The Freshman (1990)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Trailer-On The Waterfront, Godzilla
Rating
Year Of Production	1990
Running Time	98:25
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Andrew Bergman
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Marlon Brando Matthew Broderick Bruno Kirby Penelope Ann Miller Frank Whaley Jon Polito Paul Benedict Richard Gant Kenneth Welsh Pamela Payton-Wright B.D. Wong Maximilian Schell Bert Parks
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	David Newman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The Godfather and its sequels are amongst my favourite films of all time and when this film came up for review, I recalled it from the early 90's as a comedy with a strong link to the Godfather Trilogy. The most obvious link is the presence of Marlon Brando, playing a mafia don, called Carmine Sabatini. He looks very much like Vito Corleone, which is commented upon by a number of the other characters. Beside this, there are also scenes from The Godfather films included and the films are part of the film studies being undertaken by the other lead character, Clark Kellogg (Matthew Broderick). This is a fun little comedy but certainly not a great film like The Godfather.

    This film involves a young man, Clark, who is leaving his family home in Vermont to attend film school at New York University. Upon his arrival in New York, he meets a small time crook called Victor Ray (Bruno Kirby), who immediately rips him off. When he catches up with Victor, Victor convinces him not to call the police by promising to get him a job working for his uncle. The uncle is Carmine Sabatini and before he knows it Clark is doing odd jobs for the Mafia and is engaged to Carmine's only daughter, Tina (Penelope Ann Miller). His first job is to pick up something from the airport and deliver it to an address in New Jersey. He becomes concerned when he discovers that the package is actually a Komodo Dragon. He becomes even more concerned when he realises what Carmine and his strange friend, Larry London (Maximilian Schell), plan to do with the animal. Now Clark needs to get himself out of this mess without getting himself killed or winding up in jail.

    I must say that my memories of this film told me it was a better film than I felt upon seeing it again, but despite this it is diverting and certainly nowhere near the worst film I have seen recently. It is always good to see Brando playing a mafia don and he has some fun with the character here. Broderick is his usual floppy-haired nervous self. SO, a decent film but nothing spectacular.

Video

    The video quality is very good, and a nice effort for a 15 year old film.

    The feature is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio 16x9 enhanced which is close to the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

    The picture was clear and sharp throughout, and surprisingly good for a film from 15 years ago, with no evidence of low level noise. There was some very light grain. Shadow detail was also very good except for scenes which were obviously designed to be somewhat murky.

    The colour was very good with no issues to report.

    Artefacts were restricted to an occasional black or white speck and one small white line at 47:39. Generally, very clean.

    There are subtitles in 21 languages including English. The English subtitles were clear and easy to read but were quite heavily summarised from the spoken word.

    There is no layer change.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is also very good.

    This DVD contains five audio options, an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s and the same in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

    Dialogue was generally clear and easy to understand and there was no problem with audio sync. Brando was occasionally difficult to make out which is a function of him and the character.

    The score of this film by David Newman does its job well without being spectacular. The quality of the music from a sound reproduction perspective was very good, surprisingly so for a film of this age.

    The surround speakers were not used.

    The subwoofer was not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Not much here.

Menu

    The menu was still and silent and included the ability to select scenes, languages and subtitles.

Trailers

    Trailers are included for On The Waterfront and Godzilla.

    This movie has been released in essentially the same format in all regions, with only the trailers being different. A draw.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The disc has no real extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall