Dysfunctional Friends (2011/Image DVD)/Meet The Browns: Season 5 (2010/Lionsgate DVDs)/A Mother’s Love (2010/Magnolia DVD)/The Myth Of The American Sleepover
(2010/Sundance/MPI DVD)/Trinity
Goodheart (2011/Image DVD)/The
Visitor (1963/aka La Visita/Raro
Video DVD)
Picture:
C/C/C/C+/C/C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C-/D/D/C-/D/C Main Programs: C/D/D/C-/D/C+
How bad
can relationship stories get? When they
get as phony as they have lately, they make $3 bills seem legal tender…
Corey
Grant’s Dysfunctional Friends (2011)
has the makings of something interesting between a good cast, some energy and
other elements that could have potentially made this work. However, it starts out with an odd scene,
progresses in mixed ways and slowly demonstrates it is going to offer every
lame, sad, predictable and some “acceptable” stereotype of young African
Americans including played-out phrases that include supposedly reflecting hip
hop culture and like watching Saturday
Night Fever (1977, in the case of Italians for comparative purposes) in
seeing new stereotype replace older ones.
Then you
have the script, which is everything we have seen and heard before, wasting a
real opportunity here. I was amazed how
bad this got and stayed for its long, long 111 minutes. The realism or progress of the Black New Wave
Spike Lee helped make possible is all but gone when I see a big miss like this
one. Geez. Extras include a trailer, music video and Deleted
Scenes with more of the same.
The only
stereotype we do not get is the “holier-than-thou” one established by the huge
financial success of Tyler Perry and here he is again with Meet The Browns: Season 5 (2010) which we have reviewed often
before and is long past its prime. Not
that it was any good to begin with, but it is from a moneymaking formula and
why change it? At least Perry spends his
money in smart ways off camera, so it is not as irritating, but do we have to
watch it? Yawn. There are no extras, especially since there
can be nothing to possibly say.
One of
the worst imitators of the many from the Perry Formula (let’s dub it that) we
have seen lately of many is Tom Alexander’s A Mother’s Love (2010) made even worse by being approved by the
shrill, politically slanted and now comfortably arrogant Dove Foundation. I never had a problem with them at first and
could live with someone endorsing titles, even under the increasingly
suspicious moniker of “family” friendly, but they have overplayed their hand
and this is a mess.
The toxic
behavior begins with a mother talking down to her grown daughter by pushing her
away and telling her to get a “good man” and that she needs one no matter
what. Why? Because only co-dependence equals happiness? Because she is concerned her daughter might
“go lesbian” at the last minute? Because
she wishes she never gave birth to her?
This is how crude this is and that is just the opening.
The 104
minutes of this seems longer than Dysfunctional
Friends (an achievement in obnoxious boredom) and wow, is this particularly
bad. If a Top Ten Worst Tyler Perry Impersonators list is ever made, this
would be a candidate for decades to come.
A trailer, Producer’s Interview and (oh no!!!) feature length audio
commentary track by Alexander are the extras.
And to
prove it is not only African Americans who are badly portrayed in relationship
narratives on screen, we have David Robert Mitchell’s The Myth Of The American Sleepover (2010) which has a cast of young
people (starting with the focus on four of them as you have to start somewhere)
enjoying their last night of fun together in an empty place where they are
having a gathering with nothing else to do.
As is the case with so many all-white cast independent features, it is a
mumblecore bore where everyone seems bored, does not know how to express
themselves, are emotionally troubled (aren’t we all? I don’t know, but these films seem to think
we are) and act too often like they in a coma or sleepwalking like zombies, but
without their flesh deteriorating.
One thing
they have in common with the African American titles above are the profound
sense of sexual oppression and cluelessness of the real world around them. As in those exercises, I never believed
anything I saw here, rarely did anyone talk like they would in real life and
what few things worked here were weak, did not lead to anything and were
nothing new. Here again, what is the
point of this release? It is not
anything close to honest or realistic, but I blame Mitchell before the cast who
are just trying to get seen. Another
dud, the only extra is a trailer, as what else could anyone say about this one.
At least
none of the child characters are as unrealistic, precocious and
talk-at-everyone as we get with the title character of Trinity Goodheart (2011) played by Erica Cluck. She actually has some personality and could
likely act, but she is so busy being so loud and overacting (thanks to the bad
advice of Director Joanne Hock) that I thought she might be auditioning for Annie or trying to sell Pringles 15
years too late (figure that one out for yourself) and the sloppy, sappy
melodrama makes everyone look dumb.
Eric
Benet and maybe James Hong are the best known actors here and like everyone
else, they are not given much to do and we never get anything that is real or
honest, making this play like a bad TV movie.
Approved by that Dove Foundation again (think of that dove logo lie a
mark of living death) this also tries to be funny and never once is leaving us
wasting 90 minutes of our time. There
are no extras.
So what
are we to do? Let’s go back a while ago
and look at an Italian film with similar aims.
Antonio Pietrangeli’s The Visitor
(1963/aka La Visita) is a
drama/comedy about a young woman (Sandra Milo) who puts a print ad in a
publication in its relationship column (talk about pre-Internet) and lands up
attracting a blind get-together with a man (Francois Perier) who meets the
criterion of a working man who has an adult life with adult responsibilities,
but he is mousy and they are not that compatible.
The film
has smart moments about faith in then-current society, the changing roles of
men and women in that society, changing norms and some moments that are at
least amusing, but even this film (despite opening with some promise and maybe
a sense of Jacques Tati comedy initially) is too broad and does not quiet add
up, but unlike the other works, this has a sense of maturity, honesty and
ambition about it that is not held back by pretension and phoniness. The performances are not bad and it was at
least not intelligence insulting, but even it did not add up. Yet, it is easily the best title on the list.
Extras
include three on-camera interviews (Ettore Scola, Composer Armando Trovajoli,
Director Pietrangeli), text bio/filmography on Pietrangeli and PDF booklet on
the film with tech information, an essay and illustrations.
The
poorest image performers are the four DVDs here with anamorphically enhanced
1.78 X 1 presentations: Dysfunctional,
Meet, Love and Trinity, with
limited color range, motion blur and more softness throughout then they should
have, despite all being new HD shoots.
Maybe Blu-rays would help them look better, but not by much. The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on
Sleepover is better, but only by so
much as it also has some of the same issues, but not to the same extents. That leaves the letterboxed black and white
1.85 X 1 image on Visita, which is
also soft and despite having a good print, is not anamorphically enhanced for
some strange reason. The print can show
its age at times, but looks pretty good for a film about to celebrate 50 years
and embarrasses the other shoots in overall consistency in its look, feel and
character.
The lossy
Dolby Digital mixes on all six DVDs are even despite the variations in time and
how they are presented on their respective discs. Visita
is 2.0 Mono, yet is solid and clean for its age, but should not be able to
equal five never recordings, especially since Italy was using post-production
sync sound for their films, but it does.
Love has 2.0 Stereo and the
makers wisely do not try to stretch out the sound, yet it has its location
audio issues and sonic limits at times.
The other remaining four DVDs are 5.1 mixes, but they have very weak
soundfields plus dialogue too much in the center channel and towards the front
speakers. Bet most of them were
originally intended for 2.0 Stereo at best.
Meet has 2.0 Stereo track as
well, with little difference from its 5.1 presentation, similar to past
volumes.
- Nicholas Sheffo
