Beautiful Girls (1996)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	108:01
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Ted Demme
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Matt Dillon Noah Emmerich Annabeth Gish Lauren Holly Timothy Hutton Rosie O'Donnell Max Perlich Martha Plimpton Natalie Portman Michael Rapaport Mira Sorvino Uma Thurman Pruitt Taylor Vince
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	David A. Stewart

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) French 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 English for the Hearing Impaired French French Titling	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    What is it about high school reunions? I have never understood the fascination about returning to the scene of some of the worst times of your life to suffer the indignities once again that the in-crowd used to inflict upon the rest of us. It's a real big thing in the United States though. Beautiful Girls is set in typical small town USA, this time Knights Ridge, and the ten year high school reunion of a group of friends, who appear to have moved on very little since then.

    Willie Conway (Timothy Hutton) is a piano player and returning from New York City for the reunion. His emotional baggage is centred around his lawyer girlfriend Tracy Stover (Annabeth Gish). Willie returns home to reunite with his friends. Tommy (Matt Dillon) operates a local construction company that clears the snow in winter. His emotional baggage is a former flame Darian Smalls (Lauren Holly), which impacts upon his current attachment Sharon Cassidy (Mira Sorvino). Paul (Michael Rapaport) works for Tommy and is having problems with his current attachment Jan (Martha Plimpton). Michael "Mo" Morris (Noah Emmerich) is a manager of a local company and the only one who seems to have any contentment in his life - he is married with a couple of kids. Kev (Max Perlich) also works for Tommy and apparently is unattached - so he doesn't have any emotional problems. Stanley "Stinky" Womack (Pruitt Taylor Vince) runs a re-opened local public house, and his claim is his gorgeous cousin Andera (Uma Thurman) is visiting from Chicago, and naturally enough attracts the eyes of every attached and unattached male in the house. Willie is staying with his old man and next door is the anything-but-childlike Marty (Natalie Portman). Willie is not sure where his life is heading, along with a number of his friends, and the course of the high school reunion week sees a lot of activity as the guys come to grips with their women - not literally but rather figuratively as they try to understand that they simply can't continue to stuff up the best things they have going for them.

    Yes, it is one of those life movies that I tend to avoid, for the simple reason that it is nothing that we haven't seen before. To be honest, this is rather run of the mill stuff and rather derivative in nature. It is only lifted above mediocrity by the cast, one of the larger ensemble casts to have graced a film through my player in recent times. The highlight has to be Natalie Portman, if for no other reason than the prophetic lines regarding Willie's feelings for her and her comments about them. In light of how the lovely Miss Portman has blossomed over the last six or seven years, very prophetic stuff indeed. I'll give you the tip - I would have waited. Unfortunately not all the cast provide stunning acting (well, whoever accused Matt Dillon of being an actor?), but overall they work well together and there is a degree of naturalness to the whole proceeding that is quite engaging. The direction from Ted Demme is adequate enough, the cinematography is quite decent and the overall result is a decent enough film.

    Never to be confused with classic cinema, it is perhaps just the ensemble cast that raises this out of complete mediocrity. Enjoyable enough entertainment when you have a spare night to fill in.

Video

    There is certainly nothing much wrong with this transfer, and truth be told it was slightly better than I was expecting. The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced. This is very close to the theatrical ratio of 1.85:1.

    The opening sequence in the bar might start a few alarm bells ringing as it is rather smoky and a tad ill defined. Then you realise that this is what was intended and once you get out into the country town, everything falls into place. Quite a decently sharp transfer, there are a few moments here and there where the odd lapse can be found - but certainly nothing that is going to cause annoyance. Detail is very good in general and everything is rather well defined - even to the background. There is just a modicum of grain to be found here and there but again nothing that is the slightest bit annoying. It is quite a clear transfer, not quite up there with really modern stuff, but certainly holding its few years of age well enough. Shadow detail is very good and some of the night time scenes were as good as I have seen in any film.

    The colours are very nicely handled and the whole film has a really natural feel to it. Bright primary colours are kept to a minimum, and especially in the town scenes the evocation of a small Minnesota country town in the grip of winter is virtually spot on (the film was shot in Minnesota but is supposed to represent upstate New York). Blacks are well handled overall, as are skin tones. The saturation of the colours is pretty well handled all the way through and there is no hint of oversaturation or colour bleed at any time.

    There were no MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There were only a few modest indications of film-to-video artefacts in the transfer, in the form of some aliasing: 27:00 on the blinds, 54:13 on the car, 66:40 on the blinds and 84:21 on the truck are the extent of the issue. There were not too many film artefacts in the transfer, which was better than I expected in this regard.

    This is a single layered, single sided DVD so there is no layer change to be contended with.

    There are just the three subtitle options on the DVD, being English, English for the Hearing Impaired and French. There appear to be no real problems with either of the English efforts, although both do lose some of the dialogue here and there.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are two soundtracks on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and a French Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. I only checked out the English soundtrack.

    The dialogue comes up well in the soundtrack and is generally easy to understand. Some of the lower volume aside comments are a little difficult to understand though. There is no problem with audio sync in the transfer.

    The original music score comes from David A. Stewart but is really subservient to the popular music numbers included in the soundtrack. The score does its job well enough but really is nothing that terrific.

    There really is nothing at all wrong with the Dolby Digital soundtrack, other than the inherent issue of some fairly obvious Foley work. The sound is clean and really quite open with no problems with congestion. The surround encoding is decent enough and given that this is a dialogue driven film I cannot see how much better it could have been used. When needed the low frequency effects channel kicks in well enough, but the film simply did not need a lot of support from this area. A very functional soundtrack overall that does the job that the film requires of it.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Nothing whatsoever.

Menu

    Plain and functional - but then again the DVD does not need much more that that.

    This is pretty easy. The Region 1 release has been out for sometime and whilst it too has no extras, it also has a non-16x9 enhanced widescreen presentation and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. The Region 2 (UK) release is very similar to the Region 4, but may be available at a cheaper price. Nonetheless, Region 4 would be the joint-preferred version with the Region 2 (UK) release. Region 1 is a very long way back and unlikely to make the finish line.

    Beautiful Girls is a decent enough film with no great pretensions to being anything terrific. A bit derivative and rather obvious at times, it has been afforded a very decent presentation on DVD. The lack of extras might well gall some but I certainly did not miss them.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall