Hi-Def Preview

Shrek The Third

Paramount Home Entertainment

Released: 11/13/07

Review By: Ryan James

Picture Quality - 4.5/5

Audio Quality - 4/5

Special Features - 4/5

Overall – 4.25/5

Comments: While doing my weekly grocery shopping last night as a local retailer which will remain nameless, I surprisingly found both “Shrek The Third” and the “Ocean’s Box set” for sale on HD-DVD. Without hesitation, I grabbed both.

Watching “Shrek The Third” I felt would be the perfect way to end an amazing week of animation viewing after having seen both “Ratatouille” and “Cars” earlier in the week. Needless to say, after watching the two Pixar movies listed above, my expectations were set very high.

Did “Shrek The Third” deliver the goods? Well, kinda. This is another Paramount HD30 release. I felt the picture quality was solid, maybe more along the lines of a “Surf’s Up” on Blu-ray. I would not however put it in quite the same class as the Pixar films. The colors were great, as one would expect. They were vivid and uniform. At no time did I detect any banding or macro blocking. I was also impressed with the “smoothness” of the overall presentation. All in all a nice PQ experience.

I listened using the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 option. I really felt the sound quality was excellent. I would not rank it quite as high as lets say “Transformers” or “Hot Fuzz” but it was great nonetheless. The surround channels were popping all around me consistently and the LFE was booming throughout. The center channel also created an enveloping atmosphere with the dialog, which I felt, really enhanced the viewing experience. My one complaint is that I did have several lip-sync issues during the viewing of this film. Was it the film or my Xbox 360 HD- DVD add-on? I am not sure as I ejected my disc, reloaded and it occurred at the same points.

This disc has a nice verity of special features. There is a creative PiP feature called, “The Animator’s Corner: Interactive Storyboards,” which should appeal to the children in the family and it has some great HD special features as well. The best one in my opinion is a feature called, “Learn The Donkey” dance. This is essentially what it sounds like, a tutorial to learn the Donkey’s dance. It was fun to do and again should appeal to the children watching this film. There are many more special features, which round out the presentation of this release.

Although the story of this Shrek was weak, it was still a fun viewing experience, as the picture and sound quality were solid. So if you are a fan of the big green ogre’s previous films, I can recommend this purchase.