The Tom Green Show-The Best of MTV's (2002)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	46:52
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Joe Friday
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Tom Green Glenn Humplik Phil Giroux
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	Tom Green

    While this disc has the proud title of being the "best of", I shudder to think what the entire series must have been like. A couple of skits were mildly humorous, but this is hardly laugh-a-minute material. The skits are awkwardly disjointed, with no flow or segues between them. The highlights (if you could refer to them as such) included the following:

    "Boy in the Bubble" - Declaring that he suffers from outdoor allergies, Tom gets inside a giant inflatable ball and tries to join some softball players on the field. Watching their frustration as he returns to the field time and again makes one wonder why they didn't just sock him in the jaw.

    "CPR Lady" - A real 911 emergency telephone operator appears in the studio to discuss CPR. The conversation soon turns to reviving dead animals, as Tom reaches into a bag and pulls out a cooked duck. I'm sure you can guess where this goes.

    "A Gift of Love" - Tom wakes his parents up at the crack of dawn to give them a present: two life size statues for their front garden. The first features them fighting in the kitchen, the second has them posing in an intimate position. Not surprisingly, they are less than impressed.

    Dukes Of Hazzard star Tom Wopat and actress Janeane Garofalo feature as guests in the studio, looking way out of their depth.

    This is terribly lightweight stuff, and I can confidently say it will never be replayed in my house.

Video

    This is an adequate transfer, considering it was produced for television broadcast.

    The feature is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, full frame.

    The level of sharpness is not as impressive as most other recent productions, with some scenes having a soft focus appearance. The amount of shadow detail is good in studio scenes, but not so great on location shots. There is no low level noise.

    Colours appeared slightly muted and washed out during outdoor scenes, but were well rendered in the studio. I suspect this is due to cheaper, low quality cameras being used on location.

    No MPEG artefacts were present in the transfer. Aliasing was very rare and mild when it did pop up, probably due to the lack of sharpness inherent in the picture. As one would expect from a television program, there were no film artefacts at all.

    The English subtitles were paced accurately with the spoken word, but were not entirely accurate. A lot of the slang and humour seemed to be lost in the translation to text.

    There is 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

    There is only one track on offer, English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s).

    The dialogue was always easy to understand. There was some slightly muffled speech at outdoor locations, but this was not a great problem. There were no audio sync issues.

    Music is not a prominent part of the show, apart from the totally daft Bum Bum Song in the show's finale. A few energetic bursts of punk rock sneak their way into the soundtrack, albeit briefly.

    I listened to some of the audio with Pro Logic II enabled, but this added no ambience whatsoever. This is certainly intended only as a stereo soundtrack, and a simple one at that.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Absolutely nothing.

Menu

    The video quality is average.

    The audio presentation is unimpressive.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall