Label: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
MSRP: $19.99
Release Date: October 7, 2014
Region A
Buy at Amazon

Film: B / Video: A / Audio: A / Extras: C

Sleeping Beauty is arguably the most beautiful of all Disney animated films, with a unique visual style courtesy of Eyvind Earle that has been a massive influence on artists worldwide since its release 55 years ago. As you might expect, its striking use of color and line is well displayed on the new Diamond Edition Blu-ray. However, the film as a whole has always suffered, simply because the story being told through those visuals never quite measures up. Based on the Charles Perrault tale, Disney’s film tells the story of Princess Aurora, who’s born under an evil and deadly curse bestowed upon her by the self-professed mistress of all evil, Maleficent. Aurora, renamed Briar Rose, is kept away in the woods by three daffy fairies, not even knowing her royal lineage until the eve of her 16th birthday. On that fateful day, she meets her true love (who’s conveniently the prince to whom she’s betrothed) and finally runs afoul of a spinning wheel, just as Maleficent portended.

In all animation, there are few films that inspire as much awe and terror through pure imagery as Sleeping Beauty. From the cerebral, austere opening sequence in which each good fairy’s magical present is depicted to the volcanic finale in which Prince Philip faces off with the transformed Maleficent, this is one of Disney’s greatest visual achievements. Unfortunately, there’s barely anything resembling plot or character development in the 75-minute running time. Aurora is such a non-entity that, partly because of the nature of the fairy tale being adapted, she’s not even present in the final act as anything other than a trophy for the bland prince to win. This is a film comprised of moments, of hopefully memorable setpieces; some work, like the climax, but others, such as the incessant comic relief of the three good fairies, strike out. (And then there’s the scene between Aurora and Philip’s fathers, two increasingly drunken kings. It’s charming but superfluous, a scene that would never make the final cut of a modern animated picture.)

As a proto-fairy tale, a properly medieval deconstruction of the Disney princess story before the modern era came along, Sleeping Beauty is a wonder to behold. And maybe if there was a dialogue-free track of the film, its pure and lush colors would be even more wondrous. Sleeping Beauty breaks less ground than it could, though, with characterization that’s on the same dimensional level as Cinderella, if not Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Disney Renaissance brought us far more trailblazing princess films, with Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, among others. But nothing has yet topped the sheer visual magnitude of Sleeping Beauty.

A/V

Let’s say you bought the Platinum Edition Blu-ray for Sleeping Beauty back in 2008. Should you double-dip for the Diamond Edition? Only if you’re a completist who’s desperate to have every single special feature Disney could offer you for each of its films. From an audiovisual standpoint, the Diamond Edition doesn’t appear to offer a strikingly different or improved transfer of the 1959 film than the Platinum Edition does. As with the rest of the disc, if you don’t own the film on Blu-ray, you should spring for this release. But if you have the Platinum Edition, you don’t need to feel like you’re missing out on brighter or more distinctive colors, or crisper or clearer audio with the new edition. If you’re new to the disc, though, you’ll be impressed by the entire presentation. The extra-wide ratio of 2.55:1 has ported over here from the previous Blu-ray; it may not be equal to the sense of watching and hearing the film on the big screen in 70mm, but it’s damn close.

Extras

Good news: there are a few new special features here that shine a light on some fascinating alternate avenues the film could’ve gone down. Bad news: much of the supplemental content from the 2008 Blu-ray, including art galleries, live-action reference footage, deleted songs, and more, isn’t present on this single-disc release. So basically, if you have the Platinum Edition at hand, never, ever let it go. That release has a treasure trove of background information and history related to Sleeping Beauty. This one has, among others, a 10-minute ad for a parade at Walt Disney World starring one of the kids from Modern Family. (There are a number of “classic” features from a past DVD release, but this release doesn’t house every past feature, sadly.)

The most illuminating supplement is one of the three never-before-seen deleted scenes, titled “The Fair.” In this storyboarded sequence, we meet a different version of Maleficent’s helpful avian cohort: a tough-talking vulture who sounds like a progenitor of the pigeons in the “GoodFeathers” segment of Animaniacs. The scratch track recorded for this sequence is recent, but apparently this vulture was always envisioned to be anachronistic—everyone else has a vaguely British, patrician tone to their reading. The wildly divergent take on the story is compelling primarily because of how misguided it was. The other scenes, like this one, were deleted for a reason. The other features of note show off the paper-making talents of a Disney Animation employee, and highlight the art of Disney villains, with talking-head interviews from animators Andreas Deja and Lino DeSalvo. (The latter, it’s worth noting, left Disney for Paramount Animation just after his work on the insert-hyperbole-here-specific-to-its-status-as-phenomenon film Frozen.) Outside of that one deleted scene with a Noo Yawk vulture, though, nothing’s nearly as vital or eye-opening as in the Platinum Edition.

Overall

If you own the previously released Blu-ray for Sleeping Beauty, there’s barely any reason for you to buy the Diamond Edition. For everyone else, though, get it while you can to luxuriate in Disney’s impressive and gorgeous animation.