According To Jim: Season Five/Boy Meets
World: Final/Seventh Season (Lionsgate DVDs)/Father Of Invention (2010/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/The Heart Specialist (2010)/The
League: Season Two (Fox Blu-rays)/Meet
The Browns: Season Two (Lionsgate DVDs)/35 & Ticking (2011/Image Blu-ray)
Picture:
C+/C/B-/B-/B-/C/B- Sound: C+/C+/B-/B-/B-/C+/C+ Extras: D/D/D/C-/C/D/C Main Programs: D/D/D/C/C/C-/C
One of
these days, Fox should do a special called ‘When
Comedies Are Not Funny’ as if they did they could include most of what we
get in this cycle of new releases.
Bad
sitcoms that keep on coming on DVD (while classics like Alice have yet to see a Season
One release) includes the latest inept sets According To Jim: Season Five, Boy
Meets World: Final/Seventh Season (thankfully over!), Meet The Browns: Season Two (a Tyler Perry show already wearing out
its welcome but likely to last for a while) and the tolerable at best The League: Season Two. All you need to know about the previous
series can be found elsewhere on this site, but The League is new and you can read about the show at the beginning
with our Season One Blu-ray
coverage:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10402/The+League+%E2%80%93+The+Co
This
comedy about fantasy football and some nit wits who are overboard into it is
the tired shaky one-camera affair that is obnoxious in itself, but I never
bought these people being in the real world (makes one miss Sports Night) and maybe the show
started out well, but this is just not that good and unless you start at the
beginning, skip it. Extras include a Gag
Reel, Extended Episodes, Deleted Scenes and five featurettes. This is a short season on two Blu-rays.
So if TV
is not funny, how about the movies? Don’t
get your hopes up with these duds.
Trent
Cooper’s pointless Father Of Invention
(2010) gives Kevin Spacey his poorest lead role in years as an infomercial guru
getting out of prison after 8 years (his product injured most of its
purchasers) and is so bad, you’ll wish it maimed him! Heather Graham shows up, guaranteeing her
curse continues in everything she does and everyone else is wasted, including
Virginia Madsen and Jackass star
Johnny Knoxville shows up for a similar kind of moment or two, though not as an
injured party to the deadly gadget. A
Making of featurette is the only extra and it is to be avoided at all costs.
Dennis
Cooper’s The Heart Specialist (2010)
is supposed to be heart-warming, but its formulaic story that wastes its cast
(including Zoë Saldana) in a romance story like a million others we have seen
before. Jasmine Guy, Jennifer Lewis and
Ed Asner even show up, but to no avail.
This is just a boring TV movie at best.
Additional Scenes that make no difference are the only extra.
That
leaves Russ Parr’s own relationship comedy 35
& Ticking (2011) that is a would be comedy like most we have seen
before and of late from Heart Specialist,
Tyler Perry to Two Can Play That Game,
but cast is likable even when script is very trying. At least it is amusing at times, sometime,
but not often enough to save it. Extra
include Deleted Scenes, Behind The Scenes & Photo Gallery. Note that both have titles that are illicit
appeals to the human body.
The anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Jim is
better than on the much softer Brown,
which might as well be the weak 1.33 on the final World set. That leaves the
Blu-rays, all of which are 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image
presentations save Father at 2.35 X
1. All are equal with the same softness,
color limits, slight motion blur and minor detail limits that make them a bit
generic. Heart has an AVC @ 23 MBPS
rate, while League has AVC @ 18.5
MBPS, yet there is not a real difference.
The DVDs
have Dolby Digital 5.1 lossy mixes, with World
only at 2.0 Stereo and barely so, but the 5.1 DVDs just stretch out weak
audio. All the Blu-rays have DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes, save Dolby TrueHD 5.1 for Father, but the DTS-MA on Ticking is weaker than the other
Blu-rays as the sound is more towards the front channels that it should be.
- Nicholas Sheffo
