| Reviews & Columns |
|
Reviews DVD TV on DVD Blu-ray 4K UHD International DVDs In Theaters Reviews by Studio Video Games Features Collector Series DVDs Easter Egg Database Interviews DVD Talk Radio Feature Articles Columns Anime Talk DVD Savant Horror DVDs The M.O.D. Squad Art House HD Talk Silent DVD
|
 DVD Talk Forum |
|
|
| Resources |
|
DVD Price Search Customer Service #'s RCE Info Links |
|
Columns
  
 
|
|
|
Lizzie McGuire Movie, The
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment // PG // August 12, 2003
List Price: $29.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Promise me something."
"Anything."
"Promise me that when we're here, we'll find adventures."
..and hey, what better way to find adventures than to take a popular TV series, expand it to feature length, drop the cast in Europe, and splash it across several thousand screens? For the uninitiated, the Disney Channel's Lizzie McGuire stars Hilary Duff as a giddy gal trying to make it through junior high alive. She's constantly at odds with her scheming younger brother Matt (Jake Thomas) and the popular, stuck-up Kate Sanders (Ashlie Brillault). She has her buddies at her side to help her out, including her best friend Miranda, platonic pal Gordo (Adam Lamberg), and her dim-witted sometimes-boyfriend Ethan (Clayton Snyder). Animated snippets gingerly interspersed throughout each episode punctuate what's churning around in Lizzie's mind.
Lizzie's first movie is aptly titled The Lizzie McGuire Movie: the movie is all about Lizzie, relegating much of the supporting cast to the sidelines and knocking a couple (most notably Miranda and the ever-silent Lanny) out entirely.
Like The Even Stevens Movie, a subsequent stab at expanding a succcessful Disney Channel series to an hour and a half, The Lizzie McGuire Movie begins with a disastrous junior high school graduation. The perpetually klutzy Lizzie is forced to deliver a speech she hadn't prepared for, and as she strains to eke her way through it, she inadvertently drapes the graduating class in a giant curtain. That's the last of the embarrassing footage her brother can add to his collection of blackmail-worthy videotapes, though, as Lizzie and much of her class are quickly spirited off to Rome for a two-week tour of the Eternal City. Though chaperoned by their future principal, the strict, influential Miss Ungermeyer (Mad TV's Alex Borstein), Gordo and Lizzie decide to make the most of their intercontinental excursion and start a new life for their two weeks in Rome.
With only ninety minutes and change to work with, it doesn't take long for Lizzie to stumble upon the adventure she'd been craving. Lizzie bears an uncanny resemblance to Isabella, one half of a widely-adored European pop sensation. The other half of the equation, singer Paolo (Yani Gellman), is quickly smitten, giving Lizzie the rounds 'round Rome. Paolo slowly reveals his plan to have his newfound gal-pal take the place of the troubled Isabella on a music video awards show, which would give Paolo the opportunity to expand his musical horizons beyond pop pap and stave off the lawsuits the record label is threatening to lob at his former flame. Lizzie, of course, leaps at the chance, feigning sickness to keep her Paolo-time under Ungermeyer's radar. The fiercely loyal Gordo, who insists he's only interested in Lizzie as a friend, suspects there's more to Paolo than meets the eye.
Some readers might be baffled by the "Recommended" note, and it's understandable. Online DVD reviewers are a snarky lot, and The Lizzie McGuire Movie would seem to be an easy target. I guess I should probably mention that the Disney Channel's Even Stevens is one of my favorite TV shows of the past few years, and though Lizzie McGuire didn't instantly appeal to me in quite the same way, I've managed to catch a few episodes and generally liked what I saw. Sure, it's not the type of series that sets out to revolutionize television or offer meaningful social commentary. Lizzie McGuire's goal was to amass 65 endearingly cute episodes, and at that, it succeeded. Its feature-length incarnation isn't too terribly different.
