Honey (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation dts Trailer Audio Commentary-Bille Woodruff (Director) And Jessica Alba (Actor) Featurette-Making Of Deleted Scenes Outtakes Featurette-Make Your Move: Dance Like Honey! Music Video-Jadakiss And Sheek: J-A-D-A Music Video-Shawn Desman: Sexy Featurette-In The Mix With Blaque Music Video-Blaque: I'm Good
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	90:04
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (66:55)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Bille Woodruff
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Jessica Alba Lil' Romeo Mekhi Phifer David Moscow Zachary Williams Joy Bryant Missy 'Misdemeanor' Elliott Anthony Sherwood Lonette McKee Wes Williams Judi Embden Laurie Ann Gibson Scott Neil
Case	?
RPI	$39.95	Music	Rodney Jerkins Ludacris Mervyn Warren

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/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 for the Hearing Impaired English Audio Commentary	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    Honey is a sickly sweet teen-orientated dance-drama, drawn from the same cheesy mould as Glitter, Showgirls, and Staying Alive. There is absolutely nothing original about this cliché-soaked movie, which tells the story of a dancing bartender who dreams of the bright lights.

    Honey Daniels (Jessica Alba) works as a bartender at night. During the day, she also works in a record store, and in the afternoons, volunteers, teaching dance classes to underprivileged urban kids. When not helping to keep street kids off drugs and comforting old ladies, Honey dreams of becoming a dancing superstar.

    After being 'discovered' while dancing in the club that she works at, Honey enjoys a meteoric rise to become the premier hip hop music video choreographer (within a week or two). But alas, the sinister Music Video Director Michael Ellis (David Moscow) begins to drool over the supple and lithe Honey. When the sweet and innocent Honey rejects his advances from her high moral horse, maintaining the movie's kid-friendly rating, Ellis tries to have her black-listed in the industry. Meanwhile, the community centre where Honey volunteers at is being closed. Oh oh, the poor homeless kids will have to put on a show to raise money to keep the centre open . . .

    Gee, I wonder if it will all work out in the end?

Video

    Overall, the transfer is pretty good.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The sharpness and shadow detail are both good, although the print is sometimes grainy. Often resembling a hip hop music video, colour is used extensively in the film as part of the story-telling, and the colours are well presented. The skin tones are accurate.

    There are no problem with MPEG or film-to-video artefacts. A few tiny film artefacts appeared occasionally, but they were never distracting.

    Only English subtitles are present on the DVD, and they are accurate. This is a Dual Layered disc, with the layer change placed at 66:55.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The feature has two audio options: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) and English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s). There is also an English Audio Commentary, presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) which is surround encoded. To be honest, I couldn't hear much difference between the feature's Dolby Digital and dts tracks.

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are excellent.

    The musical score is credited to Rodney Jerkins, Ludacris, and Mervyn Warren. Obviously a lot of hip hop music is used throughout, and there are also a number of cameo appearances, such as by Missy Elliot.

   The surround sound quality is a bit of a mixed bag. At times it's done quite well, and the score is often piped through the rears as well. However, at other times the surround mix collapses into the front or centre speakers. For example, in the hall at 80:01 when the whole audience is applauding, there is virtually nothing from the rears. The LFE track is often called upon to help out with the pounding bass of the hip hop music.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    As with many recently released movies of lower quality, there are plenty of extras.

Menu

    An animated menu with audio.

Audio Commentary

    Bille Woodruff (Director) and Jessica Alba (Actor) provide an annoying team. While Woodruff points out some of the difficulties in shooting this movie in 18 days, Alba does her best to be cutesy and flippant. Usually they merely narrate what's happening on-screen, and provide a few anecdotes.

Featurette-Making Of

    Running for about 10 minutes, and entitled "Behind the Groove", this featurette is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. It includes a smattering of behind-the-scenes footage, interspersed with talking heads. The interesting bit is the footage of the auditions for the film's street dancers.

Deleted Scenes

    Running for over 30 minutes, there are a number of deleted and extended scenes presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, non 16x9 enhanced, with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio

Outtakes

    About 4 minutes of bloopers presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, non 16x9 enhanced, with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio.

Featurette-Make Your Move: Dance Like Honey!

    Hosted by the film's chorographer, Laurie Ann Gibson, this featurette will teach you a dance routine from the movie.

Music Video 1

    Jadakiss And Sheek: J-A-D-A

Music Video 2

    Shawn Desman: Sexy

Featurette-In The Mix With Blaque

    A behind the scenes look at the making of Blaque's music video.

Music Video 3

    Blaque: I'm Good

    Honey has been released on DVD in Region 1.

    The Region 4 DVD misses out on:

• Cast/crew bios
• DVD ROM features
• Forced trailers from Universal
• French and Spanish audio

    The Region 1 DVD misses out on:

• English dts 5.1

    In terms of features it's pretty even, but I would favour the R4 for the dts option, and our superior PAL encoding.

   Honey is a sickly sweet piece of fluff. I was toying with giving it one star overall, but Jessica Alba's amazing stomach has earned it another.

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is also good.

    Sadly, there are plenty of extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall