Man of the House (2005/I) |
|
Man of the House (2005/I) |
|
|
| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Action Comedy |
Trailer-Bewitched Main Menu Audio Dolby Digital Trailer Featurette-Cheer Camp Featurette-Making Of Trailer-Men In Black II |
|
| Rating |
|
||
| Year Of Production | ? | ||
| Running Time | 96 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | Dual Layered | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Ads Then Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4,5 | Directed By | Stephen Herek |
|
Studio
Distributor |
 Sony Pictures Home Entertain |
Starring |
Tommy Lee Jones Cedric The Entertainer Christina Milian Paula Garcés Monica Keena Vanessa Ferlito Kelli Garner Anne Archer Brian Van Holt Shea Whigham Terry Parks R. Lee Ermey Paget Brewster |
| Case | ? | ||
| RPI | $39.95 | Music |
Tree Adams David Newman |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Czech Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Hungarian Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Polish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) |
|
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.40:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
 |
||
| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Polish Romanian Turkish English for the Hearing Impaired |
Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | Yes | ||
| Action In or After Credits | Yes | ||
Man Of The House is a formulaic comedy that drifts along pleasantly enough for an undemanding 90 minutes and then is quickly forgotten. Hollywood never seems to tire of tried and tested formulas, especially in the comedy genre. Now I don't have anything against tried and tested material as long as it's entertaining, but too much of anything is eventually tiresome.
Like a paint by the numbers exercise, Man Of The House unfolds with all the variety of a bus timetable. Tommy Lee Jones plays Roland Sharp, a hardened Texas Ranger who places a group of College Cheerleaders under Witness Protection after they witness the murder of a police informant. In order to protect the cheer squad, Sharp poses as their trainer and the usual `fish out of water' gags flow thick and fast.
What saves this film from disaster is the ever-reliable and always watchable Jones. If there was ever an actor born to play a hardened Cop, especially a gruff Texas Ranger, it's Tommy Lee Jones, or perhaps Sam Elliot, but the list is short. Jones is obviously having fun with the part and this is what gives the film what little zest it can muster.
Director Stephen Herek, who trod similar ground with the Disney film The Mighty Ducks, directs with a pedestrian style that is more appropriate for television than feature film. The rest of the cast collect their paychecks admirably, and there are a few well presented action scenes. At the end of the day you could do a lot worse with your rental dollar.
Man Of The House is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2:40:1 and is 16x9 enhanced for widescreen viewing.
Like nearly all of Columbia Tristar's releases, especially recent films, the picture quality is excellent. The image is crisp with no aliasing or obvious edge enhancement. Shadow detail is very strong with rich blacks and great depth of field. There is very little grain and no low level noise interference.
The colour palette is vibrant with no image bleeding.
As a recent release film artefacts were basically non-existent.
| Sharpness |   |
| Shadow Detail | |
| Colour | |
| Grain/Pixelization | |
| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts | |
| Overall | |
Columbia TriStar have provided Man Of The House with three very strong 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtracks, and a reasonable 2.0 surround track. The 5.1 tracks are in English, Czech and Hungarian with the 2.0 surround track in Polish.
Dialogue is always clear and there are no audio sync problems. Even during the occasional action scene or explosion the dialogue is never lost amongst the sound effects.
Surround channel usage is fairly dynamic. All front and surround channels are busy and active. I did find the English track to be the slightly better audio choice, which is to be expected as it is the native choice. The rear channels have an excellent dynamic range, and provide well placed surround effects throughout the film.
The subwoofer supports all tracks solidly.
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
| Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
| Surround Channel Use | |
| Subwoofer | |
| Overall | |
16x9 trailer of the abysmal Nicole Kidman remake.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
All versions of this film currently available appear to be the same.
As a rental you could do a lot worse than Man Of The House. Tommy Lee Jones is always watchable and he does have several good one-liners that elevate the otherwise mundane material. The disc looks and sounds great, but if you're looking for in-depth extras look elsewhere.
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras |  |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer DV-535, using Component output |
| Display | LG 76cm Widescreen Flatron Television. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Sony HT-K215. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Sony HT-K215 |
| Speakers | fronts-paradigm titans, centre &rear Sony - radio parts subbie |