Bat Thumb (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Menu Animation & Audio Featurette-Behind The Scenes Deleted Scenes Interviews-Character Teaser Trailer-BAT THUMB Teaser; BAT THUMB Cartoon Teaser Audio Commentary Storyboards Trailer-Thumb Wars; Thumbtanic; The Blair Thumb Trailer-Frankenthumb; The Godthumb
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	28:22
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Dave Bourla
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Steve Oederkerk
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	None Given

    Steve Oederkerk has been around a while. He's the scriptwriter of such luminous movies as The Nutty Professor (1 & 2) and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. As well as this he's directed other comedy films such as Kung Pow (1 & 2), Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and of course his classic Thumb series. These short, low budget spoofs are based around other movies and TV series of note such as Frankenstein, Star Wars, The Blair Witch Project, The Godfather and of course Batman. In all cases I've seen so far, every expense has been spared to offer the viewer the very least quality, both in scripts, acting (can thumbs act?) and sets. If you have no sense of humour then this isn't a series you'll enjoy, but for 30 minutes plus extras this is the sort of mindless stuff that either becomes cultish, forgotten or ends up in endless repeats on unwatched cable TV channels.

    Bathumb parodies both the recent movies and the old 1960s TV series. The opening sequence where a can of beets offers an apology and introduces the movie is indicative of the level of humour to follow. A quick synopsis (which can't be too long as otherwise I'll give away all the best gags!) is that Bat Thumb, played by Wuce Bayne (aka Steve Oederkerk), comes to the aid of an hapless reporter who is robbed by two inept crooks. Bat Thumb in turn has his own problems remembering his lines and warding off the advances of his new love interest Vicky Nail. Meantime, his old arch enemy No Face has robbed a bank and the commissioner sends for him. With his trusty new (and unwanted) sidekick, Blue Jay, who is even more inept than he is, in tow (or should that be toe? or thumb? argh!) he must save the day and find Blue Jay a new costume, since his current one sucks so badly.

    The whole thing is a bit of a mess with the plot consisting of bits of the movie and the TV series, with a few visual sound effects tossed in, taking the Mickey out of Michael Keaton's acting and some pretty awful jokes. All-in-all, I found it a crack-up, but then that goes to show you what sort of sense of humour I have, doesn't it?

Video

    The quality is about as decent as you'd expect and no more. The sets are cheap, tacky and obviously sets designed for thumbs. The great thing is that they work really well.

    The transfer is presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced.

    There are no problems with grain, which is minimal at worst. Sharpness is excellent to the degree that you can make out the whorls on the surface of the thumbs. Shadow detail is irrelevant with nothing to be really seen in the backgrounds and the sets being fairly two dimensional. Low level noise wasn't an issue.

    The colour is good. It is well saturated with no chroma noise or bleed noticed. The thumbtones are quite good although there's a lot of make-up used to hide the nails.

    No major MPEG, film or video artefacts were noted at all. There was possibly some very minor shimmering on the background sets, but it was so minimal as to be unworthy of comment.

    The subtitles are in yellow and utilise a good font that proves fairly unobtrusive. They are easy to read and very accurate with a selection of either English or Dutch subtitles.

    There was no layer change on this single-layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtracks on this disc are fairly unremarkable being Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks at a bitrate of 224 kilobits per second. They are available in English, French, German and Spanish. For the most part I stuck to the English version. There is not a lot of separation across the front although there is the odd swoosh that tracks across the front speakers. All-in-all, it was adequate for the job at hand.

    The dialogue was clean and crisp with no syncing errors to be noted.

    The music used is fairly unspectacular and uncredited as well.

    There was no surround channel nor subwoofer usage noted.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu Animation & Audio

Featurette-Behind The Scenes

Deleted Scenes

Interviews-Character

Teaser Trailer

Audio Commentary

Storyboards

Trailer

Trailer

• Thumbwars - 1:46 (Thumb Wars - The Phantom Cuticle)
• Thumbtanic - 3:49
• The Blair Thumb - 0:50
• Frankenthumb - 0:55
• The GodThumb - 1:07

    The only difference between the Region 1 and Region 4 versions of this disc is that the R1 version appears to have a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Although I don't believe it will make that much difference, that and the lower pricing for the R1 version gives it a slight advantage over the local product.

    A rather silly spoof/parody on the Batman movies and TV series. It has moments of humour and won't tax the brain. It is best watched with a smattering of younger viewers, since they will probably appreciate the humour more.

    The video is decent without being spectacular, but does the job.

    The audio is fine with no major dramas.

    A good extras package is offered that is actually better than the feature!

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall