Soul Man (1986) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio Audio Commentary-Steve Miner (Director) And C.Thomas Howell (Actor) Teaser Trailer-1:01 Theatrical Trailer-1:58
Rating
Year Of Production	1986
Running Time	104:55
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Steve Miner
Studio Distributor	New World Pictures Simitar DVD	Starring	C. Thomas Howell Rae Dawn Chong Arye Gross Melora Hardin James Earl Jones Linda Hoy Leslie Nielsen Ann Walker James Sikking Max Wright Julia Louis-Dreyfus Maree Cheatham Wallace Langham
Case	Amaray-Opaque-Secure Clip
RPI	?	Music	Tom Scott

Video (NTSC)		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	480i (NTSC)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes, tobacco and marijuana
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

This is Harvard
I don't have to eat
I don't have to sleep
I just have to study...

    Let's get the main thing out of the way up front. Despite various things said about it, this film was never intended to be anything but a lightweight comedy. That said, it makes some interesting statements about a privileged white boy learning a bit about what it's like to be black.

    The plot setup is simple enough. Mark Watson (C Thomas Howell) has always planned on attending Harvard Law School. He is a bit of a spoiled boy who has always gotten what he wanted, although we guess that he must have studied to stand a chance of getting into Harvard. He gets in. And then his father (James B Sikking) tells him that he won't pay for Harvard — his therapist has convinced him that he should concentrate on himself. Mark is shattered. He looks through all the scholarships — there aren't any for rich white kids whose fathers have decided not to pay for them, strangely enough. He tries to get a loan, and discovers that a history of small bounced cheques doesn't make him a good risk. He tries to convince the therapist (a cameo by Max Wright) to change his father's mind — yeah, that's gonna work! His last desperate hope is a scholarship that pays full tuition plus a stipend. Catch is that it is for the best black applicant from Los Angeles. Mark salves his conscience by checking: there are no black applicants.

     So Mark starts Harvard Law as a black man. He slowly learns what it's like to be black in a largely white world. He also gets close to Sarah Walker (Rae Dawn Chong), another black law student. He tries to take advantage of being black in the class of a black professor, Professor Banks (James Earl Jones), but learns that he is mistaken. In fact, he learns that he is mistaken about a number of things...

    It's hard to believe that there were protests when this film first opened — clearly the protesters hadn't seen the film.

    One interesting coincidence: in the film, Rae Dawn Chong's character was married for two years. She and C Thomas Howell were later married 1989-1990 — kind of prophetic.

    There are some decent laughs, some painful spots of farce, and a few cringe-worthy moments, which is about average for a lightweight comedy. Plus some moments that are a bit more meaningful than is normal for a film like this. Don't expect too much, and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Video

    If your display won't display NTSC, stop reading — you won't be able to play this DVD.

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, which appears to be the theatrical aspect ratio. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is soft, but not so soft as to be unwatchable. Shadow detail is limited, with colours in shade dropping off into black rather too quickly. It's hard to tell if the softness is film grain or over-compression (from fitting the film into one layer). Low level noise is never a problem.

    Colour is not rendered too well, with skin tones often a bit orange (the worst is around 83:32). There are no other colour-related artefacts like colour bleed.

    There are some tiny film artefacts, but nothing of any consequence. There's some occasional aliasing, but it's mild, and not distracting. There's some minor moiré. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    Apart from the softness, this is quite a reasonable transfer.

    There are no subtitles.

    The disc is single-sided and single-layered. That means no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one soundtrack on this disc. It's English Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround-encoded, at 192kbps. There is also an audio commentary track. I listened to both.

    The dialogue is clear enough and readily understood, with only slight distortion occasionally. I didn't spot any audio sync glitches.

    The score is provided by Tom Scott. However, the important part of the music is the carefully selected songs — they have gone to some trouble to choose songs that fit very well (music supervisor David Anderle has done well).

    The soundtrack is not surround-encoded, but if you enable ProLogic decoding manually, you'll hear a bit of sound from the surrounds, and most of the dialogue will move into the centre. The subwoofer isn't provided a signal, but may respond to the bass in the soundtrack if you have bass management turned on.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is not animated, with a short music clip. The menu is easy to use, because there's very little to it.

Theatrical Trailer (1:58) / Teaser Trailer (1:01)

    Surprisingly, both these trailers are 16x9 enhanced. They are quite similar.

Audio Commentary: director Steve Miner, actor C Thomas Howell

    This is a reasonable commentary. It wanders around from topic to topic, but it's interesting enough. I think I'd have preferred a commentary from the director alone, but this is a lot better than nothing.

    This film, like Heathers, is a case of the Region 1 disc being made all-region, then released here. Feel free to buy this disc from Region 1 or Region 4 — you are buying exactly the same disc either way.

    A surprising lightweight comedy with a touch of bitter reality, a film that's better than you'd expect, on a decent DVD.

    The video quality is just good enough, but soft and with limited shadow detail. And it's NTSC.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are not bad, with a reasonable commentary.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall