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Review added January 13, 2005.
Charlie's Angels
:: DVD Review |
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Studio:
Columbia TriStar |
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>> Review
Equipment |
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Video:
2.35:1 (Enhanced for 16:9) |
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Length:
94
Minutes |
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Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 (448kbps) En/Hu |
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Subtitles: En/Pol/Cz/Hu/Ice/Heb/Du/Bul |
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Video Format:
PAL |
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Tu/Da/Sv/Fin/Gr/Nor/Ar |
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Layer Change:
77:33 |
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Disc Format:
RSDL DVD-9 |
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Average Bit-Rate (A+V):
5.11Mbps |
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Disc Capacity Utilised:
5.87GB |
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Region Coding:
2/4 |
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:: The Film
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>> Skip to
Audio/Video Details
After reading more than a few luke-warm
reviews of Charlie's Angels, and finding the film's concept
less than appealing, I didn't bother catching it when it
made the rounds of the local multiplexes and I certainly
wasn't awaiting its arrival on DVD with any anticipation.
However, after cautiously sitting down to watch the DVD I
was surprised what a blast I had.
This is a film with its tongue
planted firmly in cheek, and treated as such is great
entertainment. Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu
play a disparate group of private eye cum secret agents in
the employ of mysterious millionaire Charlie. None of the
three have ever actually met Charlie in person, who uses his
assistant Bosley (Bill Murray) as a go-between.
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The three are assigned the task of
retrieving the recently kidnapped founder of Knox
Technologies, Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell). Suspect number one
is industrialist Roger Corwin (Tim Curry in a gut-busting
performance); but things are not entirely as they seem. I'll
leave the plot there to prevent spoiling it; also because
the plot is pretty much irrelevant here, taking a back seat
to the ladies' antics, outrageous gymnastic action sequences
and a healthy dose of plain silliness. If you're in the mood
for 90 odd minutes of innocuous fluff, this is just what
you're looking for. If silliness isn't your thing, steer
well clear.
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Video
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Unsurprisingly, this anamorphically-enhanced 2.35:1
transfer is well above average in virtually every
department. The print is very clean, the picture
razor-sharp, and both shadow detail and black levels
exceptionally good. This is an extraordinarily colourful
film, with a hyper-saturated colour pallette as over the
top as the film itself. Colour reproduction was generally
excellent, but bordered on the oversaturated. Only
occasionally, such as at the very end of the film (at the
85 minute mark) was that border actually crossed,
resulting in noticeable colour bleed.
Skin tones look good, but like the rest of
the film are very colourful, so could never be described
as looking 'natural'. I noticed some minor pixelation and
edge enhancement, and a few instances of slightly hot
contrast, but finding any real problems with this transfer
is no easy task. This is a transfer that aims to please,
and hits the bulls-eye.
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| :: Audio
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This Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is, like the transfer, very
good. Fidelity is exceptionally high with both effects and
dialogue extremely clean and free of distortion (with two
notable exceptions: 37:51-38:05 and 52:52), and consequently
very easy on the ears. The front soundstage is very active
with numerous effects spanning the front hemisphere and the
film's almost constant pseudo-retro soundtrack wrapping around
the listener, employing both front and rear channels. The
surround channels are notable for their frequent and
occasionally spectacular directional pans and discrete
rear-channel cues, and for their convincing recreation of
various acoustic environments.
Dialogue is very naturally
integrated into the soundtrack, never sounding less than
completely convincing with no obvious ADR giveaways. Bass
content is very good from all channels with occasional
reinforcement from the LFE channel, although the LFE channel
was a little quieter than I would have liked and lacked any
real rafter-raising sub-bass content. This is a soundtrack
that will please with its careful design, superb fidelity, and
surround channel usage.
As a side note, this soundtrack
appears to share its R1 counterpart's unusually high dialnorm
value, making this a fairly quiet soundtrack. Reference
playback levels will therefore require a higher volume setting
on your amplifier than normal.
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