Chasing Holden (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	97:31
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Malcolm Clarke
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	DJ Qualls Rachel Blanchard Sean Kanan Tom Rack
Case	?
RPI	Rental	Music	Luc St. Pierre

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Once there, he runs afoul of the resident school bullies, whom he deals with in short order. But while he doesn't have any standover bullies to deal with, what he does have to deal with is himself and his own mind. While he is trying to make some sense of his new surroundings, Neil meets up with two people whom he can confide in: teacher Alex Patterson and student T.J. Jensen. Alex Patterson is younger than some of the other teachers at the school, but his advice and guidance for Neil is timely, as is the meeting of another student, T.J. Jensen. After a flirtatious first meeting, the two again meet up in the school's drama class where their spontaneous two-handed improvisation leads to an ovation by the rest of the class. The chemistry begins to work between the two and they begin to see each other after class and eventually Neil meets T.J.'s parents. But eventually Neil's troubled mind begins to affect proceedings and the catalyst of all the young man's troubles is an assignment by Mr. Patterson.

    In Mr. Patterson's English Literature class, the assignment that has been given is to follow the character Holden Caufield from the J.D. Salinger book The Catcher in the Rye after the end of the book. Neil baulks at the assignment at first, calling it almost sacrilege. "It's like adding books to the Bible" he says. But the assignment stands and Neil has to finish it as everyone else must. Seeking some insight into the character, Neil writes to the book's author J.D. Salinger with high hopes and in fact confidence of a reply. Neil is aware of the fact that the author now lives in self-imposed exile from public life with little contact with the outside world, very few interviews and probably almost no interest in discussing his book The Catcher in the Rye. Still, Neil has dreams of a reply, but when the reply does come it is very much not what Neil had been hoping for and he immediately sets out to find the reclusive author and talk to him. Inviting his new friend T.J. to go along with him, the two travel to New York City to see the sights (T.J. has never seen the city before) and after some time begin to make their way to the home of J.D. Salinger. As they get closer to their destination, Neil becomes more and more obsessed and by the time they near their goal, we begin to wonder if it's just a meeting with the author that Neil has in mind, or something else.

    Admission time. I've never read The Catcher in the Rye. Perhaps I was too caught up in my own teenage angst to read the 'classic mantra' on the subject and I instead spent my time reading older classics such as Les Miserables and Gulliver's Travels. I've heard much about it and it has come up many times in films over the years. But the one thing that I found strange is that while many films will quote the book and acknowledge its existence, the book itself has never been made into a film. This is because of an adaptation of a J.D. Salinger short story that originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine called Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut which became the 1949 film My Foolish Heart. To say that Salinger was unhappy with the end result of his work translated to the big screen would be an understatement, and from that film on Salinger would refuse to ever sell the rights to any of his works to any Hollywood studio and hence the complete absence of a Catcher film. This of course hasn't stopped writers and filmmakers from incorporating references the author's work into their own, and even basing characters on the author himself. Terrence Mann, the author depicted in the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams is based on the reclusive Salinger and in fact is actually Salinger himself in the W.P. Kinsella book Shoeless Joe.

    So what can I say about this film? First of all, it's not in the running for the Oscars this year (or any year). Perhaps this is an unfair comment as it looks as if this was never meant to have a cinema release and instead was made for the continually popular home video market. The production values are quite good and this has the look of a well made pay-TV film rather than a made-for-network-television movie (yes, there is a difference). A real surprise with this film is its writer, who is none other than The Bold and the Beautiful's Sean Kanan who plays Deacon Sharpe in the show. Along with acting work, Kanan both wrote and acted as Executive Producer for this film as well as producing the 2001 film March which looks to be another straight-to-video affair. The film's main star is actor DJ Qualls who can be seen in the teen comedy Road Trip (2000) as well as the up-and-coming blockbuster (maybe) The Core. Qualls does a credible job as the angst-ridden teen, but I did find it a little hard to believe that T.J. (played by Rachel Blanchard) would be so instantly attracted to him. Still, it is the movies. Rachel Blanchard as T.J. does a very good Alicia Silverstone impersonation with a characterization that belongs in Clueless rather than here. As I didn't believe that T.J. would be attracted to Neil, the same goes for Neil whom I really couldn't believe would be attracted to T.J. on anything other than a physical level, as T.J. is a real dingbat.