I wouldn't expect it to hold much appeal to anyone unfamiliar with the television series (though there is some obligatory exposition early on in an attempt to bring new viewers up to speed), and fifteen years from now, I doubt current viewers of the series will be pulling a holodisc or whatever off their space-shelves to introduce their future kids to The Lizzie McGuire Movie. There's a lot of jaw-agape pointing at Roman landmarks and sterling exchanges like "It's so beautiful!"; "Yes, you are.", which are certain to leave older viewers groaning incessantly. Still, forget whatever legacy the series' silver-screen counterpart may or may not have, and don't get excessively mired in its flaws. In the here and now, it's a sweet, cute movie (count the number of different combinations of "sweet" and "cute" in this review, if you're bored), and not a bad way to spend 93 minutes.
Convention-shattering brilliance it's not, but I enjoyed this cute comedy, despite being a 24-year-old male square peg that doesn't quite fit into Disney's target demographic. The Lizzie McGuire Movie hits DVD with an anamorphic widescreen presentation, six-channel audio, and an armful of bonus features.
Video: The Lizzie McGuire Movie steers away from its small-screen origins and towards a substantially wider frame for its theatrical debut. This single-sided, dual-layer DVD includes both full-frame and 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen presentations of the film. The widescreen image isn't a knockout, but it's free of any particularly nagging flaws. The level of crispness and clarity in particular is middling. The movie doesn't have an overly soft appearance by any stretch, but there were several instances where I thought it should look considerably sharper than it does. Film grain is an intermittent nuisance, perhaps due to its Super 35 origins. I didn't find it all that intrusive, and I wouldn't be surprised if theatrical exhibitions boasted a similar appearance. Having so recently trotted out of theaters, the source material doesn't exhibit any wear, and I didn't spot so much as a single speck or nick for the duration. The presentation is good, if unremarkable, and I'm glad Disney opted to provide both versions instead of taking the full-frame-only route.
Audio: The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (384Kbps) is pretty typical for a teen comedy. Most of the action is anchored up front, with some noticeable stereo separation. Aside from some scattered pans, such as a scooter whizzing by on the streets of Rome, the surround channels are mostly used to reinforce the music and provide ambiance. The rears murmur with sounds like echoed voices at the graduation ceremony, the boisterous crowd during the climactic music video awards performance, clinking champagne glasses, and electrical buzzing. The surrounds most frequently caught my attention in the animated clips with effects like a spit-take beverage splashing around the back of the soundstage. Dialogue, rooted front and center, is the focus of the mix and comes through cleanly and clearly. The soundtrack particularly shines, featuring a number of teen-pop covers of classics like "The Tide Is High", "Shining Star", and, um, RuPaul's "Supermodel". These songs are accompanied by a healthy dollop of bass, and there's some other decent activity in the lower frequencies distributed throughout. A nice mix, and one I'd imagine is representative of the way The Lizzie McGuire Movie sounded theatrically.
The setup menu has an option to enable English subtitles, but for whatever reason, that submenu refused to display any text on PowerDVD or my portable Audiovox DVD-1500. The menu displayed properly on my set-top Toshiba SD-3109, but the fact that I encountered that error on two different players would seem to point towards an authoring problem of some sort. The DVD also features English closed captions, and no alternate soundtracks have been included.
Supplements: The Lizzie McGuire Movie features a smattering of extras, beginning with "Hilary's Roman Adventure", a twelve-minute featurette hosted by star Hilary Duff. Instead of just being a standard promotional featurette, "Hilary's Roman Adventure" is at first presented as a tour, highlighting various monuments and notable stops along the shoot. Hilary also runs through a typical day on the set, how much she enjoyed her time in Rome with the cast 'n crew, and how elaborate the climactic performance scene turned out to be. The featurette is presented full-frame with Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround audio (192Kbps).
Hilary Duff fronts an Avril Lavigne-ish backing band in the music video for "Why Not" (2:16), a catchy guitar-pop song that's featured on the movie's soundtrack. "In the Recording Studio with Hilary" (2:02) is pretty much what it sounds like, featuring some comments from Ms. Duff about the recording of her new album, interspersed with oodles of footage of her crooning in front of a mic. Like the movie, both the music video and the recording studio featurette sport Dolby Digital 5.1 audio encoded at a bitrate of 384Kbps.
