Jack

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1996	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	108:36 minutes	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	2,4	Director	Francis Ford Coppola
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Robin Williams Diane Lane Jennifer Lopez Brian Kerwin Fran Drescher Bill Cosby
Case	Amaray
RRP	$34.95	Music	Michael Kamen

    Jack's parents (Diane Lane & Brian Kerwin), concerned about how other children would react to him, have him tutored at home by Mr Woodruff (Bill Cosby). Jack wants to go to school, however, and his parents agree to let him go.

    Jack's adventures at school form the rest of the movie, with Jack initially being shunned because he is different, but later on his unique qualities enable him to make friends.

    Inevitably, this movie will be compared to Big, to which it possesses more than a passing similarity. Big is unquestionably better (no pun intended). Jack starts off excruciatingly bad, with Robin Williams and the script trying far too hard to make us believe that Jack is really ten years old. This simply doesn't work. The humour is very much forced initially, and we have to sit through a number of dreadfully tacky and dull sequences to even get the odd chuckle. Fortunately, it does a complete turn-around in the middle of the movie, and becomes funny, sad and endearing. Towards the end of the film, however, it once again falters but just becomes dull rather than becoming excruciatingly bad again. Make sure you check out the really bad make-up and prosthetic job on Robin Williams' fake receding hair-line at the end of the movie.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. I have been unable to determine the original aspect ratio of this movie, but I believe it to be 1.85:1.

    The transfer was very sharp and clear, and is remarkably good looking despite being non-16x9 enhanced. There is a marginal loss of resolution because of the lack of enhancement, but this is minor. Shadow detail was satisfactory, though there were not a lot of dark images in this movie. There was no low level noise.

    There was a small blue single-frame glitch in the bottom right corner of the transfer at 32:23.

    The colours were nicely saturated throughout, with frequent vibrant colouration, none of which ever bled nor oversaturated.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some surprisingly rare aliasing. I only noted this in two specific circumstances. The first was on a horizontally-striped top worn by one of the children, which exhibited both aliasing and some moiré effects, and the other was on some car shots.

    Film artefacts were usually completely absent, except for various times during the movie when a brief burst of film artefacts would become apparent. Rather than being isolated specks here and there, these tended to be clusters of defects which drew attention to themselves.

Audio

    The overall level of the English soundtrack was moderately low, but I could hear everything just fine, so I did not adjust my listening level at all.

    Dialogue was always clear and very audible. However, at times it had a manufactured ADR quality to it.

    There were scattered ADR sync problems with this disc, but no consistent audio sync problem.

    The musical score was composed by Michael Kamen. It was suitable for the on-screen action without being overly remarkable.

    The surround channels had only limited use for the music.

    The .1 channel, even though flagged as being present, seemed to receive no signal whatsoever. Based on the format of the French and German soundtracks, I suspect that there never was a .1 track created for this mix, though some of the music sounded as if it would have benefited from some extra bass.

What's Missing / What's Extra

Menu

    The video quality is generally exceptionally good, especially for a non-16x9 transfer, except for the occasional bursts of film artefacts.

    The audio quality is average.

    The extras are non-existent.

Video
Audio
Extras	nil
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
23rd June 1999