Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

UPDATE To resolve confusion being caused by other reviewers: The feature on the Blu-ray disc runs one hour and fifty-seven minutes. (Another reviewer appears to have incorrectly interpreted 1:57 as 157 minutes. It is actually 117 minutes.) I assure everyone this is the shorter, original theatrical version, without the additional scenes that were included on previous DVD editions. ALSO - The special features on the Blu-ray disc include a featurette entitled "Music Magic: The Sherman Brothers". This featurette is about all the scenes that were cut. The entire purpose of this featurette is to promote the restoration of these scenes back into the film and discuss the challenges encountered in the restoration process. Angela Lansbury and others speak at length about how lovely it is to be able to see the film again as originally intended. The people who worked on this project would have had to be idiots not to notice the disparity between the version of the movie promoted in the bonus materials (if anybody had actually watched them) and the actual version of the movie on the disc. Having worked for Disney Home Entertainment myself, this is not entirely surprising. In my review earlier today, I wrote: I am stunned at the botched job Disney has done with the Blu-ray release of this magical film. When it was released on DVD a few years ago, it included the restoration of addition musical sequences that had been cut for the original theatrical release. The running time was 139 minutes. Even the earlier laserdisc edition contained the 139 minute version of the film. I was looking very forward to upgrading to Blu-ray, expecting the film would look spectacular on Blu-ray. Sadly, Disney made the poor decision of releasing only the original 117 minute version of the feature on Blu-ray. It is over 20 minutes shorter than the version previously released on DVD and laserdisc. Much of the content that had been incorporated into the feature for the previous editions is included on the Blu-ray as Special Features, but not incorporated into the feature. Surely Disney has the creative and technical resources (as well as the marketing sense) to have included both versions of the feature on the Blu-ray disc. As it stands, I feel the Blu-ray is a major disappointment and a downgrade from the DVD, due to the failure to include the extended version of the film. What a disappointment!