"Roamin' Volare" (2:16) is letterboxed, time-coded rough cut footage of Lizzie and Paolo careening around Rome, with Vitamin C's "Volare" playing underneath in Dolby Digital stereo (192Kbps). The three deleted scenes featured on "Off the Cutting Room Floor" are presented in much the same way. Director Jim Fall optionally introduces each of the scenes, which all together run just shy of seven and a half minutes in length, and his video introductions are more detailed and thoughtful than the usual "we had to cut it for pacing" prattle. The titles of "Kids Coming Off the Plane" and "Lizzie's Shopping Spree" ought to provide some inkling as to what to expect, and the final snippet of footage is an alternate ending. The latter two include some unanimated-animated-Lizzie moments, and it's interesting to see how those portions were tackled in the filmmaking process.
Finally, there are 'Sneak Peeks' for the upcoming The Lion King DVD (1:08), two Lizzie McGuire DVDs collecting episodes from the TV series (1:02), Kim Possible: The Secret Files (0:55), the Sleeping Beauty special edition (1:55), George of the Jungle 2 (1:18), and a plug for the Disney Channel's That's So Raven (0:33). All feature Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (384Kbps), and aside from a letterboxed George of the Jungle 2 trailer that looks like it was shot on leftover 8mm film, the previews are full-frame.
The Lizzie McGuire Movie comes packaged in a white keepcase that nicely complements the cover art. A chapter listing lurks on the flipside of an ad for a pair of upcoming Lizzie TV-on-DVD releases. Also, a coupon for $3 off the movie's soundtrack is tacked onto the cover.
The DVD features a set of 16x9-enhanced animated menus, and the movie has been divided into twelve chapters. The disc also includes a "Register Your DVD" feature for technical support and...y'know, to provide Disney with a bunch of demographic info on Lizzie McGuire fans.
Conclusion: The Lizzie McGuire Movie is a celluloid confection. Sweet and impossibly cute, I'm sure devotees of the series will enjoy it, and the hordes of fans who caught the movie theatrically ought to be pleased with its presentation on DVD. A quick introduction to the TV series might make a better starting point than leaping head-on into this disc, and viewers who found Lizzie's small-screen incarnation unbearable probably won't be swayed by The Lizzie McGuire Movie. If you're familiar with the TV series and think you might enjoy a 90-minute version, you're probably right. Recommended.
Related Links: The official Lizzie McGuire site includes a trailer along with an armful of other goodies.
Boring Image Disclaimer: The screen captures in this review are compressed and don't necessarily reflect the appearance of the footage on DVD.
"Anything."
"Promise me that when we're here, we'll find adventures."
..and hey, what better way to find adventures than to take a popular TV series, expand it to feature length, drop the cast in Europe, and splash it across several thousand screens? For the uninitiated, the Disney Channel's Lizzie McGuire stars Hilary Duff as a giddy gal trying to make it through junior high alive. She's constantly at odds with her scheming younger brother Matt (Jake Thomas) and the popular, stuck-up Kate Sanders (Ashlie Brillault). She has her buddies at her side to help her out, including her best friend Miranda, platonic pal Gordo (Adam Lamberg), and her dim-witted sometimes-boyfriend Ethan (Clayton Snyder). Animated snippets gingerly interspersed throughout each episode punctuate what's churning around in Lizzie's mind.
Lizzie's first movie is aptly titled The Lizzie McGuire Movie: the movie is all about Lizzie, relegating much of the supporting cast to the sidelines and knocking a couple (most notably Miranda and the ever-silent Lanny) out entirely.
Like The Even Stevens Movie, a subsequent stab at expanding a succcessful Disney Channel series to an hour and a half, The Lizzie McGuire Movie begins with a disastrous junior high school graduation. The perpetually klutzy Lizzie is forced to deliver a speech she hadn't prepared for, and as she strains to eke her way through it, she inadvertently drapes the graduating class in a giant curtain. That's the last of the embarrassing footage her brother can add to his collection of blackmail-worthy videotapes, though, as Lizzie and much of her class are quickly spirited off to Rome for a two-week tour of the Eternal City. Though chaperoned by their future principal, the strict, influential Miss Ungermeyer (Mad TV's Alex Borstein), Gordo and Lizzie decide to make the most of their intercontinental excursion and start a new life for their two weeks in Rome. With only ninety minutes and change to work with, it doesn't take long for Lizzie to stumble upon the adventure she'd been craving. Lizzie bears an uncanny resemblance to Isabella, one half of a widely-adored European pop sensation. The other half of the equation, singer Paolo (Yani Gellman), is quickly smitten, giving Lizzie the rounds 'round Rome. Paolo slowly reveals his plan to have his newfound gal-pal take the place of the troubled Isabella on a music video awards show, which would give Paolo the opportunity to expand his musical horizons beyond pop pap and stave off the lawsuits the record label is threatening to lob at his former flame. Lizzie, of course, leaps at the chance, feigning sickness to keep her Paolo-time under Ungermeyer's radar. The fiercely loyal Gordo, who insists he's only interested in Lizzie as a friend, suspects there's more to Paolo than meets the eye.
