Fun Size (Blu-ray) (2012) |
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Fun Size (Blu-ray) (2012) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Comedy |
Featurette-Making Of-Unwrapped: The Making of Fun Size Featurette-Jackson Nicoll - Trouble Size Outtakes-Gag Reel Deleted Scenes Music Video-"This Kiss" by Carly Rae Jepsen Featurette-Making of "This Kiss" music video |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 2012 | ||
| Running Time | 86:23 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | Dual Layered | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 4 | Directed By | Josh Schwartz |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Paramount Home Entertainment |
Starring |
Victoria Justice Jackson Nicoll Chelsea Handler Josh Pence Jane Levy Thomas Mann |
| Case | Standard Blu-ray | ||
| RPI | ? | Music | Deborah Lurie |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 French Dolby Digital 5.1 German Dolby Digital 5.1 Turkish Dolby Digital 5.1 English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 5.1 |
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
 |
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| Video Format | 1080p | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English English for the Hearing Impaired Cantonese Mandarin Danish German French Hindi Arabic Indonesian Dutch Norwegian Finnish Swedish Turkish |
Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
It is Halloween in Cleveland, the chance to pretend that you are someone else. Wren (Victoria Justice) lives with her single mother Joy (Chelsea Handler) who will not act her age, dying her hair blonde and dating a much younger man, and her eight year old brother Albert (Jackson Nicoll) who is a handful and has not spoken since their father died. Wren and her best friend, the ditzy April (Jane Levy), are invited to a party at the house of Aaron (Thomas McDonell), the hottest boy in town, but Wren is stuck babysitting Albert. Then Albert goes missing and Wren and April enlist the help of nerds Roosevelt (Thomas Mann) and Peng (Osric Chau) for a hunt to find Albert before he can get into too much trouble or before her mother finds out he is missing.
Fun Size was made by Nickelodeon and some critics have pointed out, rightly, that the film struggles to identify its target audience. For the pre-teens, it has an 8 year old getting into heaps of trouble but Fun Size has sequences unsuitable for pre-teens while late teens, the age of Wren and her friends, may well find the film rather too twee and juvenile. Fun Size also adds a sub-plot involving Wren’s mother at a party with younger people (some of the scenes there were cut and are in the deleted scenes on this Blu-ray but enough remains to unbalance the tone of the film) and includes a very strange relationship between Albert and Fuzzy (Thomas Middleditch), a worker in a convenience store who is more of an adolescent than Albert! Yet, Fun Size is quite funny in places, is sweet and good natured, is sentimental without being saccharine and the child actor Jackson Nicoll is not too precocious or annoying (just). Another plus is Victoria Justice who is a pleasure to watch. She is required to play the “straight man” when those all around her, including Jane Levy as April and Johnny Knoxwille as the aged rocker, are anything but, and she does it well.
Fun Size is the first feature by director Josh Schwartz, who has credits mainly as a TV producer, and is written by Max Werner, who also has TV writing credits. Perhaps a firmer hand may have helped the film to be more consistent in tone and avoided script missteps like the mother subplot, but nevertheless when Fun Size sticks with Victoria Justice and her problems with her brother it has some very funny moments. Fun Size is by no means the worse teen comedy out there and the Cleveland locations in autumn look beautiful.
Fun Size is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the original ratio, in 1080p using the MPEG-4 AVC code.
This is a beautiful print, sharp with fine detail in every scene. The yellow and red autumn colours of Cleveland are gorgeous, but all colours have a nice clean glossy look. In the night scenes blacks are rock solid, shadow detail exceptional. Brightness and contrast throughout the film is consistent, skin tones natural. Artefacts are absent.
Subtitles come in a wide range of European and Asian languages, and both English and English for the hearing impaired are available.
A beautiful looking print.
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Audio choices include English DTS-HD MA 5.1 plus English audio description for the vision impaired, French, German and Turkish, all Dolby Digital 5.1 at 640 Kbps.
Dialogue is nearly always clear, centred and easy to hear. The surrounds mostly carry the music, but add some effects and do include directional effects, such as doors shutting. The sub-woofer mainly gave support to the music.
The original score by Deborah Lurie was augmented by numerous popular songs by artists including Passion Pit, Blondfire, Beastie Boys, Drex, Mike Lembo and of course Carly Rae Jepsen’s This Kiss. It was a fun soundtrack.
Lip synchronisation was fine.
The audio is good.
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
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| Surround Channel Use | |
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Most of the extras are lightweight, and some of the items take an age to load.
A superficial EPK with on set footage and interview snippets with the director, writer and nine cast members, all in less than 9 minutes.
The director and various cast talk about the 8 year old actor and his activities on set.
Various goofs, some amusing.
Five deleted scenes, with a play all option. All are production quality. The scenes are:
Music video of the song in the closing credits.
Behind the scenes of the making of the music video; the artist and video director say how great everything was.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region A US Blu-ray of Fun Size is identical to our release except for some audio and subtitle options – and it does come with a digital copy, if that is of interest. There is not currently a Region B UK version.
Fun Size struggles to identify its target audience but is quite funny in places and sweet and good natured and Victoria Justice is a pleasure to watch. The Cleveland locations look stunning and Fun Size is by no means the worse teen comedy out there.
The video is beautiful, the audio is good. The extras are lightweight, but there are some and there is nothing different available in Region A.
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Sony BDP-S580, using HDMI output |
| Display | LG 55inch HD LCD. This display device has not been calibrated. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 1080p. |
| Audio Decoder | NAD T737. This audio decoder/receiver has not been calibrated. |
| Amplification | NAD T737 |
| Speakers | Studio Acoustics 5.1 |