Let's admit it - you know who Hannah Montana is, you know who Miley Cyrus is, and the only reason you are reading this review is because you have a preteen around the house, or you have a thing for teenage girls. No rational adult would ever submit themselves willingly to this. Of course, I am irrational, and I have a godchild who just turned 13, so I am going to review this for you.
So, background. Miley Cyrus is the star of this hit tv-show on Disney Channel called Hannah Montana. Her father in the show is played by her real-life father, Billy Ray Cyrus (anyone remember Achy Breaky Heart). In this show, Hannah Montana is a popular Pop-singer who wears a wig, then tries to live a normal life the rest of the time by not wearing a wig and changing her makeup around a bit, hence "Best of Both Worlds". The show became a huge success, and lead to merchandising lines including bedspreads and dress-up outfits (and probably a clothing line, but I am going to plead ignorance here).
So, Miley Cyrus practically overnight was propelled into superstar status - as a TV character. So, she released a two disc album, which on disc one she sings songs as the character, directed to a more preteen crowd, and on disc two, she is herself, singing songs of her own directed toward a more adult crowd. Of course, you cannot have a huge album without doing a concert tour. Sadly, they greatly underestimated her popularity, booking venues that were way too small, and not having enough performances in each city. This lead to tickets selling out in record-breaking times, people scalping tickets for thousands of dollars a piece, and millions of disappointed little girls all across the country who were not able to get tickets. In their brilliance, Disney decided to put HD cameras up at one of the concerts, shoot the entire thing in 3-D, and show the thing at special engagements at theaters all over the country. These shows also generally sold out, but at least they were able to milk their cash cow.
So, finally, they released the concert on DVD and BluRay - the latter of which is the only medium to have the 3-D version of the concert, and ships with 4 sets of 3-D glasses.
So, for the movie itself. Its a concert. Miley Cyrus, while she is a good actress / singer, is not by any stretch of the imagination great. The concert features tons of behind the scenes footage, and interviews with fans - which ironically seem to be some of the absolute cutest kids they could find (or maybe not so ironic. Hmmmm, you would think that they did this on purpose). The concert? It's actually not that bad. I found myself tapping my feet and bobbing my head (white guy head-bob) to some of the songs. And to my surprise, when the Jonas Brothers came out, I actually found myself singing along to a couple of the songs. So, as much as I hate to admit it, I found myself kinda enjoying this concert.
Video quality
Only on the BluRay disc do you get both the 2-D and the 3-D version of the film. This may piss off a great majority of little girls across the country, but I could see this as a great marketing strategy - if it gets marketed right. Surely parents who have no problem spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on concert tickets will not think anything about plopping down another $300 for a low-end BluRay player. Will it make a huge difference in BluRay sales? Probably not, but I am sure Disney will sell a fair number of BluRay discs, and you will see a marginal number of PS3s fly off the shelf when parents realize that the pretty disc in the blue case will not play on their DVD players and the kid throws a fit when they find out the DVD version has only the 2-D version.
The entire concert was filmed using HD cameras. As such, in the 2-D version, colors are crisp, and every little detail jumps out at you. Disney's habit of encoding their discs with AVC at a high bitrate means that you will see no compression artifacts or anything else. As such, the 2-D version is probably the most perfect example of how good video can be on BluRay. I would recommend this as a demo disc, except the content may embarrass you to even let your friends know that you have a copy.
My rating of the 3-D version has nothing to do with the quality of the transfer. My problem is, instead of using the polarized lenses in their 3-D presentation like they do in their 3-D theatrical releases, the 3-D is done with that annoying red and blue stuff. This leads to two problems - first, you will not get true color by any stretch of the imagination. All the vivid colors that you saw in the 2-D version sadly get thrown out the window here. But its worse. Wearing red/blue glasses for extended periods of time gave me headaches. Thankfully the backstage material is in 2-D, allowing you to pull your glasses off for a few minutes and rest your eyes. However, the 3-D is VERY well done, and added an extra dimension to the concert. It's not as gimmicky as many people are making it out to be. The inclusion of 4 pairs of 3-D glasses means that the whole family can enjoy it - or your daughter can have a sleep over with three of her best friends and keep you up all night with the music pounding, girls dancing around, and squeals. The kids will love it, and not care at all about the glasses or it giving them headaches.
Sound quality
In a departure from previous Disney releases, there is no English Dolby Digital track. Even more of a departure - the uncompressed PCM audio mix is only two channel, not 5.1. However, Disney did give us something VERY nice - a 7.1 channel DTS Master Audio track. The quality of this is absolutely amazing. The screaming girls will give your rear speakers a workout and add depth to the mix. The subwoofer was constantly dancing across the floor, just giving you more of a feeling of actually being at the concert. The music mix is incredible and shows that there is finally someone out there who knows how to mix a concert in surround. Needless to say, I consider the audio quality on this disc to be absolutely perfect, and you may want to pick this movie up or rent it simply to see how a concert should be presented on a disc
Bonus features
Final Word
This is a surprisingly good concert, and BluRay offers the perfect medium to present this. 2-D video is perfect, audio is perfect, and should be a reference disc for future concerts. If only Disney would have given us the polarized 3-D version instead of this crappy stereoscopic version, the whole disc would be perfect. Highly recommend.