Chasing Papi (2003) |
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Chasing Papi (2003) |
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| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Comedy |
Outtakes-(4:04) Music Video-'Chasing Papi' By Huey Dunbar, Featuring Fat Joe (3:42) Theatrical Trailer-1.85:1, not 16x9 enhanced, Dolby Digital 2.0 (2:26) TV Spots-Soundtrack (1:10) |
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| Year Of Production | 2003 | ||
| Running Time | 76:54 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (39:56) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Linda Mendoza |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Twentieth Century Fox |
Starring |
Roselyn Sanchez Sofía Vergara Jaci Velasquez Eduardo Verástegui Lisa Vidal Freddy Rodríguez D.L. Hughley |
| Case | Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip | ||
| RPI | $36.95 | Music | Emilio Estefan Jr. |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Polish Dolby Digital 2.0  (192Kb/s)
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
Arabic Croatian Czech Danish English for the Hearing Impaired Finnish Hebrew Hungarian Portuguese Norwegian Slovenian Swedish Turkish |
Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
Why exactly is this a part of the World Cinema Collection? To my mind, that collection represents films from outside the mainstream American film industry. That is hardly a description of the rather lamentable Chasing Papi. Okay, so it is a Latina film but it sure as heck comes from the American mainstream - instantly noticeable as the film itself is quite crap. Still, if you want high eye candy value in your viewing, you would not find too many better than this, as it stars Sandra Bullock's Latina twin in Roselyn Sanchez - although I am sure most heterosexual males will be salivating over the buxom Sofia Vergara. Frankly, you can forget Sofia, but Roselyn can come visit anytime she wants!
Which all goes to prove of course that the fundamentals that any film needs in order to succeed - such as story - are well and truly absent here. You sure would not be watching this for serious quality acting for instance. Indeed, I have seen better acting from a marionette than what you will generally see on offer here.
The excruciating story here is that Tomas "Papi" Fuentes (the deplorably untalented Eduardo Verastegui), a handsome advertising executive from Los Angeles, has fallen in love with a cocktail waitress in Miami who goes by the name of Cici (Sofia Vergara). That would not be much of a problem except that he has also fallen in love with a lawyer from Chicago, Lorena Morales (Roselyn Sanchez) and a society rich girl from New York, Patricia del Pescador (Jaci Velasquez). This would not be a serious problem except for one tiny little detail - all three have been watching some programme wherein the host suggested certain things that results in all three deciding to visit Los Angeles at the same time to meet Papi. You can probably guess the rest - they run into each other at Papi's house, and agree to dump this three-timing whatsit as soon as possible. This of course lasts about a minute or so, before a tired Papi arrives home to have all three turn up again and push him to the brink of a breakdown. Courtesy of some tranquilisers that have been prescribed for him, he gets rather too relaxed and passes out. He is the lucky one as the poor viewer then has to go through the second story line involving a car, a bag of money, a beauty contest and a dance session, all of which really is just a convoluted way of getting the girls all back into the same place as Papi to be able to tell him their true feelings about him.
It really is that soap-operish. Aside from being way too long for its own good, which considering how short the film is anyway goes to just prove how bad an idea this was in the first place, the collective talents of the four leads and the supporting cast aren't even up to the task of keeping this thing afloat for twenty minutes. The first time through this was not too bad but the second viewing just seemed to drag forever. It was probably a wise idea to toss in some gratuitous shots of the girls in lingerie - it was not so wise an idea to do it only once. This is dire stuff indeed, a comedy that is not the least bit funny and featuring some of the most memorable exhibitions of excruciating acting that I have seen for a while. Eminently avoidable.
The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced.
On the face of it, the film looks very good with a reasonably sharp and detailed look. However, closer examination shows that it is not quite as good as it looks all the time and at times certainly gets a little soft. You certainly would not want to pause playback at 21:45 for instance, where the resolution in the movement drops to virtually nil. It would appear that exterior shots are basically sharp and detailed whilst interior shots are not so sharp. Thankfully there is nothing but some rather light grain to be found throughout most of the transfer, which means the clarity is pretty good. Shadow detail is not that much of an issue with the transfer.
This is quite a bright and vibrant transfer with plenty of bright primary colours to be found. It looks a treat most of the time and it is a rather inviting palette. From a visual point of view, this is certainly the high point of the transfer. There are no issues with oversaturation or colour bleed. Skin tones are well handled in particular.
