My Girl 2 (1994)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer-Fly Away Home
Rating
Year Of Production	1994
Running Time	94:46
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Howard Zieff
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Anna Chlumsky Dan Aykroyd Jamie Lee Curtis Austin O'Brien Richard Masur Christine Ebersole
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    My Girl was an interesting, quirky, but ultimately rewarding film about a young girl growing up in somewhat abnormal circumstances. I wasn't expecting much from it, and to my (pleasant) surprise, I quite liked it.

    This is a sequel to that film. There's a little-known rule about Hollywood sequels — you probably haven't come across it before :-) — generally speaking, sequel = bad. So I wasn't expecting much from this film. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I liked this film, too. Now that's unusual. To date there hasn't been a sequel to this film, which is a good thing, but surprising — generally, if two films are both good, Hollywood feels compelled to make a third, and it may be truly dreadful. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

    This film is set two years after the first. If you haven't watched the first yet, please skip the remainder of this section, and hop straight to the discussion of the transfer.

    Vada (Anna Chlumsky again) is now thirteen, and getting pushed out of her room by the impending arrival of a baby — Shelly (Jamie Lee Curtis again) is nearing term, and Harry (Dan Aykroyd again) is a classic expectant father (with some cause for nervousness — his previous wife died in childbirth, after all). Shelly is concerned about Vada, fearing she is feeling neglected.

    Vada is given a school assignment, to write a piece about a person she has never met, who achieved something. On impulse, Vada decides to write about her mother (other students are writing about Elvis Presley, and so forth), but she is hampered by knowing next to nothing about her. Shelly encourages Vada to explore her mother's past, and assists in a minor plot to get Harry's reluctant permission for Vada to visit Los Angeles. This is aided by the fact that Harry's brother Phil (Richard Masur, again — they got everyone back!) is now in Los Angeles.

    Through a fairly long and complicated path, Vada manages to track down several of her mother's old friends and acquaintances from school and college. She's helped, considerably, in this by Nick (Austin O'Brien), the son of the woman Phil is working for, and sleeping with. She learns a lot about her mother, including a few things she would rather not have known.

    Anna Chlumsky is impressive, turning in a performance that many an older actress would envy. I have no idea why she isn't a big star today — apparently she's working as a restaurant critic in New York.

    This is not a work of high art, but it is an interesting diversion, and well worth the investment of time. It is not as dramatic as the first, which I think is a good thing, because the drama felt a bit out of place in My Girl. Strongly recommended if you liked the first film.

Video

    This transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. The original aspect ratio was 1.85:1, so this is close.

    The image is fairly sharp, with just a subtle touch of softness — the result is quite clear. Shadow detail is reasonable, but not fabulous. There's no significant film grain, and no low-level noise.

    Colour is nicely-rendered, with some deep rich colours on display. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are very few film artefacts to see — perhaps the only noticeable one is a black spot at 4:49.

    There is only a little aliasing, which is good. There's occasional moiré, but it isn't bothersome. There are no MPEG artefacts. All up, this is a clean transfer.

    There are subtitles in twenty-one languages, including English. I watched the English subtitles: they are clear and legible, well-timed to the dialogue, and a little more accurate than normal.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered, so there is no layer change. There's not enough on this disc to over-crowd the single layer.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in five languages. All of the soundtracks are Dolby Digital 2.0, surround encoded. I only listened to the English, which is a simple 192 kbps stream.

    The dialogue is clear and comprehensible. There are no audio sync issues.

    There's no specific credit for the score, but both Jackson Browne and Cliff Eidelman provided original music. Most of the music in this film consists of songs from the era, and they do an excellent job (as in the previous film) of establishing the film in its milieu.

    The surrounds are used for nothing significant; a little bit of score, but next to nothing. The subwoofer really isn't called upon.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The only extra isn't related to this film (just like the previous film...)

Menu

    The menus are simple, static and silent. The images are nice, and the menu is easy to use.

Trailer — Fly Away Home (2:34)

    This trailer is utterly unrelated to this film. It's a nice enough trailer, but has nothing in common with this film, as far as I can see (not even the cast). And it's the same trailer as on the My Girl disc. A little originality would have been nice.

    Well, this one is easy. Even though our R4 disc is bare-bones, it is still superior to the R1.

    The R1 disc is missing:

• wide-screen 16x9 enhanced transfer
• numerous subtitle options

    The R4 disc is missing:

• full-frame transfer (probably pan&scan)

    It's easy to choose the wide-screen version, and it doesn't hurt that the R1 is reported to have a less than stellar transfer.

    My Girl 2 is a pleasing sequel that is as good as the original, on a bare-bones disc that's not bad at all.

    The video quality is quite good.

    The audio quality is fine, but nothing special.

    The extra is unrelated to the film.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall