Ja'mie:
Private School Girl (HBO
DVDs)/Wahlburgers: The
Complete First Season
(Lionsgate DVDs/both 2014)
Picture:
C/C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Episodes: C/C+
Reality
TV takes two odd twists in a send-up and an amusing new entry that is
not great, but has interesting moments here and there.
Ja'mie:
Private School Girl is the latest from comedian Chris Lilley, a
comedian who pretends to be all kinds of other characters and has a
good range in doing so, as he had in Angry Boys and Summer
Heights High. Here he plays a pretentious, phony gal so
self-important, she added an apostrophe to her first name. The eight
half-hours have a few chuckles, but Lilley is only able to make the
all-too-true funny since this is not as shocking or amusing as it
might have been in the 1980s. He also might be a be a bit of an
acquired taste, but this is as good a place to start with him and
does mock reality TV enough.
A
Behind The Scenes featurette, Deleted Scenes and Bloopers are the
extras.
Wahlburgers:
The Complete First Season (2014) takes place in the city of
Boston and features the family of actors (and former music stars)
Mark and Donnie Wahlberg. Here, their mother Alma and brother Paul
run a hamburger restaurant, an excuse to see the family together,
share photos, film, video and stories of the past and even show off
Boston.
Some
of it is obviously set-up, but it is amusing if you can handle how
long each show feels. The show is best when it deviates from formula
and is likely to be around for a while. Nine bonus featurettes with
footage not seen on TV are the only extras.
Both
shows are shot on HD and are here in anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1
image presentations with their own motion blur, et al, but Girl
is the softer of the two more than expected. Girl is here in
lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and both in lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, but
they are sonically even.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
