Making Mr. Right (1987)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Scene Selection Animation
Rating	?
Year Of Production	1987
Running Time	94:31
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Susan Seidelman
Studio Distributor	MGM	Starring	John Malkovich Ann Magnuson Glenne Headly Ben Masters Laurie Metcalf Polly Bergen Harsh Nayyar Hart Bochner Susan Berman Polly Draper Christian Clemenson Merwin Goldsmith Sid Raymond
Case	?
RPI	$14.95	Music	Chaz Jankel

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish 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 German for the Hearing Impaired French Dutch Greek	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Not everything John Malkovich does is great. No, really! And here we have the perfect example — I doubt very much if he includes this film on his resume. Not that his performance is especially bad, but the script requires him to be clumsy, awkward, socially inept, and he doesn't quite pull it off.

    Frankie Stone (Ann Magnuson) is having a bad time. She's just dumped her boyfriend, Steve Marcus (Ben Masters), who is trying to get elected as a Congressman for Florida. A friend, Trish (Glenne Headly), has just descended upon her after leaving her husband. Her sister is getting married soon (and Frankie is a bridesmaid).

    Frankie's PR firm get a new client: Chemtec. Chemtec is a large company who have developed an android for deep space missions. Rather than sending a man alone on a 7 year journey (during which he'd probably go mad), they propose sending an android. But they are having problems, because they are not good at convincing Congress to continue their funding. That's understandable: their android, Ulysses (John Malkovich), is awkward, and not very sociable, just like his inventor, Dr Jeff Peters (John Malkovich). So Frankie takes on the job of making Ulysses more socially skilled. She succeeds too well, sort of.

    There are some amusing moments in the film, but they push the farce too far, and there are some obvious plot holes. And let's be honest, the whole film is really one long lead-up to the big surprise — you'll probably guess it, anyway. Not a great film.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. That is probably the original intended aspect ratio.

    The picture is a bit soft, but sharp enough. Shadow detail is somewhat limited, but it's mostly acceptable. There's no noticeable grain. There is no low-level noise.

    Colour seems well rendered — there are plenty of bright colours, and they seem adequately saturated. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are film artefacts, but they are mostly quite small.

    Surprisingly, there's basically no aliasing, even where you'd expect some. There's no noticeable moiré, and no other MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in five languages, including English for the Hearing Impaired. The English subtitles are easily read, quite accurate, and well-timed to the dialogue.

    The disc is single sided, single layer. That means no layer change, and the film is short enough to fit easily onto a single layer.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in five languages, including English — I only listened to the English. It is Dolby Digital 2.0, surround-encoded, at 192kbps.

    The dialogue is clear and easy enough to understand. There are no audio sync issues.

    The score is credited to Chaz Jankel, assisted by Philip Bagenall. It's mostly electronica, and very repetitive, even irritating at times.

    The subwoofer is not addressed by this signal. The surround speakers get nothing of any significance, even though the signal is surround-encoded — perhaps the surround encoding is just to place the dialogue in the centre channel.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are no extras on this disc.

Menu

    The main menu is static and silent. There is a language selection menu before the main menu, yet the main menu is completely symbolic (not all of the symbols are obvious) — that seems odd.

    This film has been released on DVD in Region 1 in one of those double-sided efforts, with the widescreen version on one side, and the pan-and-scan version on the other. The Region 4 disc is essentially equivalent to the widescreen side of this disc.

    It sounds as though the R1 and R4 have equivalent transfers, so unless you have to have the pan-and-scan for some reason, you can get either version.

    An imperfect film given a reasonable transfer.

    The video quality is rather good.

    The audio quality is good enough.

    The extras are nonexistent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall