A
Royal Night Out (2015/Fox
DVD)/Unlikely Heroes
(2014 aka Schweizer
Helden/Olive Blu-ray)
Picture:
C+/B Sound: C+ Extras: C- Films: C
Here
are two new foreign drama/comedies that try to work, but....
Julian
Jarrold's A Royal Night Out
(2015) takes place on VE Day as WWII has mostly ended with an Allied
victory and the two British Royal Princesses Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon)
and Margaret (Bel Powley) go out on the town anonymously to enjoy the
celebrations. Their parents (Rupert Everett and Emily Watson) barely
approve, but off they go and it becomes an adventure with some
misadventure, but the screenplay has too many cliches to really buy
many of the events and the film tends to drag despite the good
casting, including Jack Reynor as a young soldier who gets involved
unknowingly with future royalty.
In
the end, it is far, too forgettable, has too many missed
opportunities, is too safe, does not feel like the period all the
time and even plays like a TV movie too often. Too bad, because this
could have worked nicely, but settles for lite entertainment. That
has been a problem with too many British releases of recent years,
but that's the way it is.
Peter
Luisi's Unlikely Heroes
(2014) is a German film trying to imitate some of those British and
Hollywood films as a divorcee (Esther Gemsch) whose children have
moved on decides to get involved with a local group of immigrants she
never met, helping them and this leads to a stage production of
William Tell.
However, what was intended as passive involvement becomes more
serious as she is unhappy with the way immigration is treating people
who have not done anything and starts to get more involved.
The
point becomes how we all in the world are one big happy family and
why can;t we be friends and help each other all the time, but this
attempt at a feel good film with underlying realism is too much of
everything we've seen before, just with different people we are less
likely to meet and with languages we also don't hear enough. I can
understand why people would enjoy this to some extent, but it was a
run-on film for me that never got better, no matter the opportunities
to do so. Only see it if you are really curious.
Extras
include Original Theatrical Trailers on both releases, while Royal
adds Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and other cyber
iTunes capable devices and Behind The Scenes/Making Of featurette
running just over 10 minutes.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Royal
insists on various monochromatic colors to denote the past as if the
images are aged, but this never works out and adds to the cliches,
looking good at best for the format, while the 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Heroes
is more
naturalistic and consistent throughout if not particularly memorable
with color that is decent.
The
lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Royal
has some activity here and there, but also its quiet moments, but the
decent soundmix is undermined by the lossiness of the format, so I
bet this would sound better lossless. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
2.0 German/Swiss-German Stereo lossless mix on Heroes
is more compressed, limited and too quiet at times, making for a
strange, problematic playback sonically throughout like nothing I've
encountered in a while.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
