Can't Buy Me Love (1987) |
BUY IT |
General | Extras | ||
Category | Comedy | None | |
Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 1987 | ||
Running Time | 90:20 | ||
RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Language Select Then Menu | ||
Region Coding | 2,4,5 | Directed By | Steve Rash |
Studio
Distributor |
Walt Disney Studios Home Ent. |
Starring |
Patrick Dempsey Amanda Peterson Courtney Gains Tina Caspary Seth Green Sharon Farrell Darcy DeMoss Dennis Dugan Cloyce Morrow Devin DeVasquez Cort McCown Eric Bruskotter Gerardo Mejía |
Case | Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip | ||
RPI | $19.95 | Music | Robert Folk |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Full Frame |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Russian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) |
|
Widescreen Aspect Ratio | None | ||
16x9 Enhancement | No | ||
Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles |
English English for the Hearing Impaired Spanish Swedish Norwegian Danish Finnish Bulgarian Russian Arabic Spanish Titling |
Smoking | Yes |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | No |
Patrick Dempsey stars as Ronald Miller in this 80s teen-comedy in a similar style to a John Hughes film, but missing a little of the charm. Ronald is a high school senior considered to be among the nerdier group of kids at school. The fact that Ronald mows lawns to earn money in order buy a $1000 telescope he's keen on may indicate why he is considered a bit nerdy. Ronald has had enough of being part of the dork gang and longs for the day when the 'cool kids' can be considered his friends. Unfortunately, this does not look like happening soon, and Ronald also has another problem. He has a major crush on the cutest and most adorable girl at school - the highly popular Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson), who is also captain of the cheerleaders and quite naturally among the most popular people at the school. Now anyone who has ever attended any school ground will know of the gulf that exists between the cool group and the non-cool group. There is a gaping chasm that exists here and one that shall never be crossed. You know the sort of thing - separate lunch areas, separate interests, separate friends. Well, Ronald Miller decides he is going to cross this chasm and become cool before the end of the year. His other mission is to take Cindy Mancini to the end-of-year prom.
Now these seem like pretty big goals for the year. Ronald's mates reckons he's nuts and should just stick to being a dork and playing cards with them every Saturday night. But Ronald is a man on a mission, so when he is presented with an opportunity too good to refuse he decides to take it. Spotting the lovely Cindy in a bind in the local shopping mall, Ronald leaps to the rescue. Cindy needs $1000 urgently to replace a dress of her mother's that she ruined while wearing it without her permission. Ronald was just about to hand over his hard-earned $1000 for his new telescope, but suddenly decides to help Cindy out of her sticky situation. His plan is to give her the money in exchange for one simple thing. Cindy must pretend to be Ronald's girlfriend for a whole month. The idea is that with the cutest girl in school on his shoulder, Ronald will instantly become part of the cool crowd and his problems will be over. Cindy is reluctant but eventually agrees.
Of course not all goes quite to plan. Ronald is immediately taken into the cool clique, but appears to have lost his old friends who all feel he has betrayed them. He also starts to change, slowly at first, but eventually becomes such a trend-setter around school with a flock of followers that his ego just begins to swell way out of proportion. When it comes time to end the deal with Cindy after the 'one-month rental', he makes a complete fool of himself and embarrasses Cindy at the same time - all just as she was beginning to feel some affection for him. Can Ronald repair the damage and win back not only Cindy but all his real friends who have deserted him as well? Well, I think the answer should be obvious.
I've had fond memories of Can't Buy Me Love ever since I first saw it a little while after its initial release. I guess I considered myself a little like Ronald Miller and certainly not part of the 'in-crowd' at school. This is my first repeat viewing since I first saw it, and the gloss has worn off a little. The thought of paying a girl to go out with you just seems a little too distasteful nowadays. But then I guess this was set in the 80s when money was the answer to everyone's problems!
I wasn't expecting a whole lot in terms of video quality here, and unfortunately it didn't disappoint, with an incorrect aspect ratio and a general soft appearance to the whole thing that isn't a whole lot more inspiring than the old VHS rental tape.
The first major problem is the aspect ratio. While I can't find any reliable information, I would suggest the original aspect ratio was 1.85:1. What we get here is quite obviously an open-matte transfer in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is therefore not 16x9 enhanced. Overall this is only an average transfer in terms of sharpness and detail. It really does feel like an old VHS copy much of the time. There is some edge enhancement, which doesn't dominate, but it is obvious. There are no shadow detail problems. Grain is evident but not too troublesome. There is no low level noise.
Colours are adequate without being super vibrant. I was expecting all manner of 80s icky fashion colours to be on display, and they are, but the overall colour scheme really lacks any punch. Just one too many shades of pastel lime-green and pink are on display. Skin tones tend to be a little red on occasion, but are predominately natural enough.
I saw no compression artefacts and with this not really being the sharpest image you have ever seen there is no aliasing present. There are a few film artefacts present, but most are of the smallish black-and-white-spot variety and can be easily overlooked.
There are a few subtitles available. I sampled the English and English for the Hearing Impaired variety and found them mostly accurate.
This is a single layered disc only. This isn't surprising since the only thing on the disc is the ninety minute film. As a result, there is no layer change to navigate.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
There are three audio soundtracks on this disc. A remastered English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is joined by similar Spanish effort. Rounding out the selection is a Dolby Digital 2.0 Russian soundtrack.
I naturally enough listened only to the English soundtrack. This is not a startling remastered track by any means. There is some separation across the front channels, but the rears remained almost silent throughout. Dialogue is anchored front and centre with only a few sound effects and the music numbers pumping out the left and right channels. The dialogue itself is fairly lacklustre at times, coming across quite flat and lifeless.
The soundtrack for this film features, quite unsurprisingly, one Beatles number in Can't Buy Me Love, and a few other songs such as Dancin' With Myself by Billy Idol and Surfin' Safari by The Beach Boys.
There is very little surround channel use heard throughout.
There is also very little subwoofer use. Not surprising really, as it isn't the sort of soundtrack that needs it.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
There are no extras.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region 1 disc is exactly the same as the Region 4, right down to the 1.33:1 open-matte aspect ratio.
It's funny when you go back to a film you only saw once when it was first released, and had remembered with fondness. Call it nostalgia, but I really wanted to enjoy this one again as much as I remember I did when I first saw it. But unfortunately I didn't. Maybe I've grown old and cynical, but the thought of paying a cute young girl to pretend to be your girlfriend for a month just seems a little too distasteful now.
The video quality is average only. Nothing spectacularly eye-popping, but to be fair there are only a handful of faults evident.
The remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is fairly flat and unremarkable.
There are no extras.
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Loewe Xemix 5106DO, using RGB output |
Display | Loewe Calida (84cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
Amplification | Harmon/Kardon AVR7000. |
Speakers | Front - B&W 602S2, Centre - B&W CC6S2, Rear - B&W 601S2, Sub - Energy E:xl S10 |