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Baby on Board
National Entertainment Media // Unrated // June 2, 2009 // Region 0
List Price: $24.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Oh no!
Heather Graham has a Nerf dart stuck on her forehead! Geez, and she just ripped one during a big meeting with Lara Flynn Boyle who -- yikes! -- is kinda starting to look like Eric Stoltz in Mask. Wait, wait...I don't wanna get distracted, so maybe I need to spell this out: she's pitching a new line of perfume and farted. Get it? I mean, they can't even smell that perfu...oh, look! That old guy's balls are drooping out from under that towel! And John Corbett's pee-pee is poking out in his underwear, and...wait, there's a whole room full of guys with boners! And they're in a Korean handjob hut or something! Heather Graham and her not-her-sister Katie Finneran keep saying "vagina" in a pizza joint, that kid over there just peed on the floor for no discernable reason whatsoever, Jerry O'Connell can't watch the game 'cause his preggers wife is doing yoga in front of the TV, and...picture a geyser of milk spewing out of my nose and a mouthful of Pringles scattered all over the floor here...she just poured a bottle of water on him!!! I mean, that deserves, like, six or seven more exclamation points!
Look, I just hammered out a three and a half star review of Fired Up! earlier today. I'm clearly not that picky, but Baby on Board is pretty much unwatchable. It's a shopworn early-'80s sitcom premise: Angela (Heather Graham) finds out she's about to squirt out a kid after getting a promotion to vee-pee at a ritzy cosmetics company. Her husband Curtis (Jerry O'Connell) may be a sleazy divorce attorney, but he's been wanting a little moppet of his own, and he couldn't be more thrilled about the news. Pregnancy makes Angela start to feel kinda insecure, though, and...well, since the script says the two of 'em have to illogically overreact and be convinced the other's cheating, they bitterly split up. Meanwhile, their best friends Sylvia (Katie Finneran) and Danny (John Corbett) are also on the outs thanks to a hooker-'n-handjob addiction, and it's through them that Angela and Curtis learn about the true meaning of...ugh. Baby on Board is aggressively generic, and fer cryin' out loud, there's even a warring-couples-and-their-fake-dates-pretend-laughing-oneupsmanship scene at a high-end restaurant. What is this? Perfect Strangers? Its sense of humor skews towards lazy shock humor, and unless you're past that point in life where you're covering your mouth with one hand, pointing at the TV with the other, and shouting, "Pee-pee! Puke! And she said 'vagina'! Oh, she said it again!", you're not gonna get much out of Baby on Board. As much as I like Anthony Starke (star of one of my longtime favorites, Return of the Killer Tomatoes, and I'm not being sarcastic) and Wonderfalls alum Katie Finneran, it's just a long, laughless hour and a half. Skip It.
Okay, this review obviously isn't all that much of a fawning love letter to Baby on Board, but I do feel like I should give a nod to distributor National Entertainment Media. They're diving into Blu-ray for the first time with this and their indie thriller Elsewhere, and while most studios are pricing their new releases anywhere from thirty to forty-five bucks a pop, National Entertainment Media is sticking with a $24.98 price point for theirs: the same as their DVDs. Remember, Baby on Board isn't some musty catalog title that's being yanked out of the vault -- this is a brand new release, and the sticker price at Amazon still winds up under fourteen bucks when it's all said and done. Hey, and it's even region-free! With Disney jacking up their MSRPs up to $44.99, it's appreciated that at least one of the smaller shops is willing to be more consumer-friendly. Too bad it's...y'know, not for a movie worth watching.
