Your face here! Soon you'll be able to put your photo on Sleeping Beauty's body. © Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

Although I have critiqued many films, I have never had the urge to alter one by injecting my own alien presence into a piece of work. Sleeping Beauty was created and produced by people who had no earthly idea who I am. They never intended for me to intrude upon their movie, even in the privacy of my home. I have seen films that have transported me and films that I have loathed, but in every case I have given them the respect of playing them uninterrupted as they expressed whatever story and meaning their creators imbued them with. Sleeping Beauty is not a great film; it suffers from a shortage of story and action, a showy surfeit of style, and too many uninteresting characters. Still, it deserves better than to be scribbled on by an inattentive audience.

Why should this "enhancement" even be considered? The only thing I have been able to conclude after researching countless articles on BD Live is that the Blu-ray format is taking a dive, and that the perceived best cure is to stuff them full of new gimmicks. According to a recent article in USA Today, sales of Blu-ray disc players fell 40% from January to February of 2008 and recouped a measly 2% of that shortfall in March. This has something to do with whether the discs are interactive enough? For anyone who believes that, I have a BD Live bridge in virtual Manhattan to sell you, complete with Monster A/V cables.

In reality, it's a bit much to ask, when a quality Blu-ray player can run between $500-$800 and the discs are $10-$15 more than standard DVDs. With gasoline spurting to $4 a gallon, food prices skyrocketing, the dollar progressively weaker, and the house that surrounds the entertainment center facing foreclosure, the price just may seem a bit steep. Viewers' pockets might trump viewer preferences in such cases, and those among the less fortunate gentry may have to make do with high-end standard DVD players hooked up to their 50" plasma flat screens and home-theater receivers.

Not only that, current Blu-ray players, those $500-$800 gadgets you just bought, can't do BD Live until Sony and Panasonic tuck Blu-ray Profile 2.0 into their machines later this summer. Blu-ray Profile 2.0 will be operating more like a jazzed-up PS3 player, and won't come cheap. Want to upgrade your existing BD player to do the same? Well, you can't. That's right. Want to downgrade your existing BD player to a shelf at the local Goodwill? Thank you for your donation; do you need a receipt, sir or madam?

Some consumers may even give up altogether; movies are increasingly available through downloads, and the most humble PCs these days are equipped to handle them. It's no big deal to connect to your flat-screen anymore, and once you have your downloaded movie it's there to enjoy. You might not be able to chat onscreen or make faces at the villain in the service of entertaining email recipients, but do you really have a problem with that? Blu-ray Live is actually designed to reverse the trend of choosing downloads over discs; don't be surprised if they speed it up instead.

Flash forward again from this date: Once upon a time, in a far-off land known as Your Neighborhood, there was a dark and mysterious cavern known as a movie theater. You went there to watch movies, and once there, you had the freedom to concentrate on and enjoy a picture. Some in those bygone days called it "experiencing a film." All distractions were handled by creatures called "ushers." If the movie was a good one (or even if not), you could analyze it in your own mind, reflect on it, and re-experience whatever thoughts or feelings it left you with.

Yes, that was once upon a time. Now it seems you can just type all over the movie, or email pieces of it featuring your dog's face, if that's what you feel like doing. Call me a dinosaur, a Luddite, or an old fogey if you will; I can go the rest of my life and still enjoy hundreds of movies without having to "interact" with them. What's next, an interactive drawing pad that allows one to draw mustaches, Groucho glasses and blacked-out teeth on Maleficent? It is not often that technology diminishes what it was designed to enhance, but it's difficult to think of a clearer case than Blu-ray Live.

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.