Milo In the Land of Faraway

ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT has just released the children's film, "MIO IN THE LAND OF FARAWAY" on dvd.  Based on "Mio, My Son", a famous children's fairytale from the same author as the "Pippi Longstocking" stories, "MIO" is filled with many more fantasy elements, and is targeted towards the young male just as "Pippi" was targeted towards the young female.  Mio's life is extremely depressing, as is the first half of the film!  He lives with a mean aunt and is always getting beaten up by bullies from school.  But, as in all fantasies, something's about to happen!  One day a grocery store owner presents him with a magical apple that turns to gold!  A head appears and leads Mio to a land "Faraway".  When he gets there, Mio finds that his father is the king!  Of course, the king has a mighty enemy, Lord Caro, who has turned all of the kingdom's children into animals.  It's up to Mio to use a magical sword to kill the evil Caro and free the children from their horrible curse.  The supporting cast, including Christopher Lee as Caro, and a very young Christian Bale as Mio's friend, Yim-Yim, is excellent.

Unfortunately, the quality of the transfer to this ANCHOR BAY release is mediocre.  The colors are extremely subdued.  When we first viewed the trailer, we were hopeful the film would look much better, but it didn't!  It suffers from the same graininess and dullness.  This is an unpleasant surprise, as ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT typically gives excellent transfers to even mediocre films!  Perhaps the source material was mediocre as well, but it would've been better to not release the film than to release it in this shape.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound offers some directional effects, but the fidelity is limited and there's some distortion.