Video
Well, at least it looks nice enough. Baby on Board is decently sharp and detailed in high-def, and really fine patterns in the wardrobe in particular show off its strong sense of texture. A very thin sheen of film grain is kept intact, and it's tight and unintrusive from start to finish. The slightest bit of softness leaves this 1.85:1 image falling just a notch below most of the day-and-date studio comedies I've caught on Blu-ray, but that's not much of a gripe, and I get the sense that at least some of that -- a very faint glow -- is a deliberate choice by cinematographer Denis Maloney. There's some light banding in the intro with the CG storks, and the grain starts to look a little digital and noisy against the maroonish backdrop of the boardroom, but all of that's pretty easily shrugged off. Especially for a low-budget indie romcom, Baby on Board is a solid first outing in high-def by National Entertainment Media.
Since Baby on Board clocks in at an hour and a half and there really aren't any extras, this AVC encode fits on a BD-25 with plenty of room to spare.
Audio
Baby on Board's 24-bit DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack seems kinda nimble and playful out of the gate -- cars whizzing by in the background, forks clinking against plates, and a bouncy score leaping out of every speaker -- but it settles into routine pretty quickly. Yup, it's a standard issue romantic comedy mix: dialogue front and center, snippets of music and very light color in the surrounds, a couple of pans up front, and the subwoofer twiddling its low-frequency thumbs while caked under a half-inch of dust. I mean, this lossless soundtrack doesn't really do anything wrong, exactly, but it doesn't rank any higher than "okay, I guess" either.
A traditional Dolby Digital 5.1 track is served up here too alongside subtitles in English (SDH) and Spanish.
Extras
So, here's a drinking game: start up Baby on Board's commentary track, and every time director Brian Herzlinger or producer Emilio Ferrari say that someone on the cast/crew "is great" or "knocked it out of the park", take a shot. Whatever you're guzzling down, it'll be out in ten or fifteen minutes flat, and...yeah, you will be too. Yup, it's one of those commentaries, and you know I'm being snarky when I use bold and italics. This track is knee-deep in backpatting, and that doesn't leave room for much of anything else. There are a few scattered notes that kinda/sorta/not-really redeem it -- Herzlinger miming a goofy shuffle for Heather Graham off-camera, a lesbian stripper taking a swig of Johnny Walker to man up for a makeout scene, a couple of Japanese actors balking on the big boardroom sequence, Herzlinger's intimate familiarity with the mighty Fleshlight, and some squabbles during the breakneck editing process -- but there's not all that much meat to gnaw on here. Pass.
Herzlinger and Ferrari mention several deleted scenes in their commentary, but none of 'em have been piled on here. A few outtakes do play over the end credits, though. The only other extras are a standard definition trailer and a high-res still gallery.
The Final Word
Ack. No. Skip It.
Why Not? A Few More Screengrabs
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
Look, I just hammered out a three and a half star review of Fired Up! earlier today. I'm clearly not that picky, but Baby on Board is pretty much unwatchable. It's a shopworn early-'80s sitcom premise: Angela (Heather Graham) finds out she's about to squirt out a kid after getting a promotion to vee-pee at a ritzy cosmetics company. Her husband Curtis (Jerry O'Connell) may be a sleazy divorce attorney, but he's been wanting a little moppet of his own, and he couldn't be more thrilled about the news. Pregnancy makes Angela start to feel kinda insecure, though, and...well, since the script says the two of 'em have to illogically overreact and be convinced the other's cheating, they bitterly split up. Meanwhile, their best friends Sylvia (Katie Finneran) and Danny (John Corbett) are also on the outs thanks to a hooker-'n-handjob addiction, and it's through them that Angela and Curtis learn about the true meaning of...ugh. Baby on Board is aggressively generic, and fer cryin' out loud, there's even a warring-couples-and-their-fake-dates-pretend-laughing-oneupsmanship scene at a high-end restaurant. What is this? Perfect Strangers? Its sense of humor skews towards lazy shock humor, and unless you're past that point in life where you're covering your mouth with one hand, pointing at the TV with the other, and shouting, "Pee-pee! Puke! And she said 'vagina'! Oh, she said it again!", you're not gonna get much out of Baby on Board. As much as I like Anthony Starke (star of one of my longtime favorites, Return of the Killer Tomatoes, and I'm not being sarcastic) and Wonderfalls alum Katie Finneran, it's just a long, laughless hour and a half. Skip It.