Some readers might be baffled by the "Recommended" note, and it's understandable. Online DVD reviewers are a snarky lot, and The Lizzie McGuire Movie would seem to be an easy target. I guess I should probably mention that the Disney Channel's Even Stevens is one of my favorite TV shows of the past few years, and though Lizzie McGuire didn't instantly appeal to me in quite the same way, I've managed to catch a few episodes and generally liked what I saw. Sure, it's not the type of series that sets out to revolutionize television or offer meaningful social commentary. Lizzie McGuire's goal was to amass 65 endearingly cute episodes, and at that, it succeeded. Its feature-length incarnation isn't too terribly different.
I wouldn't expect it to hold much appeal to anyone unfamiliar with the television series (though there is some obligatory exposition early on in an attempt to bring new viewers up to speed), and fifteen years from now, I doubt current viewers of the series will be pulling a holodisc or whatever off their space-shelves to introduce their future kids to The Lizzie McGuire Movie. There's a lot of jaw-agape pointing at Roman landmarks and sterling exchanges like "It's so beautiful!"; "Yes, you are.", which are certain to leave older viewers groaning incessantly. Still, forget whatever legacy the series' silver-screen counterpart may or may not have, and don't get excessively mired in its flaws. In the here and now, it's a sweet, cute movie (count the number of different combinations of "sweet" and "cute" in this review, if you're bored), and not a bad way to spend 93 minutes. Convention-shattering brilliance it's not, but I enjoyed this cute comedy, despite being a 24-year-old male square peg that doesn't quite fit into Disney's target demographic. The Lizzie McGuire Movie hits DVD with an anamorphic widescreen presentation, six-channel audio, and an armful of bonus features.
Video: The Lizzie McGuire Movie steers away from its small-screen origins and towards a substantially wider frame for its theatrical debut. This single-sided, dual-layer DVD includes both full-frame and 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen presentations of the film. The widescreen image isn't a knockout, but it's free of any particularly nagging flaws. The level of crispness and clarity in particular is middling. The movie doesn't have an overly soft appearance by any stretch, but there were several instances where I thought it should look considerably sharper than it does. Film grain is an intermittent nuisance, perhaps due to its Super 35 origins. I didn't find it all that intrusive, and I wouldn't be surprised if theatrical exhibitions boasted a similar appearance. Having so recently trotted out of theaters, the source material doesn't exhibit any wear, and I didn't spot so much as a single speck or nick for the duration. The presentation is good, if unremarkable, and I'm glad Disney opted to provide both versions instead of taking the full-frame-only route.
Audio: The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (384Kbps) is pretty typical for a teen comedy. Most of the action is anchored up front, with some noticeable stereo separation. Aside from some scattered pans, such as a scooter whizzing by on the streets of Rome, the surround channels are mostly used to reinforce the music and provide ambiance. The rears murmur with sounds like echoed voices at the graduation ceremony, the boisterous crowd during the climactic music video awards performance, clinking champagne glasses, and electrical buzzing. The surrounds most frequently caught my attention in the animated clips with effects like a spit-take beverage splashing around the back of the soundstage. Dialogue, rooted front and center, is the focus of the mix and comes through cleanly and clearly. The soundtrack particularly shines, featuring a number of teen-pop covers of classics like "The Tide Is High", "Shining Star", and, um, RuPaul's "Supermodel". These songs are accompanied by a healthy dollop of bass, and there's some other decent activity in the lower frequencies distributed throughout. A nice mix, and one I'd imagine is representative of the way The Lizzie McGuire Movie sounded theatrically.
