Disney's 1994 animated feature, The Lion King, was a huge smash in cinemas and continues to enjoy life in an acclaimed stage production. The story finds a lion cub, son of a king, sent into exile after his father is deposed by a jealous uncle. The little hero finds his way into the "circle of life" with some new friends and eventually comes back to reclaim his proper place. Characters are very strong, vocal performances by the likes of Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane and Whoopi Goldberg are terrific, the jokes are aimed as much (if not more) at adults than kids, the animation is sometimes breathtaking and the songs from Tim Rice and Elton John, accompanied by a colourful score, are more palatable than in many recent Disney features. -Tom Keogh On the DVD: The Lion King Special Edition is a superb restoration: take a look at the serviceable but dull film clips incorporated in the plethora of extras and compare them to the vivid gorgeousness of the film presentation. This special edition also adds a 90-second song ("Morning Report") that originated in the lavish stage musical. To Disney's credit, the original theatrical version is also included, both restored and featuring two 5. 1 soundtracks: Dolby Digital and a new Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix, which does sound brighter. As with the Disney Platinum line, everything is thrown into the discs, except an outsider's voice (the rah-rahs of Disney grow tiresome at times). The excellent commentary from the directors and producer, originally on the laser disc, is hidden under the audio set-up menu. [+]

This follow-up to the surprise Disney hit about a hockey team of misfits brings Emilio Estevez back to the role of the kids' yuppie coach. This time, Estevez assimilates his Ducks into the higher-stakes Team USA in the Junior Goodwill Games, an opportunity that could bring fame and money. Entirely perfunctory, this sequel is basically an excuse to revisit the eccentricities of some of the younger characters, extend some of their conflicts into adolescence and showcase their allegedly entertaining but ethically dubious abilities on the ice. Estevez is okay but even he had enough after this movie. -Tom Keogh.

Film buffs and critics can argue until their faces turn blue about whether this lavish Dickensian musical deserved the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1968, but the movie speaks for itself on grandly entertaining terms. Adapted from Dickens's classic novel, it's one of the most dramatically involving and artistically impressive musicals of the 1960s, directed by Carol Reed with a delightful enthusiasm that would surely have impressed Dickens himself. Mark Lester plays the waifish orphan Oliver Twist, who is befriended by the pickpocketing Artful Dodger (Jack Wild) and recruited into the gang of boy thieves led by Fagin (played to perfection by Ron Moody). The villainous Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) casts his long shadow over Oliver and his friends, but the young orphan is still able to find loving care in the most desperate of circumstances. Full of memorable melodies and splendid lyrics, Oliver! is a timeless film, prompting even hard-to-please critic Pauline Kael to call it "a superb demonstration of intelligent craftsmanship", and to further observe that "it's as if the movie set out to be a tribute to Dickens and his melodramatic art as well as to tell the story of Oliver Twist. " -Jeff Shannon Film buffs and critics can argue until their faces turn blue about whether this lavish Dickensian musical deserved the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1968, but the movie speaks for itself on grandly entertaining terms. Adapted from Dickens's classic novel, it's one of the most dramatically involving and artistically impressive musicals of the 1960s, directed by Carol Reed with a delightful enthusiasm that would surely have impressed Dickens himself. Mark Lester plays the waifish orphan Oliver Twist, who is befriended by the pick-pocketing Artful Dodger (Jack Wild) and recruited into the gang of boy thieves led by Fagin (played to perfection by Ron Moody). The villainous Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) casts his long shadow over Oliver and his friends, but the young orphan is still able to find loving care in the most desperate of circumstances. Full of memorable melodies and splendid lyrics, Oliver! is a timeless film, prompting even hard-to-please critic Pauline Kael to call it "a superb demonstration of intelligent craftsmanship," and to further observe that "it's as if the movie set out to be a tribute to Dickens and his melodramatic art as well as to tell the story of Oliver Twist". [+]

Though the third season of John Kricfalusi's much-loved Ren and Stimpy animated series has been the subject of much controversy among devotees of the show and its creator, there is still enough cat/dog insanity to warrant viewing. Some fans' problems with the season revolve around the fact that Nickelodeon, which was airing the program, removed Kricfalusi and his Spumco team from the show's production and replaced them with Games Animation, which reproduced Ren and Stimpy's signature artwork, but without the absurd spark of the first and second seasons (at least by those fans' estimation). However, a perusal of the 29 episodes compiled on this three-disc set (which offers the entire third season and a smattering of the fourth, which concludes on the Season Five and Some More of Four set) does turn up some worthwhile episodes, most notably "Ren's Pecs" (Ren develops a rippling physique after injecting fat from Stimpy's posteior), "Jimminy Lummox" (Stimpy's conscience takes the form of a monstrous singing lout), "Powdered Toast Man vs. Waffle Woman" (no explanation needed there. ), and the surreal "House of Next Tuesday" (R & S visit the title domicile to escape giant ants). All this, plus several visits to "Untamed World," appearances by the irascible Wilbur Cobb, Jerry the Bellybutton Elf (who resides inside Stimpy's navel)-and scads of commentary tracks, including eleven from Kricfalusi and his Spumco team, and two from Ren and Stimpy themselves. Though the loyal may be divided on these seasons, completists will want to add this round of lunacy to their DVD animation collections. -Paul Gaita.

