Elephant Juice (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Dolby Digital Trailer-Train Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	83:59
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Sam Miller
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Emmanuelle Beart Sean Gallagher Daniel Lapaine Daniela Nardini Mark Strong
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	Rental	Music	Tim Atack

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes, drug usage
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Elephant Juice is an interesting "relationships" movie about a group of young friends living in London and their love lives. They seem to hang around each other a lot, kind of like the Friends sitcom, and bump into one another in supermarkets and nightclubs even when they don't mean to.

    Jules (Emmanuelle Béart) is recently engaged to a good looking artist called Will (Daniel Lapaine) but she doesn't realise he's cheating on her. Her good friend Billy (Sean Gallagher) is secretly in love with her but doesn't want to admit it, even to himself. Frank (Mark Strong) and Daphne (Daniela Nardini) seem to be playing a perpetual chasing game, and family lawyer Graham (Lennie James) wants to settle down with his boyfriend George (Lee Williams) but George doesn't want to be burdened and is more interested in pursuing his male modelling career and living a hedonistic lifestyle.

    Eventually Billy finds a romantic interest, a coffee shop waitress called Dodie (Kimberly Williams). Dodie is an American who is in the process of divorcing from her British husband and has a young child.

    The film follows the progress of the various fragile relationships and I'm sure it will come as no surprise that each one of those relationships will be in trouble before the end of the film. But which ones will survive, and which ones will be reformed or destroyed?

    This is a watchable film, but did not really spark any fires in me.

Video

    I must admit, I wasn't expecting this film to be presented in Scope, but in any case we do get a widescreen 2.35:1 transfer, including 16x9 enhancement.

    This is a good looking transfer, fairly close to reference quality.

    I suspect the contrast has been artificially enhanced in the transfer, as even scenes that I would expect to look dull ended up with a bit of punch in them. Blacks are really black, but I suspect at the expense of losing shadow detail. Similarly, colours are quite vibrant, perhaps a little bit too vibrant given the overcast skies.

    The only video artefacts I noticed were occasional minor pixelization in defocused backgrounds, and a slight shimmering in the closing credits. Fortunately, I did not notice any issues with edge enhancement or grain.

    There is an English for the Hearing Impaired subtitle track available, which I turned on briefly. Some care has been taken to position subtitles just underneath the character who is speaking, which I found quite useful as a substitute for dialogue attribution. In addition, the occasional Foley effect is also transcribed, as well as song lyrics and general descriptions of the mood of the background music.

    This is a single sided single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one audio track: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s).

    This is quite a pleasant audio track to listen to. It seems to be recorded at a somewhat higher than normal level (about +3dB compared to typical audio tracks).

    Dialogue is generally clear apart from a few minor instances where it falls just under the threshold of intelligibility, or it is being masked by (intentionally) loud background music. In these instances, turning on the subtitles was useful.

    As is to be expected, this is a very front centred audio track, and I did not notice any significant directional positioning or panning of Foley effects. However, the surround channels are effectively and reasonably used for background music ambience and train sounds for scenes shot in the London Underground.

    The subwoofer was occasionally used, particularly for the low bass notes during the nightclub scene around 48:58-49:22.

    The background music seems to be a mixture of eclectic pop songs (some of which are rearrangements of songs that seem somewhat familiar to me) and jazzy instrumentals. The original music score is by Tim Atack.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Given that this is a rental only release, extras are limited to a theatrical trailer. Let's hope the sell-through version will include more material.

Menu

    Static but 16x9 enhanced.

Dolby Digital Trailer-Train (0:32)

    A little bit more subtle than the typical Dolby Digital extravaganza. Presented in 2.35:1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s).

Theatrical Trailer (1:56)

    This is presented in full frame and with Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded (224Kb/s) audio.

    This title has not yet been released in Region 1.

     The Region 2 (UK) version includes a number of text based extras:

• Cast and crew list
• Cast and crew filmographies
• Production notes

    Given that this is currently a rental only title, the winner is yet to be determined.

    Elephant Juice is a reasonably watchable film about a group of friends in London and their love lives.

    The video transfer is excellent, although shadow detail is mediocre.

    The audio transfer is acceptable.

    Extras for this rental only release are limited to a trailer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall