Lemonade Mouth (2010/Disney DVD) + Midnight
Is A Place
– The Complete Series (1977/British/VCI DVD Set)
Picture: C Sound: C+
Extras: D Main Programs: D/B-
How TV
programming with and for children has changed…
I really
miss the time when there was a strong educational slant on a good bit of the TV
shows aimed at them, but now, it seems to be aimed at turning them into
mindless foolishness that says the only fun its to be a phony snob singing bad
songs.
As much
as I wish it were otherwise, the new Disney TV movie production Lemonade Mouth (2010) wants to be the
next in a series of High School Musical/Hanna Montana clones so far away from
an original idea that they pretend to be Rock stars when really being
warmed-over Pop stars several generations from the original idea of this which
goes back to the 1960s, which part of this silliness is built against. Would-be new stars Bridgit Mendler and Adam
Hicks headline this extremely forgettable and sour (pun intended) trainwreck of
a band that forms after meeting in school detention, but quicker than you can
“forget about them”, they have formed a really, really, really bad group that
sings songs that sound longer than it took to write and compose them. The only thing thinner than the songs is the
acting and script. This is just plain
awful and no amount of marketing can save it.
Digital Copy for PC and PC portable devices, “exclusive extended music
scenes” that are very painful and Rock-Along piece to “learn” these
not-very-challenging works are the lame extras.
On the
other hand, Joan Aiken is much more versed in writing intelligent works for a
younger audience like Jackanory (she also had her work adapted on for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, reviewed
elsewhere on this site) and though it is a little more than Charles
Dickens-esque, Midnight Is A Place – The
Complete Series (1977) is a really good mini-series I actually remember
from many years ago with Simon Gipps-Kent as Lucas Bell, the son of a rich man
who has died, but is supposed to have left a fortune behind in a textile mill and
lives in Midnight Court with an obnoxious guardian (an almost unrecognizable
William Squire of Callan) until he
dies and more things take a turn for the worse, but something wrong is afoot
and now-orphan Lucas needs to find out what and is made for a
wide-ranging-but-intelligent audience.
Roy
Russell co-wrote some of the teleplays, while Christopher McMaster (see Skyport elsewhere on this site) does an
ace job of helming the whole enterprise.
Another lost gem of the last golden age of British TV, it is great to
see it on DVD and is an underrated series that deserves rediscovery. Lally Bowers, Ron Moody, Maxine Gordon, Erik
Chitty, David Collings, Donald Morley, Peggy Aitchison, Jo Kendall, Pearl
Hackney, Diana Lambert, Hugh Manning and James Cosmo also star. There are sadly no extras.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image in Mouth
and 1.33 X 1 image on Place are both
equally soft in their own ways, which is a big surprise considering 33 years
separate the two. Mouth is loaded with motion blur and poor color, while Place is a mix of in-studio
professional PAL analog video and 16mm outdoor shooting that has more density
to it. Imagine that. Both have Dolby Digital sound, but are again
matched as the 5.1 on Mouth is very
limited in soundfield (even when the “music” kicks in) and has much too much of
its sound in the center channel. Place may have some distortion and even
hum in its 2.0 Mono mix, but it is warm, consistent and well-recorded in ways
that overcome its flaws in ways that make the difference between the two
shockingly narrow. Mouth sounds watered down by comparisons more than it should. I’ll skip any other puns.
- Nicholas Sheffo