The setup menu has an option to enable English subtitles, but for whatever reason, that submenu refused to display any text on PowerDVD or my portable Audiovox DVD-1500. The menu displayed properly on my set-top Toshiba SD-3109, but the fact that I encountered that error on two different players would seem to point towards an authoring problem of some sort. The DVD also features English closed captions, and no alternate soundtracks have been included.
Supplements: The Lizzie McGuire Movie features a smattering of extras, beginning with "Hilary's Roman Adventure", a twelve-minute featurette hosted by star Hilary Duff. Instead of just being a standard promotional featurette, "Hilary's Roman Adventure" is at first presented as a tour, highlighting various monuments and notable stops along the shoot. Hilary also runs through a typical day on the set, how much she enjoyed her time in Rome with the cast 'n crew, and how elaborate the climactic performance scene turned out to be. The featurette is presented full-frame with Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround audio (192Kbps).
Hilary Duff fronts an Avril Lavigne-ish backing band in the music video for "Why Not" (2:16), a catchy guitar-pop song that's featured on the movie's soundtrack. "In the Recording Studio with Hilary" (2:02) is pretty much what it sounds like, featuring some comments from Ms. Duff about the recording of her new album, interspersed with oodles of footage of her crooning in front of a mic. Like the movie, both the music video and the recording studio featurette sport Dolby Digital 5.1 audio encoded at a bitrate of 384Kbps. "Roamin' Volare" (2:16) is letterboxed, time-coded rough cut footage of Lizzie and Paolo careening around Rome, with Vitamin C's "Volare" playing underneath in Dolby Digital stereo (192Kbps). The three deleted scenes featured on "Off the Cutting Room Floor" are presented in much the same way. Director Jim Fall optionally introduces each of the scenes, which all together run just shy of seven and a half minutes in length, and his video introductions are more detailed and thoughtful than the usual "we had to cut it for pacing" prattle. The titles of "Kids Coming Off the Plane" and "Lizzie's Shopping Spree" ought to provide some inkling as to what to expect, and the final snippet of footage is an alternate ending. The latter two include some unanimated-animated-Lizzie moments, and it's interesting to see how those portions were tackled in the filmmaking process.
Finally, there are 'Sneak Peeks' for the upcoming The Lion King DVD (1:08), two Lizzie McGuire DVDs collecting episodes from the TV series (1:02), Kim Possible: The Secret Files (0:55), the Sleeping Beauty special edition (1:55), George of the Jungle 2 (1:18), and a plug for the Disney Channel's That's So Raven (0:33). All feature Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (384Kbps), and aside from a letterboxed George of the Jungle 2 trailer that looks like it was shot on leftover 8mm film, the previews are full-frame.
The Lizzie McGuire Movie comes packaged in a white keepcase that nicely complements the cover art. A chapter listing lurks on the flipside of an ad for a pair of upcoming Lizzie TV-on-DVD releases. Also, a coupon for $3 off the movie's soundtrack is tacked onto the cover.
The DVD features a set of 16x9-enhanced animated menus, and the movie has been divided into twelve chapters. The disc also includes a "Register Your DVD" feature for technical support and...y'know, to provide Disney with a bunch of demographic info on Lizzie McGuire fans.
Conclusion: The Lizzie McGuire Movie is a celluloid confection. Sweet and impossibly cute, I'm sure devotees of the series will enjoy it, and the hordes of fans who caught the movie theatrically ought to be pleased with its presentation on DVD. A quick introduction to the TV series might make a better starting point than leaping head-on into this disc, and viewers who found Lizzie's small-screen incarnation unbearable probably won't be swayed by The Lizzie McGuire Movie. If you're familiar with the TV series and think you might enjoy a 90-minute version, you're probably right. Recommended.
Related Links: The official Lizzie McGuire site includes a trailer along with an armful of other goodies.
Boring Image Disclaimer: The screen captures in this review are compressed and don't necessarily reflect the appearance of the footage on DVD.
|
| Popular Reviews |
| Sponsored Links |
|
|
| Sponsored Links |
|
|
| Release List | Reviews | Shop | Newsletter | Forum | DVD Giveaways | Blu-Ray | Advertise |
|
Copyright 2024 DVDTalk.com All Rights Reserved. Legal Info, Privacy Policy, Terms of Use,
Manage Preferences,
Your Privacy Choices 
| |||||||