    Is this worth seeing? Perhaps if you are a fan of The Bold and the Beautiful and want to see more of Sean Kanan then this would be one way of doing it. Otherwise, we've seen almost every element set out here a zillion times. Think The Dead Poets Society with less of the character-driven drama, charm and quality performances, chuck in a bit of road trip, shake it up and hope for the best. I wish that there was more I could recommend from this film, but alas, there isn't.

Video

    The film is presented in 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. The film's original aspect ratio is 1.85:1 and 1.78:1 is an acceptable variant.

    The sharpness of the image throughout the film is fairly good with the only major factor hampering the clarity of the picture being MPEG pixelization that is quite visible from time to time. Otherwise, the picture is quite clean and sharp. Shadow detail is of reasonable quality with an acceptable level of detail revealed during the darker scenes in the film. Low level noise didn't seem to be a real problem.

    Colour use during the film was quite natural, although somewhat muted and soft at times, which seemed in tune with the director's intent. The commitment of colour to this disc looks to be accurate with no issues of note.

    Of all the artefacts that come to the fore on this disc, MPEG artefacts are the most common. While outright macroblocking isn't a problem, pixelization is with what looks to be a fairly basic compression job being done with this title. An example of this quite noticeable artefact is at 12:45 with an image that is quite noisy because of the flurry of MPEG pixelization visible. Aliasing isn't such a problem and though visible, is not to such an extent as to draw undue attention to itself. The print used to commit this film to DVD is quite clean and there are very few film artefacts visible. Grain can be seen at times but is far from distracting.

    There are no subtitle options on this disc.

    This disc is formatted single layer and as such, a layer change is not an issue.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are two audio tracks available here, these being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix and an English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded mix.

    With a film primarily based on dialogue, it's quality is important and I found that this disc presented the dialogue audio very well with no real issues of clarity as I at all times could understand the characters. I also had no issues with sync, dialogue or otherwise.

    The music for this film comes from film scoring newcomer Luc St. Pierre who has little work to his credit other than a score for a short film and a documentary Prisoner of Paradise, which has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. While I found his score to be workable, it was not overly memorable. Fine for the subject matter and stature of the film, but that's about it.

    The surrounds for the most part are used in an atmospheric fashion during much of this film with little for them to do as this is a character-driven piece and not any sort of action blockbuster. There were a couple of instances where the rears offered more than the usual atmosphere such as at 22:15, but these were isolated cases.

    As is the case with the surrounds, such is it with the LFE channel with the subwoofer backing up the mains. There was little in the way of major action or intense music that would lead to the subwoofer coming to the fore and in this case it plays a minor supporting role.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

• Play Movie
• Scene Selection (static images with chapter titles)
• Play Trailer
• Audio Options (Dolby Digital 5.1 or 2.0)

Theatrical Trailer  -  1:44

    This is the typical trailer that we would see at the start of a videotape before the main movie. It gives the film the look that perhaps it is something that was once at the pictures and perhaps we'd missed it. It also gives the viewer the impression that it might be some sort of romantic road trip comedy about life and love rather than its real subject of angst, obsession and death. Presented full frame with Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded audio.

     This film was released on DVD in Region 1 in July of 2002. There are several differences to the package we get here in Region 4.

     The Region 4 version misses out on:

• Filmmaker's Commentary - Screenplay author, Executive Producer and actor Sean Kanan, actress Rachel Blanchard and Co-Producer Jessica Hammerschlag
• English and Spanish subtitles
• Theatrical Trailers: Lovely & Amazing and Ten Tiny Love Stories

     The Region 1 disc misses out on:

• English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded mix
• Animated menus with audio

     Any reader of my reviews knows that if there is one thing I hate missing out on, it's commentaries. So much of what goes into a film can be gleaned from them, so it's quite disappointing that our disc here in Region 4 misses out on one of these. With this in mind, I would have to pick the Region 1 disc as the better version with the commentary, subtitle options and the same Dolby Digital 5.1 mix available.

     For mine, Chasing Holden was a disappointment with too little story development and some clichéd characterizations that provided an empty viewing experience. Nothing here really sets this film apart and I'm sorry that I can't recommend this film.

     The video is watchable, although it suffers from some noisy MPEG pixelization that is mildly distracting.

     The audio is fine and more than adequate for the film's proceedings.

     The extras are thin with only a theatrical trailer on offer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall