Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1986
Running Time	101:00
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (57:17)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Penny Marshall
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Whoopi Goldberg Stephen Collins John Wood Carol Kane Annie Potts Peter Michael Goetz Roscoe Lee Browne Sara Botsford Jeroen Krabbé Vyto Ruginis Jonathan Pryce Tony Hendra Jon Lovitz
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Thomas Newman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Italian 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	Danish Dutch English for the Hearing Impaired French German Greek Italian Spanish Swedish French Titling German Titling Italian Titling Spanish Titling	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, Sperry
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Jumpin' Jack Flash is a Rolling Stones song. We get to hear the Rolling Stones version, and another, by Aretha Franklin, during this film — both are good. This movie is not quite so good, but it could have been worse.

    Terry (Teresa) Doolittle (Whoopi Goldberg) works for a bank, entering foreign exchange transactions on a computer screen (this dates the film a lot — foreign exchange doesn't work like this today). Her boss isn't too thrilled because she has little chats (over the computer channel) with her counterparts in foreign banks at the end of each transaction (it doesn't affect her work negatively — she is the most productive of the operators). He takes her to task over the subject. That very evening, just as she is finishing for the day, an unexpected message appears on her computer screen. It's not one of her friends, however — it's a guy calling himself Jumpin' Jack Flash who wants to chat with her. She's wary, wondering if it's her boss trying to entrap her, but it turns out to be a man working for British Intelligence who has hacked his way into the banking system because he needs help to escape from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. Yeah, that sounds a bit difficult to believe, but it gets further from reality...

    As a comedy / spy thriller, this is not the best you'll see, nor the worst. Whoopi Goldberg's over-the-top antics are distinctive — I don't recall any other movie featuring a character defending herself with a giant toothbrush. Some of the slapstick material (like the phone booth) is quite funny.

    If you approach this film not expecting too much, it's rather entertaining.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. I'm guessing that's the original theatrical aspect ratio, judging by the framing.

    The image is adequately sharp, but a little soft — basically displaying slightly lower resolution. Shadow detail is not very good, but you've seen worse. There's no low-level noise, but there's what looks like some light film grain.

    Colour is fairly well-rendered, which is just as well, given the bright colours of the clothes Terry wears. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are some small noticeable film artefacts, mostly spots and flecks, but they are nothing to worry about.

    There is some very mild aliasing. There is no moiré. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in nine languages, including English. The English subtitles are English for the Hearing Impaired. They seem to be as accurate as usual, well-timed to the dialogue, and easy to read.

    The disc is single-sided, dual layered, formatted RSDL. The layer change is at 57:17, directly in between two scenes — it's essentially invisible.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is available in five languages, including English. All of them are encoded as Dolby Digital 5.1, but only the English is 448 kbps (the rest are all 384kbps). It's quite a frontal soundtrack, with the dialogue mostly confined to the centre channel, and the score in the mains.

    The dialogue is mostly clear and easy to understand, although it gets a bit difficult to understand a few of Whoopi's lines at her most manic. There are no audio sync problems.

    Thomas Newman's score is fine, but the real musical stars of the film are the songs.

    The subwoofer gets nothing of any significance to do unless the bass management in your amplifier redirects bass into it. The surrounds are used in a minor way for ambience, but if you don't have surround speakers you won't miss them.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    No extras. Nothing at all.

Menu

    The menu is static and silent, with nothing on it but scene selection, language selection, and play.

    The Region 1 version of this film was released a few months ago. It includes both full-screen and wide-screen versions. Reviews vary, but it doesn't sound like it has a better transfer than this one, and I would not be surprised if it were worse (the dual aspect-ratio discs are often restricted to a single layer per aspect ratio). It doesn't have any extras, either.

    You'll probably get pretty much the same thing buying either version.

    A medium-grade comedy/spy thriller film, on a bare-bones disc.

    The video quality is adequate, but not fabulous.

    The audio quality is good enough.

    The extras are not to be found anywhere on this disc.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall