Searching everywhere for something new

Okay, I'm quite happy to admit I'm really boring. I don't know anyone who throws fun parties, and if I do I don't know them well enough to get invited to those parties. Even if I did know people who throw fun parties well enough to warrant an invitation, I probably wouldn't get one anyway because they'd know I'm likely to sit in the corner of the room exuding vibes of boringness. Or, perhaps, boringality. Or any other fake nominalisation you can think of for the word “boring”.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise to you that I celebrated New Years Eve by staying home and watching a DVD of Disney's classic film, Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Now, I love that film. When I was a kid, I used to borrow it from the video rental shop up the road from my grandmother's place and watch it at least three times in a week before returning it. That, and Mary Poppins. Maybe I'm a fan of David Tomlinson, who stars in both films. Maybe I'm a fan of Robert Stevenson, who directed both films. Maybe I'm a fan of Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, who wrote the screenplays for both films. Maybe I'm a fan of Richard and Robert Sherman, who wrote the music for both films. I don't know. All I know is that these two films, together, represent all that was once right and good in Disney films. It doesn't bother me in the least that Bedknobs and Broomsticks was probably a prime example of Disney executives saying, “Well, that other film was a success, let's make another one just like it!” I still love it.

For a while there, you couldn't watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Once the rental videos died, there was nothing to replace them. It took a long time to get released on DVD and it was never shown on TV. Then it did come out on DVD, and I intended to buy a copy, but life gets away from you, doesn't it? Ah, but when I noticed on shop had a double set of Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks for less than $20... Well, there was no power in the 'verse that was going to stop me from getting my hands on that. I got the last copy in the store, but I got it.

So, New Years Eve rolls around and I can think of no better way to spend it that to crack open a favourite film from my childhood and wash in the nostalgia of it all.

But something wasn't quite right. There was a scene early in the film that didn't run exactly as I remembered it. A conversation I didn't quite recall. Perhaps I should have twigged at that point. After all, even after all these years, I could still recite a number of the lines with the characters as though I'd heard them yesterday (“my first brrroom!”). It wasn't until David Tomlinson launched into an entire musical number I'd never seen before that the penny dropped – the film had been “restored”!

Apparently the film I knew and loved had been cut quite dramatically to bring it under two hours running time. There was over half-an-hour's worth of material that I had never seen before. Songs that were cut, conversations that were halved, entire subplots that were excised. When Disney brought Bedknobs and Broomsticks out on DVD for the 25th anniversary they found as many of those bits as they could and put them back in. Even then, they didn't exactly find them “whole”. In most cases they found the picture, but obviously not the sound, so they had to record new ADR voices. They had to leave out a musical number (technically, the first in the film) because they had the sound, but not the images (they included it, with stills, in the special collections).

The film I watched on New Years Eve was a much longer film, but for the most part also a richer film. There was the subplot with the Rector trying to woo the witch (he didn't know she was a witch, obviously) because he wanted to get his hands on her house. There were shades to Professor Brown's character that were more thoroughly fleshed out. There were musical numbers I hadn't seen, and longer versions of the musical numbers I had seen. The romance between Eglantine and Prof. Brown was fleshed out a bit more (but still, somehow, not convincing).

Being such a fan of the film I should have been happy to see more of it, and, on one level, I was. I wasn't happy with the way they did the ADR for the restored scenes. I'm usually a fan of Jeff Bennett's work, but he didn't sound a thing like David Tomlinson – and his timing was off. Nothing drags you out of a story like noticing the main character's voice is different and his lips aren't moving at quite the same time as the sound. I suspect they got Angela Lansbury to do her own ADR for those scenes, what with her being not dead and all. That was my only real gripe with the way they did the restoration.

However, I felt vaguely cheated. I was all set to watch a favourite film from my childhood, and instead I watched something else. Something very similar, mind you, but not the same. And I have no other options. The only version of this film available on DVD is the restored version. If I want to watch the one I grew up with – the one where David Tomlinson's voice comes out of his face in every scene – I'm plum out of luck.

I felt the same way with the re-mastered Star Wars films. I didn't particularly like the newer versions more than the older versions, but for a while there you couldn't buy anything else. I think that's one of the reasons why I really can't be bothered with Star Wars these days.

I understand something similar happened to Blade Runner when the director's cut came out. The only version you could get was not the version you remembered from the cinema.

Maybe it's just being petty, but it would be nice if, in this age of almost unlimited choices, I had been given the choice of watching the old version if I wanted to.

That said, man I'd love to see that first musical number from the film if they ever found the images.