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Mom's Outta Sight
Fox // PG // September 4, 2001
List Price: $19.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Untold millions of dollars have been made by films transmogrifying the mothers of plucky children. Nearly every classic Universal horror flick has some modern-day equivalent with a mother either unwittingly dating or becoming a creature of the night, including My Mom's A Werewolf, Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire, The Lost Boys, Mom, the Wolfman and Me, Flesh-Eating Mothers, Rock 'n' Roll Mom, and My Stepmother Is An Alien, to name a few. Of these sorts of movies, I don't think any theme has been explored more than invisibility. Apparently every member of the family has inspired invisible misadventures, even Invisible Dad and The Invisible Kid, but it's the fairer sex that seems to disappear more than any other. Mom's Outta Sight has considerable difficulty stacking up against such fine works as Invisible Mom, Invisible Mom II, and the classic 1983 Bob Denver TV movie Invisible Woman, though.
Bigwigs at the Pentagon have been funnelling quite a bit of cash towards the development of the Triton, a device that can convert matter to energy and instantly transmit it to any conceivable place in the world. Some (gasp!!!) shady folks have their own devious plans for the miraculous machine, and a strapped-for-cash researcher takes their offer of four million dollars to steal the Triton and snag the schematics, which are both guarded by the paranoid measures of Dr. John Richards (Hannes Jaenicke). Their crony uses a modified Triton to transform his very effeminate girlfriend into a duplicate Richards while the genuine article is teleported to an old warehouse. Faux-Richards snoops around the family home looking for the schematics, piquing the curiosity of Richards' family. While uncovering the truth, Richards' wife (Ariauna Albright) is turned invisible and sets out with their son to rescue Dad and clear his name.
I'm a sucker for kids' movies, and the goofier the premise, the more insatiable my desire to add it to my collection. My DVD racks are peppered with such discs as MVP: Most Valuable Primate, Casper's Haunted Christmas, and Digimon: The Movie, and it seemed that Mom's Outta Sight would fit right in. The hysterically corny cover art seemed promising, but I never could've anticipated how genuinely terrible Mom's Outta Sight would turn out to be. First of all, neither of the children on the cover are in the movie. Heck, there's not even a kid sister. I wonder if Fox took the Full Moon approach and produced a film based on a poster. The acting, if you want to call it that, is embarassing, from Ariauna Albright's stilted delivery to the clearly inexperienced kids who were presumably cast due to nepotism of some sort. Jaenicke's handling of the dual roles stands out as one of the film's few redeeming qualities. The special effects are amateurish, and Albright doesn't even turn invisible until Mom's Outta Sight is half-over. Even the studio apparently knew they'd come up a-cropper, as the 1998 film is just now getting a release in the last quarter of 2001. There's nothing about Mom's Outta Sight that warrants even the most tepid recommendation. It's not unwatchable, but with countless superior family movies on store shelves, why bother?
Video: Mom's Outta Sight is presented in full-frame and is virtually indistinguishable from a cable broadcast. There's a fair amount of grain, as if Mom's Outta Sight were filmed using rather low-grade 16mm stock. Clarity is inconsistent, with a number of shots seeming far softer than others, and the color palette appears muted, often with a considerable blueish tint. On the upside, the image is free of dust and other assorted flecks. Fox may very well have done the best job possible given the film's microbudget origins, but the end result is still disappointing, leaving the 1998 Mom's Outta Sight looking as if it were lensed nearly a decade earlier.
Audio: The stereo surround track on Mom's Outta Sight isn't any better or any worse than your average USA World Premiere Movie. Dialogue is always discernable and mixed so that it's never buried under the score or sound effects. Aside from a couple of music cues, the rear speakers remain largely silent throughout the film. The audio is strictly average for this sort of release.
Supplements: The only supplements are cast/crew bios and full-frame trailers for Mom's Outta Sight, Ping!, and To Walk With Lions.
Conclusion: Mom's Outta Sight is a poor family movie that isn't redeemed by its lackluster presentation on DVD. Since the disc looks and sounds exactly like a broadcast on cable, it would probably be worth your while to save fifteen bucks and wait for Mom's Outta Sight to turn up on the Fox Family Channel.
Bigwigs at the Pentagon have been funnelling quite a bit of cash towards the development of the Triton, a device that can convert matter to energy and instantly transmit it to any conceivable place in the world. Some (gasp!!!) shady folks have their own devious plans for the miraculous machine, and a strapped-for-cash researcher takes their offer of four million dollars to steal the Triton and snag the schematics, which are both guarded by the paranoid measures of Dr. John Richards (Hannes Jaenicke). Their crony uses a modified Triton to transform his very effeminate girlfriend into a duplicate Richards while the genuine article is teleported to an old warehouse. Faux-Richards snoops around the family home looking for the schematics, piquing the curiosity of Richards' family. While uncovering the truth, Richards' wife (Ariauna Albright) is turned invisible and sets out with their son to rescue Dad and clear his name.
I'm a sucker for kids' movies, and the goofier the premise, the more insatiable my desire to add it to my collection. My DVD racks are peppered with such discs as MVP: Most Valuable Primate, Casper's Haunted Christmas, and Digimon: The Movie, and it seemed that Mom's Outta Sight would fit right in. The hysterically corny cover art seemed promising, but I never could've anticipated how genuinely terrible Mom's Outta Sight would turn out to be. First of all, neither of the children on the cover are in the movie. Heck, there's not even a kid sister. I wonder if Fox took the Full Moon approach and produced a film based on a poster. The acting, if you want to call it that, is embarassing, from Ariauna Albright's stilted delivery to the clearly inexperienced kids who were presumably cast due to nepotism of some sort. Jaenicke's handling of the dual roles stands out as one of the film's few redeeming qualities. The special effects are amateurish, and Albright doesn't even turn invisible until Mom's Outta Sight is half-over. Even the studio apparently knew they'd come up a-cropper, as the 1998 film is just now getting a release in the last quarter of 2001. There's nothing about Mom's Outta Sight that warrants even the most tepid recommendation. It's not unwatchable, but with countless superior family movies on store shelves, why bother?
Video: Mom's Outta Sight is presented in full-frame and is virtually indistinguishable from a cable broadcast. There's a fair amount of grain, as if Mom's Outta Sight were filmed using rather low-grade 16mm stock. Clarity is inconsistent, with a number of shots seeming far softer than others, and the color palette appears muted, often with a considerable blueish tint. On the upside, the image is free of dust and other assorted flecks. Fox may very well have done the best job possible given the film's microbudget origins, but the end result is still disappointing, leaving the 1998 Mom's Outta Sight looking as if it were lensed nearly a decade earlier.
Audio: The stereo surround track on Mom's Outta Sight isn't any better or any worse than your average USA World Premiere Movie. Dialogue is always discernable and mixed so that it's never buried under the score or sound effects. Aside from a couple of music cues, the rear speakers remain largely silent throughout the film. The audio is strictly average for this sort of release.
Supplements: The only supplements are cast/crew bios and full-frame trailers for Mom's Outta Sight, Ping!, and To Walk With Lions.
Conclusion: Mom's Outta Sight is a poor family movie that isn't redeemed by its lackluster presentation on DVD. Since the disc looks and sounds exactly like a broadcast on cable, it would probably be worth your while to save fifteen bucks and wait for Mom's Outta Sight to turn up on the Fox Family Channel.
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