There is a problem with MPEG artefacting in the transfer at times, with a lot of motion being quite poorly resolved, as indicated above. Motion blur does certainly occur at times (such as 19:40). There is a relatively small amount of aliasing in the transfer, such as in the animation at 6:47 and the car at 25:24. Most of this is minor and really does not detract too much from the transfer. There is some moiré artefacting in the shadow of the pergola at 67:45 and in the car grille at 31:45. Edge enhancement has been used at times during the transfer but not to the extent of being very noticeable and distracting. Film artefacts were not really an issue with the transfer.
This is an RSDL formatted DVD with the layer change coming at 39:56. It is moderately noticeable on my system only because of a slight pause in the image. If your player does not handle layer changes well, this could be a problem.
There is a rather diverse selection of selectable subtitles on the disc, although interestingly Spanish is not amongst them. Seems odd for a Latina film. I stuck with the English for the Hearing Impaired efforts, which are pretty good but seem to unnecessarily drop dialogue here and there.
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There are just the two soundtrack options on the DVD, being a decent English Dolby Digital 5.1 448 Kb/s soundtrack and a staggeringly inappropriate Polish Dolby Digital 2.0 192 Kb/s surround encoded soundtrack. Quite why it was thought appropriate to have a Polish soundtrack is quite beyond my comprehension, unless there was some Polish involvement in the film of which I am not aware. Of course, I stuck with the English soundtrack.
Given that the film is a Latina film, nearly everyone has a Caribbean- or Central American-influenced accent. This has to be borne in mind when considering how easy the dialogue is to understand. If it weren't for the accents, there would be no problem, but every so often... There is nothing obviously wrong with the audio sync in the transfer.
The original music comes from Emilio Estefan Jr. The name alone should give you a fair indication of the sort of music we have here, although to be fair it is all pretty well upstaged by the songs included in the film. I cannot say that the score itself did much for me but I suppose it did not need to do much.
The six channel soundtrack is pretty good overall, let down by surround encoding that really does not shine most of the time. There is certainly activity there and when they get it right the rears in particular are very good. It's just that they seem to have picked highlights to do well and forgotten otherwise to use the surrounds throughout the film. I certainly would not call this a soundtrack with great ambience, even though the possibility for it be so was certainly there. The bass channel gets a good workout during the music, but otherwise also seems to go AWOL. The sound is quite open and clear which is certainly a positive enough.
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Well, there certainly is something but it is hardly anything to get excited about.
Pretty basic stuff, and not really that terrific.
Four minutes of absolutely pointless and relatively unfunny outtakes going by the name of Papi Lite. Lite on! The presentation is Full Frame that is not 16x9 enhanced and has adequate enough Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. Very much a waste of time, although the technical quality is reasonable enough for this sort of stuff.
This would have been a whole lot more interesting if the Huey actually turned out to be a Bell UH-1. At least the noise would have been more musical. I am presuming that this is some sort of hip hop tripe and therefore a complete waste of time. Woeful song, with the only high point of the video being the girls. The presentation is again Full Frame, it is not 16x9 enhanced and features good Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. Nothing wrong with the technical quality.
The great advantage of modern film trailers is that they give you the essence of the film, complete with most plot spoilers, in a shortened version running two to three minutes. I call it films for the MTV generation. In this case it is a very, very good thing. By watching the trailer, you just know that there is no need to watch the rest of the 74 minutes of the film. The presentation is consistent with the preceding extras, although the technical quality is possibly better.
Billed as a Movie Promo Spot on the DVD itself - which it clearly is not - this is a half way reasonable advert for the soundtrack recording. For a change, the presentation is 1.85:1, although still not 16x9 enhanced, with Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded sound.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
In comparison to the Region 1 release, the Region 4 release misses out on:
The Region 1 release also has a Spanish soundtrack (way too logical for a Latina film). If you need to see the film, then frankly the Region 1 release is far ahead of the Region 4 and probably comes a cheaper price.
There is a Region 2 release in Norway but since I cannot understand Norwegian and any of the online translators are so poor as to make the review I found even more unintelligible, unfortunately I cannot tell you much about it. Most likely it is similar to the Region 4 release however.
Chasing Papi is high on eye candy value, but that is about the only place where it does excel. A decidedly below average film that only has the eye candy value of its female leads to make this even remotely watchable. It simply fails at any other level to sustain even the relatively paltry running time on offer here. It would not matter if this were given an absolutely perfect transfer in all respects, there is still no way that this could in all honesty be recommended. And it sure does not get an absolutely perfect transfer in all respects. Quite how this warranted a release in the World Cinema Collection is a puzzler and a half. The only reason I ever bought this, and at well below the indicated retail price I will mention, is to maintain the integrity of my World Cinema Collection collection - and I sure should not have bothered to do so.
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Denon DVD-1600, using RGB output |
| Display | Loewe Aconda 9381ZW. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Yamaha RXV-795 |
| Speakers | Energy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL |