Elf is 1.85:1??/

[sharkdiver289]

Hello,
I hope this is the right forum but I had a question and I'm hoping someone can answer me.
I got a blu ray for my birthday and I got the movie elf as a gift.
My wife and I are watching it and I noticed the lack of the widescreen bars. I don't have a problem with the lack of the bars...what I do have a problem with is the fact that some of the image is missing from both sides. i know for a fact because I have played the orginal dvd on my laptop and the same scene has more detail on both sides.
Is this normal...I checked another forum and it had a list of bluray 1.85 movies, some of them, sleepy hollow, 28 days later etc are some of the movies I really want, but I hate any type of cropping.
Do I have something set wrong?
I have a 720p projector. The player is set to 16:9 and the player's resolution is set 720p