Look Who's Talking Now (1993)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Stuart Little
Rating
Year Of Production	1993
Running Time	91:10
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Tom Ropelewski
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	John Travolta Kirstie Alley David Gallagher Tabitha Lupien Lysette Anthony Olympia Dukakis Danny DeVito Diane Keaton George Segal Charles Barkley John Stocker Elizabeth Leslie Caroline Elliott
Case	?
RPI	$44.95	Music	William Ross

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

    Look Who's Talking Now is the third film in the Look Who's Talking trilogy. What do you do when the kids that provided much of the laughter from the first two films have grown old enough to speak for themselves and no longer require the sarcastic wit of Bruce Willis to communicate? Well, there's always the pets!

    James (John Travolta) and Mollie (Kirstie Alley) return for this, the final instalment (well, hopefully the final instalment). A few years have moved on since we last left the family which had just welcomed the latest addition to the household, the baby Julie. Both kids, Mikey (David Gallagher) and Julie (Tabitha Lupien) are old enough now to hold their own conversations, and with Christmas approaching, there is plenty of discussion in the Ubriacco household. Mikey has been asking for a dog for some time now, and when he begins to wonder that Santa may in fact not be real, James decides to take the drastic step of letting him have a dog as a means to take his mind off that most horrendous of kiddie questions. The boys head off to the pound to select a new pup, and with fate lending a hand, come home with a scruffy mongrel named Rocks (voiced by Danny DeVito). Of course, things don't quite go as planned, and when James' new boss Samantha (Lysette Anthony) decides the family could use some cheering up, especially after Mollie is sacked just before Christmas, the results are disastrous. Samantha off-loads her pampered pet poodle Daphne (voiced by Dianne Keaton) on the family. Suffice it to say the two dogs don't quite get along, having been bred on completely different sides of the tracks. And Samantha isn't just being nice for the sake of it - she has a plan and it rather intimately involves James.

    The President of her company, Samantha is continuing her seduction of her new company pilot...James. Coming up with some scheming idea that she needs him to fly to the country with her on Christmas Eve, the trap is set for James to fall into. Of course, Mollie the ever-vigilant wife, is completely aware of what is going on, and packs the kids into the car and heads off into the chill frost of Christmas Eve night to rescue her husband from the clutches of the sensual blonde boss.

    That just mentioned plot is really only a sideshow to the main thrust of the story, which is of course the laughs which occur as a result of the two talking dogs. There are some fun moments and a couple of really amusing lines, which I think you need to be a dog owner to understand, but overall the gags are pretty lame and the laughs few and far between. The kids will probably love it, but I certainly found this far less amusing than the first film and perhaps even less funny than the second offering - and that's saying something.

Video

    Since this is the newest film in the series I was hoping for a much improved look to the transfer and this one didn't let me down. Overall it is far sharper and cleaner than either of the earlier two films.

    Presented in the slightly modified aspect ratio of 1.78:1, the transfer also features 16x9 enhancement. The original aspect ratio was 1.85:1.

    The transfer is sharper than average. It still won't knock your socks off by any stretch, but it will suffice. Shadow detail is excellent and thankfully the level of grain never intrudes upon the image. There is no low level noise.

    Colours are moderately saturated without resorting to that vibrant bold look. More of a consistent and familiar television style is perhaps the best way to describe them. Skin tones are spot on and black levels are never compromised with tinges of grey or blue.

    There were no apparent MPEG artefacts, and the image doesn't suffer from any aliasing type problems. There are also few film artefacts, which is always pleasing.

    There are numerous subtitles present. The English were the only ones I viewed and they appeared to have no major problems, apart from the odd word or two being left out.

    This is a single layered disc only so there is no layer change with which to contend.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Like the video, there is nothing startling about the audio quality here, but it is again a vast improvement on the earlier two films, especially Look Who's Talking Too which had quite a disappointing soundtrack.

    There are five Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo surround tracks present. These are German, French, Italian, Spanish, and of course English. I listened to the English track and verified the presence of the others.

    Dialogue is consistent and well represented in what is a dialogue heavy soundtrack (even the dogs talk remember!). Audio sync for the human characters is spot on, but it is a little difficult to measure with the talking dogs.

    The music featured in this film is not as much fun as the earlier two films. Less songs are used and the score is much like any kids action feature. Unfortunately it is set around Christmas time, so there are plenty of clichéd Christmas songs and carols.

    There is effectively no surround channel use. Likewise the subwoofer was pretty much silent throughout the whole film.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Theatrical Trailer

    A 2:20 trailer, presented full screen, it focuses on the talking dog aspect of the film. Quite funny at times and doesn't spoil too much of the wafer-thin plot.

Trailer

    A bonus trailer for Stuart Little.

    This title has been available for some time in Region 1, but is only presented with a full screen pan & scan video transfer. There is a new version set to be released in December 2003, but I have not been able to confirm any details of this at the time of writing.

    At present it is a clear win to Region 4.

    Look Who's Talking Now is basically taking a now well-worn idea and stretching it as far as it can go. Others may call that milking something for all it's worth, but I really think they extracted all the milk in the second film!

    The video is certainly better than either of the first two films, but is still nothing spectacular.

    The audio is functional, being pretty much what you can expect for a kids film.

    There are virtually no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall