Stuart Little 2 [DVD] [2002]

Product Information

Show and Tell Select this option and whenever an icon appears on screen during the movie you can access a selection of short featurettes (average two minutes in length) on the making of the film. The CGI and other visual effects are explored, as well as the art direction which drew inspiration from the 40s editions of New Yorker magazine and, bizarrely, the Al Pacino cop thriller "Serpico". There's also a miscellaneous selection of lesser bonus material. "Stuart Little's Big Adventures Read-Along" (and the option to record your own read-along) and the "Interactive Game: Stuart's Circle of Friends" are only going to be of interest to the younger viewers. Playstation 2 owners will be interested in the promotional material for the Stuart Little 2 game; incidentally, the graphics for the game look pretty terrible. There's also a music video for one of the insipid songs from the film, Celine Dion's "I'm Alive," trailers, and weblinks.

In addition to its title character and his family, Stuart Little 2 takes several elements directly from the original novel by E.B. White: the cat Snowbell, the songbird Margalo (Melanie Griffith), and several minor incidents such as his adventure in the kitchen drain pipe, landing in the garbage barge, and having a tiny toy car to drive. These elements are woven together into an entirely different story, however, with Margalo a much more important character with a past history that ends up drawing Stuart into a life-threatening adventure. A Touch of Evil The introduction of the scary Falcon to Stuart's world is covered in this seven-minute featurette. James Woods pops-up for a short interview and, as always, has slightly different coloured hair than the last time you saw him. He enjoys playing bad guys in animated films and reveals his formula for being scary, without being too scary, where kids are concerned. Stuart Little's Big Adventure The movie is condensed into a three-minute read-along adventure which ends with a charming fable about how you can buy more Stuart Little adventures. Stuart Little is the smallest member of the Little family... literally. In fact, he's a mouse. But in the fairytale world of Stuart Little 2, Stuart is completely accepted as their son, complete with going to school, eating breakfast with the family, and even playing in the little kids' soccer league with his human brother George. Of course, being only about six inches tall, Stuart (voiced by Michael J. Fox) ends up being excluded from many of the activities that human kids his own age enjoy. Saddened by George's sudden enthusiasm for playing with the neighbor instead of him, Stuart longs for a friend of his own.When Irwin gets hit in the stomach with the soccer ball it bounces off of him, but in the next shot of him he is holding the ball. Having discovered Stuart's absence and whereabouts, the Littles follow him by taxi as he begins an aerial adventure through the park, with Margalo at his side. They lose Falcon, but he catches up and makes an attempt to kill Stuart, when he detaches the plane's upper wing, damaging the main one and making it enter a steep nose dive, which fails when Stuart recovers from the dive, narrowly missing his family. Audio Commentary Director Rob Minkoff is joined by senior visual effects supervisor Jerome Chen for a somewhat dry chat about the movie. The focus is highly technical and, while Minkoff provided an interesting commentary for the DVD of the first film, this effort is very limited in appeal. Kids will be bored by it and only those interested in animation and special effects may glean something from a movie that Minkoff describes as having "every shot manipulated". PlayStation Demo There's an advert around every corner on this DVD and this time it's for the PlayStation game. Life in the Fast Lane It's the dreaded 'making of' featurette, except this one is kept to only two-minutes long because all the action is speeded up. So you get everything you ever really needed to know in one short blast. Amen to that.

Picture Technically this disc is as good as you'd typically expect from Columbia TriStar. The picture quality is good, with the fairytale styled take on New York transferring to screen with warm glowing tones that offer plenty of detail.Stuart Little 2 was even more well-received than the first film. Rotten Tomatoes has reported that 84% of critics gave the film a positive review. There's plenty to like about "Stuart Little 2" as a film, but the DVD release is quite disappointing in what it offers.