Duets (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	107:29 (Case: 112)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (72:17)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Bruce Paltrow
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Maria Bello Andre Braugher Paul Giamatti Huey Lewis Gwyneth Paltrow Scott Speedman Angie Dickinson
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$36.95	Music	David Newman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Spanish Dutch	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This is a gently sad film. And that's not because it's about karaoke. This film follows fragments of the lives of three pairs of people, interweaving their stories as they head for a single point. That single point is a $5000 karaoke contest in Omaha, Nebraska.

    The first person we meet is Ricky Dean (Huey Lewis). He makes his living hustling karaoke (they have to show us how it works, because we wouldn't believe it otherwise). He discovers that the mother of his child has died, and goes to her funeral, meeting his child Liv (Gwyneth Paltrow) for the first time. Angie Dickinson gets a cameo as Gwyneth Paltrow's grandmother.

    The second person we are introduced to is taxi-driver Billy Hannon (Scott Speedman). He is confronted by his third-grade teacher, and is told (in emphatic terms) that he is an underachiever. He heads home early, and finds his girl in bed (well, just out of bed) with the man who owns the other half of his taxi. He takes off and bumps into Suzi Loomis (Maria Bello), who insists that she needs him to drive her to California.

    The third, and saddest, person we meet is burnt-out salesman Todd Woods (Paul Giamatti). He has been driven over the edge in the process of accumulating 800,000 frequent-flyer miles that he never seems to be able to use. He feels guilty about the things he's done for his job, including causing the extinction of a species. He goes home, and is cheerfully ignored by his entire family. He cracks, and goes out for a packet of cigarettes. He seems to go a long long way for those cigarettes — next time we see him he's in another state. Soon he has acquired an earring and some new vocabulary. He picks up a hitchhiker, Reggie Kane (Andre Braugher), and insists that they sing a duet in a karaoke contest.

    The karaoke contests are not the central part of the story. They actually function as the structure upon which the interweaving storylines are hung. This works rather well, but it does obligate the film to show us more than a few karaoke performances. Karaoke, as performed in real-life, is a painful, even excruciating, thing. A critical ingredient in real-life karaoke is excessive alcohol, imbibed to the point where the most tone-deaf person believes themself to be a brilliant singer. Karaoke originated in Japan, where sake contributed the necessary inebriation. As a tilt of the hat to this origin, we see a drunken gentleman, Japanese in appearance, attempting to sing in a bar. However, this film is not about real-life karaoke, so there are some quite pleasant performances. Oh, there are some with off-key notes, but they are generally kept brief. The first song we see Gwyneth Paltrow perform is Bette Davis Eyes — it's a bit out of her range, and you can clearly hear her voice straining. Some of the other good performances are: I Can't Make You Love Me and Sweet Dreams sung by Maria Bello, Cruisin' sung by Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow (this one is in her range), and Arnold McCuller (singing for Andre Braugher) and Paul Giamatti singing Try a Little Tenderness.

    The back cover blurb paints this as a uproariously funny comedy. It's far from that — this is more of a study of imperfect people, with the occasional laugh, but more pathos. This is never going to qualify as high art, but it is good enough to keep one's interest.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and it is 16x9 enhanced. That's the original theatrical aspect ratio.

    The picture is clear enough, but not especially sharp. Shadow detail is fairly good. There is light film grain over much of the picture, softening the image somewhat; a couple of scenes in low light show rather more grain. There is no low-level noise.

    Colour is mostly very good, although some colours look a bit off during performances, but I think that can be attributed to the lighting. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are no film artefacts of any significance. There is little in the way of aliasing, but there is some moire on some of the outfits. The backgrounds look quite soft — I was wondering if they turned the MPEG compression on the backgrounds up a bit too high, or perhaps they were deliberately out of focus.

    There are subtitles in English, Spanish and Dutch, but I only watched the English ones. They are English for the Hearing Impaired, and subtitle all the songs and sounds as well as the dialogue. They are mostly well-timed, although occasional lines appear ahead of when they are said (one or two were even out of order). They are fairly accurate.

    The disc is single sided and dual layered, formatted RSDL. The layer change is at 72:17, and it is placed on a static shot of a computer screen — it wasn't easy to spot.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English or Spanish. I listened to the English, which is Dolby Digital 5.1. It is recorded a little soft, and I boosted the volume by 3dB to make the quieter dialogue more audible. You may need to boost it further.

    The dialogue is readily understood once the volume is raised. There are no obvious audio sync problems, even with the lip-syncing.

    The score (not the karaoke) is provided by David Newman. It's perfectly reasonable, and blends well with the karaoke performances. There's a very nice effect during Sweet Dreams, where the off-stage action is working to the same music as the on-stage.

    The surround speakers aren't very noticeable; they provide a bit of ambience, but nothing special. The subwoofer, on the other hand, gets a bit more work.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are no extras at all.

Menu

    The menu is static and silent, offering only Play Movie, Chapter Selection, and Set Up.

    The Region 1 disc is more of a special edition, with a number of decent extras. The Region 4 looks like a rental disc.

    The Region 4 disc is missing:

• audio commentary from the director and one of the producers
• 3 deleted scenes
• music video (with multiple angles) of Cruisin'
• Conversations with Bruce Paltrow (director) featurette
• trailers

    The Region 1 disc is missing:

• nothing

    The R1 disc looks like the better disc.

    A movie that turns out a bit more interesting than you might expect, given a good transfer to DVD.

    The video quality is good enough.

    The audio quality is good, but a little low in volume

    The extras are non-existent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall