Review of Creature Comforts: Vol. 2

Introduction

Once upon a time there was a series of adverts for electricity that proved more popular than the product. Several Wallace and Grommit TV movies and the feature `Chicken Run` later Nick Park`s animation company returned to its` creatures. Using the voices and thoughts of the man, woman and child in the street Aardman added the magic ingredient of plasticine to create `Creature Comforts`. Now the thoughts appear to come from a range of animals and insects. Previously innocuous statements take on new meaning when spoken by slugs, snakes and the occasional alien.

Included on this disc

Episode 7 The Beach
Episode 8 The Pet Shop
Episode 9 What`s It All About?
Episode 10 Being a Bird
Episode 11 Is Anyone Out There?
Episode 12 Cats or Dogs?
Episode 13 Merry Christmas

Video

It`s a lovely picture with good strong colours that appeal to my inner child.

Audio

Good clear sound. Great catchy them tune.

No scripts but presumably the statements by the general public have been culled from acres of useless stuff. Quoted by various animals they take on a surreal tone. One of my favourite lines is spoken by a hamster-"the main difference between me and a monkey is that monkeys live in the jungle… and I live in…Catford."

Features

Favourite Bits

A mini Featurette on the favourite bits from the production team.

TV Extras

ITV Channel Idents

These are the slick intros where you sometimes get Robson Green looking smug. Here we have slugs and monkeys not looking at all smug.

National TV Awards 2003

Various characters discuss the awards. Favourite comment `Jonathan Ross irritates me`.

PG Tips

The recent ads for that brand of tea.

Heat Electric commercials

The original adverts including the `very busy` tortoise and Johnny Morris voice over! Excellent.

Bringing creature comforts to life

The director and animator demonstrate how they capture the images on video to use for their animated characters. An enlightening look at the methodology of this kind of film making.

Who said that?

A game to match the question to the correct character. A choice of three pictures. Clicking on them reveals the truth. Three questions-not too taxing.

Rom content

Creature comforts wallpaper and sound files.

Conclusion

A whole new angle on the `vox pop` and a lot more interesting than any of the programmes featuring the `public` currently. Attitudes and expressions are surprisingly revealing and in some cases quite sad. Appealing to young and old the production values are high and each short episode has its own highlights.

There is a reasonable amount of extra content and the disc itself has replayability. I like this very much and hope there are more to come.