Disney does Dickens in this animated version of Oliver Twist, in which a homeless New York City cat falls in with a bunch of mischievous dogs under the leadership of the appealing scoundrel Fagin. The roots of Disney's success with animation in the 1990s begins with this clever, energetic, atmospheric movie, which succeeds in capturing the grim world Dickens conjured. Lyricist Howard Ashman (The Little Mermaid) worked on the songs, the best of which is sung by Billy Joel, who provides the voice of (the Artful) Dodger. -Tom Keogh.

Pokémon 2000, the second film to spin off the powerhouse child-friendly franchise of the turn-of-the-millennium, consists of the colourful if babyish human-presence free, short Pikachu's Rescue Adventure and the more elaborate feature The Power of One. The main attraction is up to snuff animation-wise, with imaginative settings (an island lair, a huge dirigible) that crossbreed cyberpunk futurism and Jules Verne style retro-fantasy. It even has the germ of an interesting, almost subversive idea, in that the story's wealthy villain is a green-haired fanatic who is as obsessive about collecting Pokémon as the film's target audience-he's after three fabled birds, Moltres, Zapdos and Articuno, but is really interested in the cute Loch Ness Monster-type being Lugia-but his philosophy is so skewed that he is more interested in owning and numbering the fabulous creatures than training or befriending them. A clever pun in a prophecy decrees that in a predestined crisis, "the world will turn to ash"-this turns out not to be a gloomy foretelling of holocaust but the revelation that human hero Ash is a messianic "Chosen One" who can restore the balance of nature when the collector's antics have unleashed worldwide climatic change. Adults might find the whole thing an endurance test for its shrill voicings, with Americanised kids and Japanese baby-talking Pokémon, not to mention the meld of incredibly simplistic storyline with amazingly intricate backstory. A trace of self-awareness comes in a brief snippet from a Weird Al Yankovic's song ("Polka mon") under the crowded end credits. -Kim Newman Video description DVD special features: The nice-looking DVD (letterboxed to 1. 85:1) comes with a "special edition" Pikachu card; trailers for this film and Pokémon 3; video clips of Pokémon-themed songs performed by Dream Street, Alysha Antonio and Youngstown; a snippet-like "making of the soundtrack" featurette, DVD-ROM features that won't play on a Mac (mostly Web-site links and ads for new poképroducts-"for the first time you will be able to discover if your Pokémon are male or female"!); soundtracks in English, French, Dutch, German and Italian with subtitles in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch and Arabic.

The most elaborate of the features to date, Pokémon 3: Spell of the Unown introduces new Pokémon that debuted in the fall of 2000 in the Gold and Silver-edition Game Boy games. En route to the Johto Tournament, Ash, Brock and Misty visit the mountain village of Greenfield, where they encounter an 8-year-old girl named Molly. Her father, Professor Spencer Hale, disappeared when he set off to study the Unown, a group of 26 Pokémon that resemble letters. The Unown build a baroque crystalline shell around Molly's palatial home, send the leonine Entei to watch over her and grant whatever she wishes-except the return of her father. What Molly really wants is a family: she refers to Entei as her father and has him kidnap Ash's mum to be her mother. Ash charges to the rescue with the help of Pikachu, Charizard and Cyndaquil. In the climactic battle, Ash is joined by Brock and Misty, as well as the usually villainous Team Rocket. ("We figure if we don't help you, we're outta showbiz," Meowth explains. ) Molly's father eventually reappears, but the viewer never sees the reunion with his daughter. Ash, Molly and the other two-dimensional characters simply don't fit into three-dimensional, computer-generated crystal settings, and large sections of Pokémon 3 look like two films unsuccessfully spliced together. [+]

In the wonderfully entertaining Freaky Friday, teenager Anna (Lindsay Lohan) and her fortysomething psychiatrist mum Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) have sunk into a rut of frustrated bickering-until a magic spell causes them to switch bodies. Suddenly Tess finds herself faced with petty teachers, vicious rivals and a hunky boy, while Anna has to cope with her mother's neurotic patients as well as her befuddled fiancé (Mark Harmon), who doesn't understand why his bride-to-be is suddenly recoiling from his embrace on the eve of their wedding. Both Lohan and Curtis turn in deft, delightful performances, with Curtis showing a surprising flair for physical comedy. The movie even manages to explore serious issues about fractured families, new parents and adolescent sexuality with honesty and empathy-and without making the story stop dead in its tracks. This 2003 remake of the 1977 original is a mother-daughter film that fathers and sons can enjoy just as much. -Bret Fetzer.

