Dick

Collector's Edition

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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Comedy?	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - 1.33:1, not 16x9, Dolby Digital 5.1 (2:04)
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - Dolby Digital City
Year Released	1999	Commentary Tracks	Yes, 1 - Andrew Fleming (Director) and Sheryl Longin (Co-Writer)
Running Time	90:45 minutes	Other Extras	Biographies - Cast and Crew Blooper Reel (11:13) Deleted Scene (1:13) Featurette - Making Of (4:43)
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (72:14)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region	2,4	Director	Andrew Fleming
Studio Distributor	Columbia TriStar	Starring	Kirsten Dunst Michelle Williams Dave Foley Harry Shearer Dan Hedaya
Case	Transparent Brackley	Starring
RPI	$39.95	Music	John Debney

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 448Kb/s) German (Dolby Digital 5.1, 448 Kb/s) English Audio Commentary (Dolby Digital 2.0, 256 Kb/s) Isolated Music Score (Dolby Digital 5.1, 448 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	No
Subtitles	English German Dutch Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Swedish Turkish German (Audio Commentary) Dutch (Audio Commentary)	Annoying Product Placement	No
Subtitles		Action In or After Credits	No

Plot Synopsis

This is just so bad...

Question: you have a spare $13 million to do with as you wish. Do you:

Donate it all to charity thereby enriching the lives of thousands? or
Invest it wisely to return you a steady income of $1 million plus a year (before tax)? or
Build a lasting monument to yourself and your ego? or
Blow the money on material things but enjoy yourself doing it? or
Spend it on making a crappy movie to lose you over half of the money?

If your answer is 5, then congratulations - you have all the right ingredients to become a major figure in Hollywood. In other words, no sense whatsoever. Yes folks, some people somewhere not only decided to take a lemon of a script and turn it into a lemon of a film, but presumably also convinced other people to ante up the budget of $13 million to make the lemon. I would be loathe to suggest that anyone involved with this project actually put any of their own money into it.

I appreciate that I am supposed to provide some sort of plot synopsis here, so here it is: there is no discernible plot with which to concern yourself. What is the film about? Basically two dumb teenagers (Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams) doing stupid things that broadly revolve around the Watergate scandal that brought Tricky Dicky (Dan Hedaya) to his knees (and permanent disgrace). Beyond that, I am not going to elaborate for fear of needing to rush to the bathroom to vomit.

This is possibly the only film I have ever seen that can make any Jean Claude Van Damme film - or indeed even a Dennis Rodman film - look like the greatest film ever made. The story is a shocker, the acting is so excruciatingly over-the-top that I think that they were actually trying to make a spoof and failing miserably, the direction is non-existent and the comedy is similarly non-existent. There is nothing the slightest bit redeeming about this effort that can be mentioned, except perhaps the fact that it has a rather decent collection of great 1970s songs - albeit in usually truncated form. The fact that the voters on the Internet Movie Database have rated this a solid 6.7 is beyond my comprehension: they must have all been on some sort of super duper upper of some description. Suffice it to say that I have made my small contribution to righting this serious overrating of this piece of celluloid by rating it a 1 - and the only reason it got that is because I cannot give it a zero.

There is nothing on earth that will ever get me to watch this piece of garbage ever again. Dick is an absolutely stupid movie that is even worse than the generally lamentable Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, made doubly worse because it does not have the gorgeous Mira Sorvino to watch. Not even the presence of Kirsten Dunst can lift this utter piece of dross out of the rubbish bin in which it should have remained. If real life turkeys were this big, the entire world could be fed with just a paltry number of them. Dick should be avoided at all costs, and to think that I actually wanted to review this effort...

Transfer Quality

Video

Well, I may have some serious problems with the actual content of the movie, and the content on the DVD, but from a technical point of view there is nothing to complain about here. Whilst it is certainly not absolute top drawer stuff, at least by the generally lofty standards of Columbia TriStar, this is definitely a typical good quality transfer that they manage to do better than most.

The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced.

Whilst not displaying the sharpest picture that you will ever see, the transfer does have a nice consistent semi-sharp look to it which in many ways evokes the style of the era being portrayed. Whilst there are occasional momentary lapses in the sharpness, most especially where some of the scenes around the Watergate building are concerned, this is not in any way a detraction from the transfer. Detail is generally very good, even in the darker scenes (of which there are a few), and shadow detail was also good throughout. There were a few odd moments when perhaps the shadow detail could perhaps have been ever so slightly better, but in general that would be harping over some really rather minor issues. This thankfully is a quite clear transfer, so some of the rather garish 1970s colours that could have posed some problems end up looking as they were intended. There did not appear to be any significant problems with grain in the transfer at all. Low level noise was also not a problem here.

Given some of the rather garish colours that could have been offered here, there was some concern going in to the review session about how it would all look. I should not have been worried, as in general the colours have been handled very well in the transfer. Despite the preponderance of pinks and lime greens in some scenes, everything was handled in such a way that the result is very believable: indeed, the lime green bedroom walls took me back to my own days of having such a colour scheme in my own bedroom all those years ago. Groovy stuff indeed, and looking very realistic indeed. There was nice depth to the colours that was consistent during the film, and the overall result is not only quite vibrant but suffers not the bit from over saturation. There was no problem with colour bleed in the transfer as far as I could see.

There are no apparent MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There were no real problems with film-to-video artefacts in the transfer. Film artefacts were generally absent from the transfer, reflecting the relative youth of the source material.

This is an RSDL formatted DVD with the layer change coming at 72:14. Whilst it is just a little noticeable, it could hardly be called a disruptive layer change.

Audio

Matching the video transfer is a decent audio transfer.

There are four audio tracks on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a German Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, an English Audio Commentary in Dolby Digital 2.0 and an Isolated Music Score in Dolby Digital 5.1. I stuck with the English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, whilst also sampling the Audio Commentary and Isolated Music Score.

The dialogue was generally clear and easy to understand, with just a few odd moments when the volume needed to be adjusted a tad due to inherent low level of the dialogue. Mind you, on occasions the dialogue was so bad that I really wished that I could not hear it!

There did not appear to be any problems with audio sync in the transfer.

The original music score comes from John Debney but this is really overshadowed by some great songs from the era - some well known and others not so well known. This is where the Isolated Music Score comes into its own and I really wish that this was an extra that we heard more of, as it really makes you realize the importance of music to film in general. This one would probably be a good way of promoting the soundtrack album for the film!

Overall, there really is little to say about the soundtrack. Surround channel use was pretty good, although my little pet hate of the lack of really good rear surround ambience was once again brought to notice. Bass channel support was acceptable without being spectacular, as befits a film that is hardly gong to rank as an audio demonstration. The overall soundscape was quite believable and quite natural. The soundtrack offers good, clean, modern sound that pushes no limits but does the job it was intended to without any fuss.

Extras

Collector's Edition? You have got to be joking, surely? This comes nowhere near, either in quantity or in quality.

Biographies - Cast and Crew

Not the greatest that I have ever seen and restricted to just four names. Rather poor really.

Audio Commentary - Andrew Fleming (Director) and Sheryl Longin (Co-writer)

I readily confess that I have not listened to this all the way through as it is simply beyond my constitutional fortitude to do so. What parts I have listened to I found to be utterly boring, with hardly anything of any real substance to it. Overall, has lessened (if that is at all possible) the experience of this film. Audio commentaries are only really worthwhile if they are by people who actually have something worthwhile to contribute to the experience of the film, who are able to communicate in such a manner as to grab your attention and sustain it for the length of the film and who know when to talk and what to say. This effort falls down in just about every respect.

Blooper Reel (11:02)

Maybe it is just me, but the words "blooper reel" sort of indicate to me that we will get to see some hilarious outtakes showing the cast doing some stupid things to their roles. Well, you wont get to see such things here, and the closest that this gets to being funny is when Dan Hedaya does a Punjabi interpretation of Tricky Dicky that will probably have ethnically righteous types gagging with apoplexy. The rest comprises quite possibly the most boring outtakes it has ever been my misfortune to watch. Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, this is not 16x9 enhanced and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. The quality is fairly poor, and it suffers somewhat from being a little on the dark side.

Deleted Scene (1:13)

Yes - the singular is correct, as there is only the one deleted scene. The reason it is deleted is fairly obvious - even by the relatively low standards of this film, it is a fairly ordinary effort that would have sunk the film even further into the mire. Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, it is not 16x9 enhanced and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. The quality is again fairly poor, and it also suffers somewhat from being too dark. Clocking in at such a short length, you can bet that this is hardly an inclusion that could be considered worthwhile.

Dolby Digital City trailer

Can we please have something else? This one is getting really boring.

Featurette - The Making Of (4:43)

You can distil all you need to know about this effort from the quoted running time. This is little more than an extended promotional trailer for the film, comprising excerpts from the film interspersed with interviews with the main cast and crew members. Presented Full Frame, it is not 16x9 enhanced and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. The quality is adequate but this really is a good example of a bad featurette.

Isolated Music Score

Finally, something worthwhile! This presents the musical score as a nice Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, generally devoid of any serious intrusions and allowing you to enjoy some of those great 1970s numbers. You have the option of listening to the whole film with score only, or using the menu selections to jump to some of the more complete numbers in the score. The one thing that grabs you here is the amazing diversity of the music of the period. It is good to hear such old gems as Popcorn by Hot Butter again.

Theatrical trailer

It is remarkable for only one thing - it condenses a lamentable film into about two minutes, allowing you to see how bad the film is without having to spend ninety minutes of your life doing so. It comes in Full Frame format and is not 16x9 enhanced, although it does come with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

R4 vs R1

It would appear that the only difference between the Region 4 release and the Region 1 release is the usual additional Pan and Scan version of the film on the Region 1 DVD with a couple of trailers for other films. These differences are hardly going to significantly influence decisions one way or the other I would suspect, so call it evens.

Summary

Dick is amongst the worst comedies I have ever had the misfortune to watch, and I hope that I never have to watch it ever again. Despite the Collector's Edition banner, this is no Collector's Edition in my view. This should be avoided like the plague in my opinion. However, my opinion is obviously somewhat at divergence with that of the voters on the Internet Movie Database. Nonetheless, I would suggest a rental before forking out your hard-earned dollars to buy this DVD, just to be on the safe side.

A good video transfer.

A good audio transfer.

An acceptable extras package.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment

DVD	Pioneer DV-515; S-video output
Display	Sony Trinitron Wega 84cm. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Audio Decoder	Built in
Amplification	Yamaha RXV-795. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Speakers	Energy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR and subwoofer ES-12XL