The Lather Effect (2007/Anchor Bay)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: C- Feature: D
Here it
comes, more revisionist history! If it
was not enough that the 1960s and 1970s were being constantly attacked as a
strategy of certain Conservatives and the like, now we are at the beginning of
trivializing the 1980s and Sarah Kelly’s The
Lather Effect (2007) is a wreck that tells us in a very weak reunion story
that the teens of the 1980s did nothing but party and everything is a
joke. Those involved do not even seem
they come from the era and it shows.
The cast
includes Connie Britton, Sarah Clarke, Tate Donovan, Peter Facinelli and token
appearances by Ione Skye and Eric Stoltz that cannot save this film for
anything. If this is supposed to be the
party-only, wasted life side of the era, Dazed
& Confused (reviewed elsewhere on this site) has nothing to worry
about. The case sites The Big Chill to
compare to, a bad sign that no one understood what they were doing.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is soft throughout, likely shot on lamer
HD equipment and is as sloppily shot as it is edited. The Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 mixes are both
lame, showing that the recording was not top rate as this was produced. The addition of songs from the era are some
of the worst-applied I have ever encountered in my life and a textbook example
of how not to use classic songs in anything.
Extras include three featurettes, deleted scenes and an audio commentary
that is a bore.
- Nicholas Sheffo
