Africa's Elephant Kingdom (IMAX) on Blu-ray Disc Review by Brandon A. DuHamel on BigPictureBigSound

Blu-ray Disc and DVD : Blu-ray Disc Reviews

Published: 2009-03-29 - 22:18:19

Africa's Elephant Kingdom (IMAX) on Blu-ray Disc Review

By Brandon A. DuHamel

The Film

This 1998 IMAX exhibition title Africa's Elephant Kingdom, has been running on Discovery Channel for years. I have had occasion to see it several times on Discovery's HD Theater, but it never struck me as something that would make a particularly worthy Blu-ray release. With narration from Avery Brooks, whom many might recognize as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Captain Sisko, the film follows a clan of elephants in Kenya. Led by their matriarch as they try to make their way towards food and water during the dry season, the trials they face are documented here.

Still, Africa's Elephant Kingdom feels like a dull exercise in nature documentaries in comparison to other films of this ilk. The pretentious narration from Avery Brooks, which drifts in and out of the first person perspective (or is that first Elephantidae?), of an elephant is overbearing, and a little confusing. The film's focus on the life cycle of an elephant misses much pertinent information pertaining to this magnificent creature as well.

What begins with great potential with spectacular aerial views of the African plains forests of Kenya then settles down into rather mundane footage of elephants playing in mud and trekking over arid lands in search of water. Some excitement comes when the matriarch puts herself between the herd and the camera and charges, or during the footage of the first rainfall's powerful, torrential downpour. Sadly, these moments are fleeting.

The scientific and biological information on elephants is almost as thin as the non-existent extra features provided on this release. The whole Blu-ray production feels like an afterthought, or just a rush to get something to market and hardly stands up to the best of the IMAX releases available on the format today.

The Picture

Africa's Elephant Kingdom is the first IMAX title I have had the pleasure of reviewing that has been released to Blu-ray without being reformatted for television. This BD release retains its original 4:3 aspect ratio, so viewers with widescreen HD displays (which I presume is the majority these days) will see this "pillarboxed" with black bars on each side of the picture.

The film itself had the potential to look more than above average on Blu-ray, with its splendid vistas of the African plains, macrophotography, and azure skies. Sadly, not much has been done to clean up this 10-year-old film. The source suffers from plenty of scratches, speckles and dust. The colors are dull, contrast is too hot and generally nothing quite "pops" in this picture.

On the positive side, compression artifacts are not an issue and one scene in particular, when the rains finally come, offers some very vivid, verdant greens, but it is hardly enough to rescue the overall disappointing presentation.

The Sound

The audio is only slightly less disappointing than the video for Africa's Elephant Kingdom -- and that may be picking nits. There are no lossless or uncompressed options offered up here, so listeners will have to make do with the archaic Dolby Digital 5.1 or 2.0 soundtracks proffered. There are some vaguely interesting things done with the 5.1 mix, occasional directional use of the surround channels for discrete sound effects of the natural world (or what passes for the natural world). Still, the mix is rather pedestrian, hardly engaging, and you might as well turn off the subwoofer for this one, because it won't even rattle your teacups during the big thunderstorm scene. The 2.0 mix is just as dull, only confined to two channels.

At least the dialogue is clean and never buried in the hardly-there sound effects. It's probably good that the musical score and effects are deemphasized, because the Dolby Digital encoding combined with the mastering leave this mix with a harsh high frequency response that are a little fatiguing to listen to, even for its brief 40-minute run.

The Extras

No extras here; move along thanks.

Final Thoughts

In these tough economic times it's difficult for me to muster up a recommendation for anyone to even rent this bare bones and, honestly, quite pointless release. Unless you really, really, love elephants, I say just leave this one on the shelf.

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