our mothers will, in fact, die. Cue the laugh track.
Bambi, while full of as much saccharine cuteness as one can squeeze into 70 minutes of movie - if you can resist the adorable Thumper, you must be some kind of perverse emotional android - carries a hefty, almost mythical weight to it. Yes, we get the now-corny songs and endless parades of cute-cute-cute forest varmints (it is Disney, after all), but at the core of Bambi's subversive narrative is the kind of life-cycle plot progression that isn't dissimilar to the Hero's Journey philosophies of Joseph Campbell.
When Bambi's mom gets killed - and I don't believe you if you say you didn't know her exact mortal status - and our eponymous fawn is forced to seek revenge against the evils that have been done against him, he learns the cyclic and essential social imperative of society, be it man-made or wilderness. He is called by nature itself to avenge his mother's passing, but there is no solace to Bambi's future - his plight is simply the same Sisyphusian boulder we all must push in order to go through the motions of our respective lives.
I hate to sound over-analytic in my response to Bambi, but considering that I hadn't seen the film in many years before popping it in my player this week, I can't deny the overwhelming sense of responsibility the film appears to occupy in spite of its strict and almost restrictive "Disneyness."
Bambi strikes a chord in the same way recent Pixar films have: It engages both the sensibilities of adults and the curiosity of children. Sure, there are always going to be youngsters shaken to their cores when they see Bambi cry because his mother will never come back home again, but Disney is - wisely - able to append this unavoidable reality with a distinct and notable sense of entertaining engagement.
Instead of wallowing in the nostalgic and maudlin qualities of an on-screen grieving process, Bambi turns its head and looks at the world around it with eyes focused on a bigger picture. There is time for sadness, of course, but the laws of the forest (and mankind, natch) insist that being subservient to grief keeps both animated characters and us real folks from addressing the other facets of everyday life.
Bambi is able to both be a "good cry" and wildly astute in its conclusions.
For this reason, the film continues to play exceptionally well. It might have an overly-gooshy facade that newer cineastes may not be able to penetrate, but for those of us who grew up with the film (and had parents who grew up with it), revisiting Bambi on DVD makes for a fascinating adventure. You'll be crying like a little kid as your mind swells with the film's ahead-of-its time metaphorical aspirations.
Postscript: There's a story out there that claims a minor error in the animation of the film that occurs when a baby raccoon disappears and then reappears after a short moment inspired Gene Roddenberry to invent the transporters used in Star Trek.
Boy, you really can find a Star Trek reference in everything. . .
The Video: How Does The Disc Look?
Disney DVD is famous for providing expert video transfers of their catalog titles, and this Bambi presentation is no exception; this 1.33:1 transfer is striking. Never one of Disney's most colorfully bold pictures, Bambi's almost pastel visual palette is given a wonderful treatment here, offering excellent color separation and outstanding consistency in black level and detail. And while 99% of all dust and grime are all but eliminated from this version of the film, there are still a few displays of its age - there are some muddy sections I found around 00:05:10, for example - but nothing of suspect nature lasts very long at all. All in all, another feather in Disney's DVD cap.
The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
We get both the film's original monaural mix and Disney-engineered 5.1 Enhanced Home Theatre mix here, but even if the original 1-channel mix is Bambi's most pure aural form, the 5.1 mix here is lovely. We don't get much surround information - a good sound designer knows not to open up the surround-channel floodgates too much - but the 5.1 mix here provides a lovely soundscape that rests almost entirely in front speakers. Dialogue, music, effects - they all sound fine. It's unlikely that Bambi could sound much better.
Also included are French and Spanish 5.1 Enhanced Home Theatre mixes, English subtitles for the hearing impaired, and English closed captions.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
Disc One houses a surprising wealth of material, the most prominent being the 70-minute documentary/commentary, Bambi: Inside Walt's Story Meetings, hosted by Patrick Stewart. In lieu of an official audio commentary, this featurette - as long as the feature film itself! - makes the act of sitting through a commentary track alive and exciting. Using frame-in-frame technology and interview footage from a wide range of Bambi participants (as well as playing the film itself), this extra feature is one of the best this writer has ever seen. Similar to video commentaries that often accompany certain titles (TV titles, mostly), this extra is the equivalent of a mesmerizing PowerPoint presentation that melds the information that comes with commentary with the relative newness of a DVD-friendly documentary. And the movie plays behind it the whole time. Extraordinary.
We also get trailers for Cinderella's upcoming DVD release, Chicken Little, Bambi and the Great Prince of the Forest, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, Growing Up With Winnie the Pooh, Disney Princess, JoJo's Circus, and the three newest Studio Ghibli titles on DVD, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Porco Rosso, and The Cat Returns as well as a THX optimizer and a sneak peek (1:00) of what is on . . . Disc Two.
Disc Two starts off with two short deleted scenes from the film: "Winter Grass" and "Bambi's First Snow." While it's interesting to have these here, they're both quite short (they run a total of 3:30 - and that includes a thirty-second animator introduction), they're both merely series of sketches (not even equivalent to an animatic), and they don't necessarily add all that much to the Bambi mystique.
Then there's the Games & Activities section, where we get a chance to fool around. The Forest Adventure is a cute set-top game that allows viewers to frolic through the woods and have fun with their favorite animated friends, while DisneyPedia: Bambi's Forest Friends is a four-minute featurette that explains to younger viewers (okay, and DVDFile reviewers, too) what real-life animals in the forest look like and how they act.
We then have another set-top game, What's Your Season? , a personality profile game, and an episode of Disney StoryTime in which you can either read (or have read to you) the short story Thumper Goes Exploring. Also included is a very interesting 3-minute virtual forest, very similar to the virtual aquarium included on the Finding Nemo DVD. You can sit and gaze out at Bambi's lovely animated woods as long as you'd like. Peaceful.
The Backstage Disney section of these special features includes the highlight of this DVD edition, a 50-minute documentary on the making of Bambi. With interviews and historical insight, this look at the film's development and execution is typical of Disney DVD's informational prowess. The Restoring Bambi featurette is also interesting - it's always astonishing to see how much work goes into bringing old picture like this one back to life on DVD (5:30).
We then have a five-minute sneak peek at the new Bambi movie, Bambi and the Great Prince of the Forest that will be on DVD next spring and a Disney time capsule that offers a look at the contemporary events occurring in the world at the time of Bambi's initial release in 1942 (4:30).
The Art of Bambi offers flip-through galleries chock-full of stuff. We get many different categories - concept art, story sketches, color keys and backgrounds, and four examples of character design - and you can choose whether to click through them all as still frames, have a slide gallery accompanied with some docent audio where a benevolent voice describes the elements of certain images (aimed toward younger DVD watchers), or as a silent slide gallery.
Next up is a seven-minute radio excerpt, "Tricks of the Trade," originally broadcast on February 13, 1957, a featurette called Inside the Disney Archive where we see what goes into organizing and cataloguing the multitude of Disney material (8:40), an animated short entitled "The Old Mill" (8:20), and Bambi's original theatrical trailer.
Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?
All that's offered is an opportunity to register your DVD.
Final Thoughts
A classic film gets the classic DVD treatment; Bambi's initial drop onto DVD is something you won't want to miss. An excellent transfer, a wonderful mix, a ton of exceptional extra features (including the best documentary/commentary hybrid this writer has ever seen) - considering that you can find this wonderful set offered for under $20 delivered, you really can't afford NOT to pick this one up. Highly recommended.
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