Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews
Contender
- Cert:
- Cat.no: CTD 10101
- Running time: 30 minutes
- Year: 2001
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: None
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Widescreen: 16:9
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £14.99
- Extras: Interviews, Featurette, Deleted Scenes, Trailers, Weblink, 2 Audio commentaries
Director
- Barry Purves
Producer
- Christopher Moll
Story and design:
- John Webster and Anna Farthing
Music:
- Spiro, Wix and Ogada
Voices:
- Hamilton Mattress: David Thewlis
Feldwick & Septimus: Henry Goodman
Beryl & Gertrude: Lindsay Duncan
Balustrade: William Hootkins
Salvatore & Tino: David Holt
Birmingham: Roy Hudd
Lulu: Maxine Peake
Hamilton Who? Hamilton Mattress is the name of the aardvark here and the reason shall become apparent soon enough..
This short film is this year’s Robbie the Reindeer, the 1999 similarly-animated film, being that they were both produced by Christopher Moll who also had a hand in the Wallace and Gromit films.
Sludger (David Thewlis) is an aardvark with rhythm, drumming the earth to make the ants rise out of their hide-outs, so when his talent becomes recognised by his caterpillar friend Feldwick (Henry Goodman) they set off to Beak City and promote him as “Hamilton Mattress – Drummer Extraordinaire”, the name coming from a poster advertisement for beds, “Everyone loves a Hamilton mattress” – and so if everyone loves those then they must love him, right?
But that’s about it. He goes over there, wows the crowd, meets a couple of baddies who are effectively and quickly dealt with… and everyone lives happily ever after.
While the animation is as you’d expect, the storyline is woefully lacking (a drumming ant?) and there’s very little in the way of humour. Robbie the Reindeer had a fair bit, but neither matched the full-on standard of Wallace and Gromit so for now these are just pretenders to their throne.
Unlike Robbie the Reindeer though, this film didn’t take a year to reach DVD after broadcast. It’s actually being shown on BBC1 this Christmas, so despite the DD5.1 soundtrack you may as well watch it first to see if it’ll be worth a purchase afterwards.
Hamilton gets his name. The picture is the best thing about this release. Completely free of artefacts and in crystal clear anamorphic 16:9 widescreen. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is fine enough and has its moments but it’s not an action-packed event.
The sound is clear enough, although some of the tunes seem a bit muffled, but no more than I remember.
The extras are in 4:3 and start with The birth of an Aardvark, 9 minutes of chat with the crew along with non-anamorphic clips, including co-writer John Webster explaining how he believes aardvarks have had a raw deal in the media, never getting a look in. Enter the Aardvark is a 16-minute “behind the scenes” featurette with more clips and chat as before.
Raiders of the Lost Aardvark is the name for seven very brief deleted shots which are presented cropped to 4:3, totalling 100 seconds, while there’s another featurette, Who Said That?, which looks at the voice-over artists.
Add to this a 100-second Trailer, a 60-second Early Promo (both 16:9 non-anamorphic), a weblink (see below) and 2 Audio Commentaries – one straight and one comedy.
There are no chapters to the 30-minute film, nor any subtitles, but the main menu and inbetween links are animated and scored.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL Visit the official website, Hamilton Mattress.com
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.