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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
The GodThumb (2001)

The GodThumb (2001)

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Released 21-Apr-2003

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Comedy Menu Animation & Audio
Outtakes
Interviews-Character
Featurette-Personal Thoughts
Storyboards
Theatrical Trailer
Trailer-Thumb Wars; The Blair Thumb; Thumbtanic
Trailer-Bat Thumb; Frankenthumb
Rating Rated PG
Year Of Production 2001
Running Time 30:34
RSDL / Flipper No/No Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 4 Directed By David Bourla
Studio
Distributor

Warner Vision
Starring Steve Oedekerk
Rob Paulson
Megan Cavanagh
Cam Clarke
Mark DeCarlo
Paul Greenberg
Jim Jackman
Eric Trueheart
Case Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI $24.95 Music Jason Nyberg


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
French Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
German Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None
16x9 Enhancement No
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English
Dutch
Smoking No
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits Yes, Sneak peek of "Electro-Robo Boogie II"

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    For those of you who haven't read any of our reviews for the other "thumb" movies, I'll just do a quick recap. Those already in the know can safely skip this paragraph. Steve Oedekerk is responsible (either partly or wholly) for quite a number of Hollywood products. Amongst other things he's had writing credits for Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, directed Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (which he also starred in), and has acted in various movies as well. Now besides telling you that he seems to like film titles with an extended sub-title, this will also give you some idea of the sort of humour he produces. The word "different" is one that springs to mind, and it is very much a matter of taste as to whether he either makes you laugh, or makes you feel acute intestinal pain.

    My impressions of Kung Pow were that it was quite funny, but due to being based on pretty much the same joke for the entire runtime, it could have been cut down to half an hour and been much funnier. Hence when I first heard about his 30-minute "thumbation" shorts, I was quite keen to check them out.

    Godthumb is of course Oedekerk's thumbation take on the Godfather films, and at the risk of being flamed to a crisp, I have to confess to not really being that familiar with this classic series. However I watched this DVD with someone who knew his Godfather lore, and observed whether it got more laughs out of him or not. There were a few jokes he got that I didn't, but I don't think it made a huge difference. Like all the other thumbation shorts, it follows a fairly rambling story loosely based on the original movie(s), which is used solely for the purpose of stringing together a number of gags and skits.

    In this instalment of thumb action we firstly meet the Godfather and his extended family, who provide us with very brief and somewhat humorous breakdowns of their character's personality. Then there's weddings, singing, kitten-eating (don't ask), electro robo boogie-bots (I said don't ask), dead animal heads, a meat cube magician, assassination attempts, shootouts, bad Italian accents, violin-playing, and wedgies to name just a few highlights. It's all loosely wrapped up in a plot concerning friction that arises from the Godfather's refusal to invest in the aforementioned meat cube magician, which will supposedly revolutionise spaghetti-eating.

    Oedekerk's impersonation of Marlon Brando's Godfather had me grinning from ear to ear, and his crooning song about beautiful girls was also quite impressive. Like him or not, the guy does have some varied talents. The other voice actors were very good as well, and as always their mouth and eyebrow movements manage to turn these thumbs into more expressive actors than a lot of A-listed Hollywood thespians.

    Overall I found this to be pretty funny, although not as good as Thumb Wars, and I'm not sure how it would stand up to repeated viewings since the humour is not exactly subtle. If you've enjoyed the other "thumb" outings then you'll no doubt get some laughs out of this one. If, however, the idea of thumbs with wigs running around in dolls' houses, turning classic films into 30-minute spoofs is not your thing, then steer clear.

Don't wish to see plot synopses in the future? Change your configuration.

Transfer Quality

Video

    The video transfer is as good as you could expect from a low-budget, made-for-TV production. It's got the usual NTSC to PAL conversion problems, but is nonetheless a perfectly watchable transfer for the material in question.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is therefore obviously not 16x9 enhanced. As best as I could tell, this is the original aspect ratio.

    The sharpness of the image leaves a little to be desired, but I'm not sure how much of this is a result of the NTSC to PAL conversion. When playing the DVD with my projector and home theatre PC, the intermixed interlaced frames became quite evident, which added to the blurring of edges. However, this wasn't nearly so evident when watching on my 76cm interlaced television, so depending on your equipment this may or may not be a bit annoying. The image is generally quite dark with lots of shadows, which I'm told is the way the original Godfather was shot, and hence I assume it to be deliberate on the part of the film-makers. There were no problems with this though, since shadow detail was fine, as were the blacks.

