Celtic Pride (1996)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	86:56
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Tom DeCerchio
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Damon Wayans Daniel Stern Dan Aykroyd Gail O'Grady Christopher McDonald Paul Guilfoyle Adam Hendershott Scott Lawrence Deion Sanders Bill Walton Gus Williams Ted Rooney Vladimir Cuk
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Basil Poledouris

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired French Dutch Spanish Danish Norwegian Swedish Finnish French Titling Spanish Titling	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    I can sympathise somewhat with the dilemma faced by two of the main characters in this film. The two main characters love their sporting teams - almost to a dangerously passionate level. I can almost hear my wife in the background during this film stating her oft-said line to me when one of my teams lose: "it's only a game, dear". For gym teacher Mike O'Hara (Daniel Stern) and plumber Jimmy Flaherty (Dan Aykroyd) it's much more than a game. The two mates are absolutely obsessed with their beloved Boston Celtics basketball team. When the team is winning the boys are happy and cheerful. When they lose, all hell breaks loose and family life suffers. Jimmy is single and lives the life of a sports junkie; his living room is plastered with sports memorabilia and photos adorn the wall showing off his heroes' many achievements. Mike is married with a son, but when the basketball season is in full swing, they take second place in his life. Mike's wife is fed up with this arrangement and for the second time is threatening to divorce him. Things have reached fever pitch since their beloved Celtics have made the NBA championship series, a best-of-seven encounter against the despised Utah Jazz and their number one player and all-round legend in the NBA Lewis Scott (Damon Wayans).

    When Lewis Scott gets a hot hand during game six and helps Utah come from behind to square up the championship series at three games all forcing the deciding seventh game, Mike and Jimmy become desperate to help their team in any way they can to win the highly sought championship. When in a local bar drowning their sorrows after the sixth game, they run into Scott and pretend to be fanatical Jazz fans. The boys hatch a plot to keep the star player away from the deciding game due to be played in two days and effectively ruin any chance Utah has of snatching the title. Getting Scott drunk (and getting themselves pretty blind in the process) they decide, mostly by accident, to kidnap the star player and hold him hostage until after the game. What results is a complete mess, when the would-be, bumbling kidnappers divulge their plan to far too many people, including a local police officer (who just happens to be a fanatical Celtics fan and friend to the boys).

    Two things disappointed me significantly about this film. Firstly, the production design is awful. It is incredibly cheap and nasty, especially the basketball games upon which the whole story revolves, and it is really an insult to both the NBA and the famous Boston Celtics. What is supposed to be the climax to the NBA season, game seven of the finals series, looks like nothing more than a high school game with cardboard fans (seriously I am sure some of them were cut-outs), zero atmosphere, poor lighting, and no excitement at all. I have seen more sports action at the local primary school sports day. Secondly, the casting of Damon Wayans. If he is supposed to be a pro NBA player then maybe I should look at signing a contract with the Celtics. He is way too short to be playing the role he was, and the director made no effort at all to hide the fact that he stands several inches shorter than both Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern. When Celtics legend Larry Bird appears in a brief cameo, the height discrepancy is even more obvious with Wayans at least 30cm short of the legend guard.

    The producers of this film should have steered cleared of the top-level NBA competition and tried using a high-school or college team as the focus. In terms of great basketball films, this is not a patch on something like the down-and-dirty Gene Hackman effort Hoosiers.

Video

    This is a passable video transfer that is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is also 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is best described as average in terms of sharpness, with no visible edge enhancement. There is a little grain scattered throughout, but it is hardly distracting. There is no low level noise.

    Colours are fairly dull. In fact, this is the area I was most disappointed with in the transfer. Sports films offer the chance for solid, vibrant and extremely well saturated colours of all possible shades. That just doesn't happen here, with the uniforms of both the Boston Celtics and the Utah Jazz coming across quite languid and dull. Skin tones are adequate if a little pale at times. I found the black levels to be excellent.

    There are no apparent compression problems. There are no major instances of film-to-video artefacts such as aliasing. Film artefacts are present, but in extremely small numbers and size, so much so it is barely worth mentioning them.

    There are several subtitle streams available. I sampled the English variety. They are reasonably accurate, though several key words and phrases are unfortunately abridged.

    This is a single layered disc, so there is no layer change to navigate.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are three audio soundtracks on this disc. All are Dolby Digital 5.1 efforts with the languages being English, French, and Spanish. I naturally listened the English soundtrack. It is an average soundtrack at best, though this is no fault of the transfer or mastering here, it is simply uninspiring source material  There is reasonable separation across the front channels with a few directional effects, but little in the way of surround activity.

    Dialogue is precise enough without being startling. There are certainly no audio sync problems.

    The score is by Basil Poledouris. It has all the elements of a sports soundtrack, including all the relevant clichéd parts we have come to expect.

    There is surprisingly little surround channel use. I was expecting a whole lot more during the basketball games, but the surrounds remained rather dormant for most of the film.

    The subwoofer gets only a little work to do. It isn't really missed.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are no extras on this disc.

    Information is a little limited, but from what I can gather, the Region 1 disc is identical to the Region 4 version.

    Celtic Pride is a fairly lame sports comedy film that despite the best efforts of Dan Ackroyd and Daniel Stern falls just short of the rim on too many occasions. The incredibly cheap production design, especially for the deciding NBA finals game, is a joke.

    The video and audio transfers are adequate and without major fault, but are hardly what I would call startling.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall