Good Advice (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio Featurette-Behind The Scenes-9:35 Theatrical Trailer-2:20
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	88:58 (Case: 90)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Steve Rash
Studio Distributor	Myriad Pictures Magna Home Entertainment	Starring	Charlie Sheen Angie Harmon Denise Richards Rosanna Arquette barry Newman Jon Lovitz Estelle Harris
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$14.95	Music	Teddy Castellucci

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/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 for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    If you like a decent romantic comedy, then you might rather enjoy this film; just don't expect too much — now that's good advice...

    This is fun. It doesn't exactly start that way. Ryan (Charlie Sheen) is a philandering egotistical stockbroker who makes a bad decision, and finds himself basically broke and unemployable. His girlfriend, Cindy (Denise Richards), is a shallow self-centred husband-with-money-seeking bimbo who does a lousy job of writing an advice column in a small newspaper, the Chelsea Journal in New York. She is not happy with Ryan moving in after losing his money, and ends up abandoning both him and the column. Ryan's only hope at earning some money is to take over the advice column, which he does, after a shaky start. It means he gets to see a lot of the editor, Page (Angie Harmon) and her secretary Iris (the very funny Estelle Harris).

    At this point, you can probably guess the rest. Well, don't, because there are some nice little twists. They have taken a number of ideas that have been done before, and spun them into an entertaining film. Superficially, there's nothing special about this movie — I won't be at all surprised if you hear this film described as corny and predictable — but it's an enjoyable effort with some big laughs. Some of the biggest laughs come from interactions with Iris — she gets some of the best lines. Jon Lovitz is meant to be the comic relief friend, but his lines don't work quite so well — that's surprising, because he's an accomplished comic actor, which is something that can't be said for Angie Harmon, yet her lines are delivered well. Charlie Sheen continues to prove that he should probably stick with comedies.

    Like I said, quite a decent romantic comedy. Plenty of laughs, and one or two touching moments. Definitely recommended.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. With an original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1, this is close enough.

    The image is a little soft, but quite clear, especially on close-ups. Shadow detail is not especially good. Film grain is not a problem. There is no low-level noise.

    Colour is not perfect, with skin tones in particular showing some minor variation, but it is not too troubling. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are film artefacts, but they are tiny — nothing worth mentioning, and probably nothing visible of a regular TV screen.

    There is some mild aliasing, a touch of moire, and no MPEG artefacts. Perhaps the most disappointing is the background shimmer that crops up far too often. Oh, it's not awful, but it's disappointing.

    There are subtitles only in English, but they include sound effects. They are easy to read, fairly well-timed, and fairly accurate, but there are a number of errors: things like "bi-orders" instead of "buy orders", like "FCC" instead of "SEC" (that's a rather amusing one), "galaxy" instead of "galleys", "breech" instead of "breach", "I could walk into a cab" instead of "I could walk you to a cab", and "eco-maniacal" instead of "egomaniacal". Looks like whoever transcribed this soundtrack was quite sloppy.

    The disc is single-sided, single layer. That means no layer change, but maybe the extra layer would have meant a lower level of compression.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English, Dolby Digital 2.0, marked as surround encoded. Gotta say that I can't see why it's flagged as surround-encoded, though, because it's essentially mono, with little in the way of stereo spread, and nothing in the way of surround sound.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand, even at 80:15, when Rosanna Arquette's scream distorts slightly. There are no obvious audio sync problems.

    The score, from Teddy Castellucci, is acceptable, but nothing special.

    The subwoofer gets nothing to do, and the surrounds are unnoticeable. Given that this is a dialogue-driven movie, that's no problem.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is static with music. Easy to operate, though.

Featurette: Behind the Scenes (9:35)

    This is a classic promotional puff-piece, nothing more.

Theatrical Trailer (2:20)

    This is a normal trailer, especially in that it blows the ending, and the middle — don't watch it before you see the film.

    This film was released on DVD in Region 1 last year by Artisan.

    The Region 4 release is missing:

• full screen transfer in addition to wide-screen
• director's commentary
• cast and crew bios
• other trailers

    The Region 1 release is missing:

• nothing

    This one looks like an easy win to the R1 on the extras front. If you are just looking at the movie, then the two transfers sound similar.

    An entertaining romantic comedy, on a fairly basic disc.

    The video quality is reasonably good.

    The audio quality is adequate.

    The extras are basic, and far less than on the Region 1 disc.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall