Fascination – Coral Reef 3D, Blu-ray 3D (2012) Fascination – Coral Reef 3D – Mysterious Worlds Underwater, Blu-ray 3D (2012)

by | Feb 10, 2013 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews

Fascination – Coral Reef 3D, Blu-ray 3D (2012)

Fascination – Coral Reef 3D – Mysterious Worlds Underwater, Blu-ray 3D (2012)

Director: Rene Schoepfer
Studio: Universal 61124429 & 61124442 [1/29/13]
Video: 1.78:1 for 16:9 1080p HD color 3D
Audio: English (also Hungarian, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian, Czech, French, Japanese, Spanish) DTS-HD MA 5.1, DD. 5.1
Subtitles: English, Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
All regions
Length: both 45 minutes ea.
Rating: ***½

These are two 3D undersea featurettes which are from the German  Hit series and are supposedly the best-selling 3D line in that country. Not sure why, because they are nothing that special. The 3D effects are quite realistic, if you don’t mind big fish swimming into your face and all sorts of flotsam and jetsam floating somewhere between the images and your eyes. The major mystery here is why two 3D Blu-rays were released at the same time from the same source, same director, similar shots but different, and with almost the same titles? As usual, the listed information at Amazon are wrong. The timings, for example, are listed as 53 minutes.

One really gets familiar with the reef and its fish life. There is much footage of the clown fish hiding among the sea anemones, and of the sea turtles. Often the narrator speaks in detail about things you are not seeing, such as the baby turtles rushing for the sea from their beach birth sites. Many of the shots stay on uninteresting scenes with not much happening for a very long time. Other closeups of some of the sea life does go in close on it but shows only part of dark and distant images. The second Blu-ray (with the longer title) is somewhat better than the first, but other similar 3D offerings beat these two out. Nicht so hot.

—John Sunier

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