    Taking into account that this was a deliberately darkish transfer, the colours were good. On the occasions where there were bright outdoor scenes, colours were vibrant and crisp, with no obvious bleeding or chroma noise.

    You wouldn't expect to see many MPEG compression artefacts on such a short feature, and I didn't, however there were a couple of instances of a small black dot appearing on-screen for one or two frames, which I would have thought were film artefacts if this had been film-sourced. Close inspection didn't help me much, but I suspect there may just be some pixels being left blank as a result of MPEG compression problems. The most obvious example of this occurred at 16:09 on Lucky Brassiere's white shirt. I didn't notice any distracting aliasing or edge enhancement, and of course there were no film artefacts present.

    There are two sets of subtitles on this DVD; English and Dutch. I watched about 10 minutes worth of the English stream and found them to be spot-on except for the odd "ooh" and "eh" being missed out.

    This is a single layered DVD, and hence there is no layer change.

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

Audio

    Audio was adequate, and did what was required for a production such as this one.

    There are three audio tracks on this disc; English Dolby Digital 2.0, French Dolby Digital 2.0, German Dolby Digital 2.0 and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0. I listened to the English track, and sampled the others - mainly to see if the voices were as amusing as the originals. They weren't, but they weren't too far off.

    Dialogue is very clear, and the faultless lip sync would suggest that they actually recorded the dialogue at the same time they were filming the mouths to be superimposed onto the thumbs. Even the Godthumb's mumbled dialogue was perfectly understandable.

    The music by Jason Nyberg was suitably Italian and, from what I know of it, was basically a take-off of the original movie's score. It added atmosphere nicely.

    Surrounds got minimal use, but did have the occasional ambient sound as well as any gunfire bouncing around the room.

    The subwoofer turned itself off and never re-awakened.

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

Extras

Menu

    Menus are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and are not 16x9 enhanced. They contain animation as well as music and scenes from the feature playing in the background. As a side note, the chapter headings contain some complete misquotes from the scenes they represent (deliberate I assume), and the navigation is suitably Italian; main-a-menu, program start-a, back-a, and so on.

Trailers

    Varying length trailers for the other thumbation DVDs. All are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, with Dolby 2.0 sound.

Outtakes - 1:58

    At first I wasn't too sure if these were all genuine or staged, but I think these were just genuine outtakes by the voice-actors, incorporated into the thumb "actors" for the sake of this extra. Short, but some of them are quite amusing.

Cast Interviews - 1:51

    Interviews with the thumb actors, outlining how they got the parts and so on. Again, short but amusing.

Personal Thoughts - 1:35

    Almost an extension of the interviews, with more ramblings and opinions from the actors. Its not 100% clear whether it's supposed to be the thoughts of the actors or the characters they're playing, but then maybe I'm just a bit thick.

Storyboards - 1:49

    22 storyboards from the film, automatically flipped from one to the next.

Sneak Peek - 2:00 (approximately)

    The back of the DVD case claims a "Sneak Peek of Electro Robo-Boogie II" as an extra. However this is just some short scenes that play during the 2-minute running of the credits. Not sure I'd really classify this as an extra.

Easter Egg - 0:11

    On the extras menu if you navigate up as far as you can go, a bullet hole appears next to the title. If you click on this you get an 11-second gag from the hospital scene.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

    Although I haven't heard the 5.1 track, I'd say the Region 1 version has the advantage. Even without the 5.1 sound, you also don't get the NTSC to PAL conversion problems. With it selling online for under US$10, at the current exchange rate that's cheaper than our Region 4 edition as well.

Summary

    Another decent thumbation film, although not the best of them. If you're a fan of this series then I recommend it, and even if you're just a fan of the Godfather films then this should probably be in your collection. I do wish they'd put the whole series onto one DVD set though, instead of stinging us for $20+ for each half-hour episode. Maybe we'll get the complete collection that's available in the US ... once everyone's bought them separately!

    The video is perfectly adequate for this type of material.

    Likewise for the audio - it does its job.

    Extras are limited, with the omission of a commentary separating this DVD from the others in the series. Most extras are worth at least one viewing though.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© David L (Only my Mum would have any interest in my bio)
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Review Equipment
DVDOmni 3600, using RGB output
DisplaySony 1252QM CRT Projector, 250cm custom built 16x9 matte screen. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver.
AmplificationOnkyo TX-DS797- THX Select
SpeakersAccusound ES-55 Speaker set, Welling WS12 Subwoofer

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