Okay, this review obviously isn't all that much of a fawning love letter to Baby on Board, but I do feel like I should give a nod to distributor National Entertainment Media. They're diving into Blu-ray for the first time with this and their indie thriller Elsewhere, and while most studios are pricing their new releases anywhere from thirty to forty-five bucks a pop, National Entertainment Media is sticking with a $24.98 price point for theirs: the same as their DVDs. Remember, Baby on Board isn't some musty catalog title that's being yanked out of the vault -- this is a brand new release, and the sticker price at Amazon still winds up under fourteen bucks when it's all said and done. Hey, and it's even region-free! With Disney jacking up their MSRPs up to $44.99, it's appreciated that at least one of the smaller shops is willing to be more consumer-friendly. Too bad it's...y'know, not for a movie worth watching.
Video
Well, at least it looks nice enough. Baby on Board is decently sharp and detailed in high-def, and really fine patterns in the wardrobe in particular show off its strong sense of texture. A very thin sheen of film grain is kept intact, and it's tight and unintrusive from start to finish. The slightest bit of softness leaves this 1.85:1 image falling just a notch below most of the day-and-date studio comedies I've caught on Blu-ray, but that's not much of a gripe, and I get the sense that at least some of that -- a very faint glow -- is a deliberate choice by cinematographer Denis Maloney. There's some light banding in the intro with the CG storks, and the grain starts to look a little digital and noisy against the maroonish backdrop of the boardroom, but all of that's pretty easily shrugged off. Especially for a low-budget indie romcom, Baby on Board is a solid first outing in high-def by National Entertainment Media.
Since Baby on Board clocks in at an hour and a half and there really aren't any extras, this AVC encode fits on a BD-25 with plenty of room to spare.
) |
| Helena Bonha...oh. Nevermind. |
Audio
Baby on Board's 24-bit DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack seems kinda nimble and playful out of the gate -- cars whizzing by in the background, forks clinking against plates, and a bouncy score leaping out of every speaker -- but it settles into routine pretty quickly. Yup, it's a standard issue romantic comedy mix: dialogue front and center, snippets of music and very light color in the surrounds, a couple of pans up front, and the subwoofer twiddling its low-frequency thumbs while caked under a half-inch of dust. I mean, this lossless soundtrack doesn't really do anything wrong, exactly, but it doesn't rank any higher than "okay, I guess" either.
A traditional Dolby Digital 5.1 track is served up here too alongside subtitles in English (SDH) and Spanish.
) |
| This is the only thumbs-up you're gonna see in this review. |
Extras
So, here's a drinking game: start up Baby on Board's commentary track, and every time director Brian Herzlinger or producer Emilio Ferrari say that someone on the cast/crew "is great" or "knocked it out of the park", take a shot. Whatever you're guzzling down, it'll be out in ten or fifteen minutes flat, and...yeah, you will be too. Yup, it's one of those commentaries, and you know I'm being snarky when I use bold and italics. This track is knee-deep in backpatting, and that doesn't leave room for much of anything else. There are a few scattered notes that kinda/sorta/not-really redeem it -- Herzlinger miming a goofy shuffle for Heather Graham off-camera, a lesbian stripper taking a swig of Johnny Walker to man up for a makeout scene, a couple of Japanese actors balking on the big boardroom sequence, Herzlinger's intimate familiarity with the mighty Fleshlight, and some squabbles during the breakneck editing process -- but there's not all that much meat to gnaw on here. Pass.
Herzlinger and Ferrari mention several deleted scenes in their commentary, but none of 'em have been piled on here. A few outtakes do play over the end credits, though. The only other extras are a standard definition trailer and a high-res still gallery.
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
The Final Word
Ack. No. Skip It.
Why Not? A Few More Screengrabs
)
)
)
|
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