The monsters in Monsters, Inc. are just so incredibly cute-and they know it. Whereas Woody, Buzz and pals in the Toy Story saga were filled with self-doubt about just how much the children in their lives would continue to love them, here our heroic monsters and their impossibly lovable human ward Boo have no such worries, at least when it comes to the cinema audience. And that's why Monsters, Inc. , for all its wondrous computer-animated artistry, its smart humour and its family-friendly appeal, doesn't quite capture the naïve charm of its predecessors. Nevertheless, John Goodman and Billy Crystal, as scare-champions Sulley and Mike, are a great double-act whose comedy never goes over kids' heads but still reaches up to make their parents laugh. The film's central conceit-that monsters in the bedroom closet are just doing a night's work in order to generate power from screams for the city of Monstropolis-is funny and cleverly worked out; and kids will of course love the fact that the monsters are mortally afraid of the very children they are trying to frighten. The animation is extraordinarily detailed (Sulley's fur is a marvel in itself) and the set-piece action sequences top anything that has gone before for sheer audaciousness. But overall Pixar play things very safe, from the hissable villain to the end credit "outtakes". A bolder film might have taken inspiration from The Nightmare Before Christmas; instead, a little of that Disney disease of knowing cuteness seems to have crept into the formula. [+]

Since early on, the Baby Einstein Company's mission has been to expose young children to the "greatest forms of human expression": language, poetry, art, and music. Since receiving widespread acclaim for such solid programs as Baby Bach and Baby Mozart, the company has made a natural progression into another expressive realm-the animal kingdom-with its Baby Dolittle series. Neighborhood Animals was the first foray into critter country, followed by this exquisite sequel-World Animals-introducing youngsters, ages 1 to 4 years old, to the wonder, beauty, and hilarity of Earth's creatures. In this 30-minute program, viewers journey to three natural animal habitats-jungle, ocean, and savannah-to watch tigers prowl, elephants romp, and giraffes glide with grace. They'll meet zebras, lemurs, starfish, and squirrels, toucans, pandas, and bears in footage both stunning and whimsical. Catering to the short attention span of its viewers, the video seamlessly flows from live action footage to colorful puppet segments (starring Jane the monkey) using engaging stage props (like a giant bubble blower) and kids' drawings. Animal paw prints morph into words and finally photos so that children learn to recognize the various animals while laughing out loud at their antics-monkeys swinging, dolphins diving and sea turtles swimming. Requisite classical music accompanies the action, including symphonies by Dvorák and Mendelssohn, along with an assortment of kid-friendly songs. Expect repeat play of this lovely, captivating DVD from a production company that continues to outdo itself. -Lynn Gibson.

After a delightful opening, in which jungle boy Mowgli (voiced by Haley Joel Osment) recaps much of the original Jungle Book in a sprightly shadow puppet show, The Jungle Book 2 swiftly turns into a carbon copy of the splendidly swinging previous movie. After his old pal Baloo the bear (voiced by John Goodman) draws Mowgli away from the man-village, with all its work and rules, and back into the glorious indolence of the jungle, the movie repeats-in a less energetic form-an encounter with Kaa the snake, the cockney vultures, a musical number at the monkey's palace, the menace of Shere Khan the tiger, and even the song "The Bare Necessities. " The only difference is that there's a girl named Shanti along for the ride; sadly, her character is so bland that it doesn't do much to justify the movie's existence. -Bret Fetzer.

Disney’s huge hit franchise of the moment never has, and perhaps never will, see the inside of a cinema. But given the millions upon millions of followers across the globe, the DVD release of High School Musical 2 will nonetheless rival the sales of any blockbuster you care to mention. And why shouldn’t it? Grounded firmly in the family spirit that classic Disney movies are renowned for, High School Musical 2 isn’t the most radical movie you’re ever likely to see, but it’s had few recent rivals where outright fun is concerned. The plot this time sees Troy, Gabriella, Ryan, Chad, Taylor and Sharpay in the midst of organising a talent competition during their school holidays, which proves all the excuse the film needs to bring on the musical entertainment. Packed in with insanely addictive tunes, and playing very firmly to its fan base, it’s hard not to conclude that High School Musical 2 is a success. What’s more, there’s immense re-spin potential to the disc, and, given the raging success of the first movie, this one too is set to be enjoyed time and time again. Not jumped on the High School Musical wagon yet? Here’s a perfect place to start. is a fun family movie, and one that sits both as a worthy sequel, and a warm slice of entertainment in its own right. -Jon Foster.