The Decoy Bride (2011/IFC DVD)/The First
Beautiful Thing (2011/Palisades Tartan DVD)/The Hedgehog (2011/NeoClassics DVD)/Mirror, Mirror (2012/Fox Blu-ray w/DVD)
Picture:
C/C+/C/B & C Sound: C+/B-/B-/B
& B- Extras: C/C-/C-/C Films: C
Here are
four ambitious comedies that landed up with mixed results, despite the talent
involved…
Suffering
in part from a budget cut that resulted in script cuts, Sheree Folkson’s The Decoy Bride (2011) has the terrific
Kelly MacDonald (Boardwalk Empire,
Pixar’s Brave) as a Scottish woman
who is asked to step in for a rich gal (Alice Eve) who is also a media and
movie star, trying to get married in peace and getting stalked by a goofy
photographer. The unknown woman gets to
know the groom (one time Doctor Who David Tenant) and as things change around,
they seem to start to fall for each other.
MacDonald
and Tenant have some chemistry, but it is not enough to save this predictable
production, nor are the beautiful locales or other moments that do work,
resulting in a film that misses the mark despite all good intents. I wish we could see the whole script to see
what we lost, but this also wants to be part of a cycle of “small village”
comedies that played itself out years ago.
You know, the place is safe, beautiful and quiet, so everyone has a
heart of gold and life is wonderful, etc., etc., etc…
It also
is another one of these marriage is always good comedies and that does not
always gel either. With the stars
involved, it is a curio, so don’t expect too much if you see it.
Extras
include a Deleted Scene, FX Shots, Trailer, Interviews clips and Behind The
Scenes featurette.
Paolo
Virzi’s The First Beautiful Thing
(2011) is a slightly more realistic variant of a romance from Italy in which a
mother (Micaela Ramazzotti) raises two children while trying to find a better
life and a good man, but complication ensue and like our previous film, we get
likable eccentrics we are supposed to automatically sympathize with and the
world is wonderful as the female lead (yes, in both cases) has a big heart.
The
bolder this one gets, the sloppier it gets and tends to be all over the place,
making it fragmented, not very memorable and not too original. As well, some performances are better than
others and the group of them never really gels.
I hoped for more, but this is just not that good and only serious
Italian Cinema fans should bother.
Extras
include trailers for this and three other Palisades Tartan releases.
Mona
Achache’s The Hedgehog (2011) is a
French film that is also in basic mode of the previous films, but being French,
tries to be artsy about it. The title
character (more or less) is a heavy set woman (Josiane Balasko) who seems like
a nice woman, but is tougher on the outside as she takes care of the apartment
building they all live in. Young lady
Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) has found her father’s old Hi-8 videotape
camcorder, she starts taping everyone and everything. As a sort of in-joke that wears thin quickly,
she adds “intellectual, abstract” thoughts every time she tapes in a nod to
stream of conscience French New Wave films, but nothing is really done with
that.
Then she
gets to know an Asian man (Togo Igawa) better, a man who always treats her with
more respect than most, gets her to speak Japanese and might be a dating match
for our live-in manager. Though this is
all nice and has potential, Achache does not quiet know what she seems to want
to do with all this and the ending is so dumb, non-profound and out of nowhere
that it seems very desperate and renders this somewhat pointless. Whether the book had the same ending is
irrelevant. This does not add up as a
film and/or the makers did not get the book, or overvalued it.
Extras
include a trailer, Deleted Scenes and a photo gallery.
Finally
we have Mirror, Mirror (2012), another
commercial feature effort from Tarsem, the Music Video director who has more
than proven to be one of the most visual adept filmmakers (The Call, The Cell)
around. He follows the mixed success of
his first commercial film Immortals
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) with this semi-spoof of the Snow White
story. What is disappointing is how flat
this comic take is, not to mention boring.
Julia
Roberts is the evil, vain Queen in a role and casting that makes sense and she
does have some fun with it, telling us about Snow White (Lily Collins) and how
a Prince (Armie Hammer) changes both their lives. Unlike the hit Huntsman version that takes the material seriously, this version is
just too cheeky for its own good and as beautiful as it can look (despite some
manipulations), comes across like a pricey cable movie instead of the big
feature film is was intended to be. Even
Nathan Lane,
Sean Bean and Mare Winningham cannot save this one, so unless you really love fantasy fiction, skip
it.
Extras
include Digital Copy for PC and PC portable devices, free music download of a
song sung by Collins, four featurettes and Deleted Scenes.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Thing
is the best-looking of the DVDs here, as the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1
image on Bride and Hedgehog, plus anamorphically enhanced
1.85 X 1 image on Mirror are much
softer than expected, made odder by so many nice shots looking
detail-challenged and even smeared in a few cases. The 1080p 1.85 X 1 AVC @ 36 MBPS digital High
Definition image transfer on the Mirror
Blu-ray looks much better by comparison to all, but I expected more clarity and
fidelity. It is all purposely softened
in this case to look like a “dreamy storybook” (as well as cover for the fact
it is an all HD shoot) but that manages to only emphasize the shortcomings of
the script.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 5.1 on the four DVDs have consistent surround information, if not
great soundfields, save the more dialogue-based and quiet Bride. This is as good as they are going to sound in
the format. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
5.1 lossless mix on Mirror Blu-ray is
the best-sounding with a warm, full soundfield throughout. However, it never goes beyond that, but is a
professional presentation and outdoes its DVD counterpart more than enough to
be the preferred choice of playback.
- Nicholas Sheffo
