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Category | Family | Theatrical Trailer(s) | Yes, 1 - 1.33:1, non 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0 |
Rating | Other Trailer(s) | Yes, 1 - Teaser Trailer, 1.33:1, non 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0 | |
Year Released | 1994 | Commentary Tracks | Yes, 1 - Brian Levant (Director) |
Running Time | 86:51 minutes | Other Extras | Biographies - Cast and Crew
Featurette - Discovering Bedrock (41:26) Featurette - Opening Sequence Comparisons (0:57) Gallery - Concept Sketches Gallery - Photo Production Notes Web Links |
RSDL/Flipper | RSDL (59:04) |
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Start Up | Movie | ||
Region | 2,4 | Director | Brian Levant |
Distributor |
Columbia TriStar Home Video |
Starring | John Goodman
Rick Moranis Elizabeth Perkins Rosie O'Donnell Kyle MacLachlan Halle Berry Elizabeth Taylor |
Case | Transparent Amaray | ||
RRP | $34.95 | Music | David Newman |
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Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None | MPEG | None |
Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | Dolby Digital | 5.1 |
16 x 9 Enhancement | Yes | Soundtrack Languages | English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
German (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) French (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) Czech (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) Polish (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) English Audio Commentary (Dolby Digital 1.0, 96 Kb/s) |
Theatrical Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 |
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Macrovision | Yes | Smoking | Yes |
Subtitles | English
French Portuguese Danish Finnish Swedish Norwegian German Dutch |
Annoying Product Placement | Yes, sort of |
Action In or
After Credits |
No |
Plot is not especially relevant to this film for the simple reason that trying to bring two dimensional cartoon characters and situations into a three dimensional live action world provides a certain restrictiveness to what can be done with the story. Really, for any such effort to work, it must remain fairly well rooted in the two dimensional cartoon world. The broad plot however is that Fred Flintstone (John Goodman) and Barney Rubble (Rick Moranis) are mates working at the local quarry, when a scheming executive in Cliff Vandercave (Kyle MacLachlan) hatches a plan to select a patsy vice-president from the quarry to take the can for his embezzlement of company funds. Naturally Fred would not get a chance for such advancement except Barney gives him the opportunity by switching their exam papers, and Fred thus ends up in a management position. The position is highlighted by one very sexy secretary, Miss Sharon Stone (Halle Berry) which does cause some minor hiccup with Wilma (Elizabeth Perkins). The misdeeds of Fred as vice-president result in all his quarry mates being less than gainfully employed and the relationship with the Rubbles being strained to breaking point.
No Shakespeare In Love here I am afraid, but the plot remains firmly rooted in the cartoon tradition and as long as you approach it as an extended, live action cartoon, you should have no worries here. The main problem for me is the characters. Whilst John Goodman is a very convincing Fred Flintstone, and Elizabeth Perkins is the embodiment of Wilma, the Rubbles were not quite so well cast. Rick Moranis is reasonable as Barney but Rosie O'Donnell simply fails to convince me that this is Betty Rubble at all. Sorry, but I see this as the very weak link in the casting. Then you have the great efforts gone to to provide a convincing live action version of the cartoon props. Whilst in general these have been done quite well, at times they do strain the relationship with the cartoon too much. There is just a lack of "naturalness" to the results, which may sound odd given that we are talking a live action cartoon here, but some of the effects just did not flow as naturally as I would have expected: I suppose they are simply too cartoonish in context to translate well to live action. Brian Levant certainly has a fair degree of enthusiasm for the task, being something of a Flintstones freak, and does his best but perhaps the conceptualization of the effort was simply too slim for it to convince me.
All of which is not to say that at some level this does work, but I feel that the effort is flawed and that this is not a film that I would return to for entertainment on a frequent basis. However it was good to see Elizabeth Taylor on screen in the minor role of Pearl Slaghoople (Wilma's mother) and brief cameos by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, and CGI gurus will no doubt be intrigued by the CGI work - especially that for the creation of Dino. The undoubted highlight though is a very sexy Halle Berry strutting her stuff as Fred's secretary.
The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced.
The transfer was generally sharp and clear throughout. The shadow detail was very good, with a nice degree of depth to the transfer that highlighted a lot of the very subtle nuances created in the sets, without which the film would still have been watchable but not quite so interesting. Some of the night-time detail was especially noteworthy. There did not appear to be any low level noise problems in the transfer. I felt however that the transfer could have been a little sharper at times.
The colours were very nicely rendered throughout the movie, although the palette was generally of slightly drab colour tones. It is nonetheless quite a vibrant transfer, although again I felt that it could perhaps have been a little more vibrant. If you are looking for plenty of gaudy, flashy colours here, you will be disappointed.
There were no MPEG artefacts noted in the transfer. There were no significant film-to-video artefacts noted in the transfer. There were slightly more film artefacts noted than I would have expected, although these were never really intrusive at all.
This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change coming at 59:04. This not a particularly great layer change and is quite noticeable and mildly disruptive to the film.
There are eight audio tracks on the DVD: English Dolby Digital 5.1, German Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1, Italian Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, Czech Dolby Digital 2.0, Polish Dolby Digital 2.0 and an English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0. You should note that the Polish soundtrack appears to be nothing more than a reading of the script in Polish over the English soundtrack, and if you want to boggle your mind a little you really need to listen to Fred Flintstone in say French or Spanish - the whole nuance of who Fred Flintstone is completely lost in my view! I listened to the default English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and to the English Audio Commentary track, as well as sampling all the other soundtracks.
Dialogue was always clear and easy to understand.
There were no real audio sync problems with this disc, although a couple of times, especially earlier on in the film, I felt that the sync was a little marginal. This may have been due to some slightly poorer ADR work than we would normally expect:
The score by David Newman is not especially remarkable, but then again it has to work within the confines of what the cartoon would work with. It must have been effective as you always seem to have the feel of the cartoon with the music. Notable for an appearance are the BC-52s - better known to most as the B-52s - who added a bit of zest with a song or two.
This is actually quite a nicely detailed soundtrack with some nice use of the surround channels. There was some lovely detail in the rear channels at times, but not as consistently as I would have expected. The sound picture is convincing enough and you were nicely involved in the sound, although perhaps needing a little more ambience at times.
The bass channel was used quite effectively to give some projection to the sound picture, most notably the opening sequence of the film which quite positively booms as a rock slide cascades down the picture.
Video quality is pretty good.
Audio quality is very good.
Extras are very good.
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Audio | |
Extras | |
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Overall |
© Ian Morris
4th December 1999
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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 EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL |