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Life Less Ordinary, A
List Price: Unknown [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Movie:
The makers of "Trainspotting" make an attempt at an American-made picture turns out to be one of those movies that is far too odd for it's own good as Cameron Diaz and Ewan McGregor star in "A Life Less Ordinary", a mess of a tale that is visually interesting, but makes no sense otherwise; in other words, a bad dream of an attempt at a movie.
McGregor stars as a janitor fired from his job so that he can be replaced by a gang of robots. Fed up with his place in life, he storms into his boss's office and kidnap's the boss's daughter(Diaz). The two hit the road, falling in love as the film draws on. There's nothing terribly odd about that, there certainly have been road movies like that before. Where the picture takes a strange turn is the addition of two angels(Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter) who, by the order of God(who is unhappy with the amount of divorces), are sent down to unite the two would-be lovers and go about doing it in a series of very odd ways.
It all makes for an energetic and visually interesting picture, but who cares when the story doesn't make a hint of sense. It has its moments(a sequence where the two do Karaoke), but overall, the story doesn't have too much of a point to it as it veers all over the place towards a lame ending. Performances generally do the best they can with the material, especially the two leads.
The DVD VIDEO:Dissapointing effort from Fox, which is especially...dissapointing after their recent improvements on discs like "There's Something About Mary". The picture is lackluster throughout as a colorful, vibrant film recieves an image that's consistently soft throughout. The print used occasionally looks slightly dirty as well, and there looks to be the occasional small scratch or two. There seems to be slight traces of pixelization in the image as well, although I didn't find that terribly distracting. There's no instances of shimmering in the image, though.
The general problem here is a picture that seems generally bland in every aspect. The image could have been much sharper- at times I would definitely say it's almost hazy looking. Colors look rather muted as well compared to how I remember viewing this film in theaters. Detail is fair at best. Fleshtones are inconsistent, looking generally pale throughout. It's just another example of the inconsistent nature of Fox's DVD production, although this disc is especially dissapointing. It's not a great movie, but it is a cool looking movie at least and the image quality, for the majority of the running time, is definitely lacking. The image is letterboxed at 2.35:1.
SOUND: As dissapointing as the video quality was, the 2.0 soundtrack here is honestly, even more dissapointing. There's a lot of great songs here, both classic and new techno songs, and they don't sound nearly as dynamic as they could. Apparently, this was 2.0 in theaters as well, and that's too bad. It's occasionally enjoyable, but for the most part, it's pretty uninteresting. Dialogue is alright, occasionally sounding a little harsh.
MENUS: Some rather slight animation livens a basic film-themed menu.
EXTRAS:The trailer(not even the cool trailer I remember, either- a different, full-frame one).
The makers of "Trainspotting" make an attempt at an American-made picture turns out to be one of those movies that is far too odd for it's own good as Cameron Diaz and Ewan McGregor star in "A Life Less Ordinary", a mess of a tale that is visually interesting, but makes no sense otherwise; in other words, a bad dream of an attempt at a movie.
McGregor stars as a janitor fired from his job so that he can be replaced by a gang of robots. Fed up with his place in life, he storms into his boss's office and kidnap's the boss's daughter(Diaz). The two hit the road, falling in love as the film draws on. There's nothing terribly odd about that, there certainly have been road movies like that before. Where the picture takes a strange turn is the addition of two angels(Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter) who, by the order of God(who is unhappy with the amount of divorces), are sent down to unite the two would-be lovers and go about doing it in a series of very odd ways.
It all makes for an energetic and visually interesting picture, but who cares when the story doesn't make a hint of sense. It has its moments(a sequence where the two do Karaoke), but overall, the story doesn't have too much of a point to it as it veers all over the place towards a lame ending. Performances generally do the best they can with the material, especially the two leads.
The DVD VIDEO:Dissapointing effort from Fox, which is especially...dissapointing after their recent improvements on discs like "There's Something About Mary". The picture is lackluster throughout as a colorful, vibrant film recieves an image that's consistently soft throughout. The print used occasionally looks slightly dirty as well, and there looks to be the occasional small scratch or two. There seems to be slight traces of pixelization in the image as well, although I didn't find that terribly distracting. There's no instances of shimmering in the image, though.
The general problem here is a picture that seems generally bland in every aspect. The image could have been much sharper- at times I would definitely say it's almost hazy looking. Colors look rather muted as well compared to how I remember viewing this film in theaters. Detail is fair at best. Fleshtones are inconsistent, looking generally pale throughout. It's just another example of the inconsistent nature of Fox's DVD production, although this disc is especially dissapointing. It's not a great movie, but it is a cool looking movie at least and the image quality, for the majority of the running time, is definitely lacking. The image is letterboxed at 2.35:1.
SOUND: As dissapointing as the video quality was, the 2.0 soundtrack here is honestly, even more dissapointing. There's a lot of great songs here, both classic and new techno songs, and they don't sound nearly as dynamic as they could. Apparently, this was 2.0 in theaters as well, and that's too bad. It's occasionally enjoyable, but for the most part, it's pretty uninteresting. Dialogue is alright, occasionally sounding a little harsh.
MENUS: Some rather slight animation livens a basic film-themed menu.
EXTRAS:The trailer(not even the cool trailer I remember, either- a different, full-frame one).
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