Date Movie (2006) |
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Date Movie (2006) |
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| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Comedy |
Main Menu Audio & Animation Alternate Audio-Laugh Track Featurette-On Dating Deleted Scenes Screen Saver-Romantic Featurette-Andy's Cherry Stem Surprise Outtakes-Gag Reel Featurette-The Fox Movie Channel Presents "Making Of A Spoof" Web Links Audio Commentary-Writer & Writer/Director Audio Commentary-Cast Audio Commentary-Film Critics Web Links |
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| Year Of Production | 2006 | ||
| Running Time | 81:15 (Case: 83) | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (61:06) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Ads Then Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 4 | Directed By | Aaron Seltzer |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Twentieth Century Fox |
Starring |
Alyson Hannigan Adam Campbell Tony Cox Fred Willard Eddie Griffin Sophie Monk Marie Matiko Judah Friedlander Carmen Electra Mauricio Sanchez Beverly Polcyn Valery M. Ortiz Charlie Dell |
| Case | ? | ||
| RPI | $36.95 | Music |
J.C. Crowley David Kitay |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (96Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (96Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (96Kb/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 |
English for the Hearing Impaired English Audio Commentary English Alternate Subtitles |
Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | Yes | ||
In the past, spoofs have often lampooned genres that take themselves seriously, thus highlighting the comic aspects of serious films and television. Date Movie on the other hand takes the easier path of spoofing films that are already comedies, in this case mostly romantic comedies and reality TV shows.
Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan) is a fat and lonely waitress working at her parent’s dinner. She seeks the help of dating expert Hitch (Tony Cox) who gives her a Pimp my Ride style makeover where she emerges thin and beautiful. She is then entered onto a Bachelor style reality program where she meets Grant Fockyerdoder (Adam Campbell). They then head cross country with Julia’s parents (Eddie Griffin and Meera Simham) to meet Grant’s parents (Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge). While planning their wedding with wedding planner Jell-O (Valery Ortiz) she must face Alex’s old girlfriend Andy (Sophie Monk).
The formula for this film is pretty simple - take a comic moment from a well known film and amp it up to the absurd. As an example, there is a memorable scene in Meet the Parents where a character breaks a vase containing the ashes of a deceased relative. In Date Movie the vase contains not only ashes, but the complete decomposing corpse of the deceased. There is nothing subtle about this film. The references to the films it is trying to lampoon are obvious and in your face.
In their audio commentary the writer/directors of this film discuss how satire works best when played as drama and claim to have given the actors instructions to play their parts like this. Either the actors completely ignored these instructions or the directors lacked the discipline to enforce this because for the most part the acting on display here is quite hammy to say the least.
Despite some talented actors and actresses nothing can ultimately save this turkey. It is neither creative nor smart and mostly it is simply not funny. The only positive thing I really have to say about this film is that minus the credits it’s only 71 minutes long. (Observe how ridiculously large and slow the final credits are in a futile attempt to pad out the running time).
As it often seems to happen, really bad movies get excellent transfers. That is certainly true here of Date Movie, with it receiving a near perfect transfer.
The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 which matches the film's theatrical aspect ratio.
Image sharpness and image detail are both excellent. Shadow detail is also very good and the image is free of low level noise.
Colours are all very well saturated and natural.
The print used is very clean and I did not notice any dirt or other blemishes and compression artefacts are almost non-existent.
The English subtitles are white with a black border, fairly easy to read and accurately match the on-screen dialogue.
The film is presented on a dual layered disc with RSDL encoding. The layer change occurs at 61:06 which is a cut between shots in the middle of a scene which is likely to be noticed if your player pauses during the layer change.
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The main English soundtracks on this DVD are both of a reasonable quality but fairly front oriented.
There is a DTS soundtrack encoded at 768 Kb/s and a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s. The DTS soundtrack is slightly louder but even when taking this into account I was surprised at how weak the bass was on the Dolby Digital soundtrack when compared to the DTS. Otherwise, both were almost identical.
Dialogue was always clear and easy to understand and I did not notice any issues with the audio sync.
The original music by David Kitay more or less imitates the music from the films being parodied and works well enough.
The surround channels were mostly only used for subtle ambience and were frankly underutilised in my opinion.
The subwoofer channel on the Dolby Digital soundtrack was almost non-existent and even on the DTS soundtrack it was still much weaker than I felt it should have been and really only came into play during some of the music.
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A generous collection of extras is provided although none of it is of a very high quality.
The disc starts up with some trailers for TV shows which thankfully can be skipped past. The menus are all 16x9 enhanced with animation, clips from the movie and appropriate music in the background. Overall it is quite a nice effort.
Friedberg and Seltzer begin by explaining that they both shared the directing and writing jobs on this film. They go on to admit that their commentary is dull and boring but justify it by saying they didn’t make you listen to it. Pity us poor DVD reviewers because they are correct. Furthermore it would seem that they were not allowed to mention any of the films that Date Movie attempts to lampoon but unfortunately they don’t seem to know it. All references to such films are beeped out, which often decimates the information giving us passages like “Funny trivia here about Tony Cox as *beeeep*, Tony was actually, played an *beeeeeeeeep* in a *beeeeeeeeeeeep*. That’s a good factoid”. The whole commentary is essentially a series of beeps which gets draining very quickly.
Going into this commentary the participants were given a long list of rules to be obeyed during the commentary. Rules like not to mention other films and not to mention any of their previous works. One of these rules also included making no disparaging comments about the film or other cast and crew members. If this is a typical rule for audio commentaries it explains why so many are so boring and so self congratulatory. For the most past this is certainly the case for this commentary although I think Sophie Monk really nails it when she says her favourite thing about the film was the on-set catering.
Now this seems like an interesting idea. Have film critics do an audio commentary of an undeniably appalling film. Unfortunately the producers of the DVD chickened out a bit and actually tracked down what I can only assume is one of the only film critics in the world who actually enjoyed this film in the form of critic Bob Strauss from the Los Angeles Daily News . (And he spends most of the commentary apologising for it). The second film critic is Scott Foundas from the LA Weekly and while he gave it a poor review he seems intent on not offending the filmmakers and really pulls his punches. Had the producers had the guts to actually get film critics who did not like the film and were willing to say so in a commentary this may have been interesting. The result however does not reach that potential. It is frankly pretty dull. You really don’t need film critics to point out why this is a bad film.
The audience this was recorded with must have known they were being recorded because they laugh hysterically at almost everything. This really is a pretty pointless soundtrack.
Members of the cast discuss memorable and bad dating experiences. This is mildly entertaining.
This is a collection of 12 deleted or extended scenes. Some of the material here is actually funnier than what remained in the movie but was obviously removed for pacing reasons.
These are 2 looping pieces of video. The first one, Sunset (1:56), is a beach scene at sunset and the second one is a Fireplace (1:56). Exactly why a pair of romantic screensavers is includes in the extras of a movie that lampoons romantic comedies is a little bit of a mystery to me.
In the film Sophie Monk’s character puts a cherry stalk in her mouth and a few seconds later spits it out as an intricate merry-go-round. This uses that same footage but uses CGI to replace the final object. You must first answer a multiple choice question from the film and then a small clips plays. Each clip lasts around 15 seconds.
As the name suggests these are mostly outtakes from the film.
This is footage from the auditions.
One of the films parodied towards the end of the film is King Kong. This is a parody of the Production Diaries that Peter Jackson made when making his version of King Kong. While mildly amusing it well and truly outstays its welcome on what is essentially one joke (which is the suggestion that Peter Jackson is a clueless moron). If you do watch this I suggest using the Play All option, otherwise every episode (there are 13) will includes a full assortment of pre and post credits. Some may like it but I found it incredibly juvenile.
There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
Two version of this film are available in Region 1, a censored rated version and an unrated version. Our version is the same as the unrated version. See the censorship notes for more details.
The Region 4 versions misses out on:
The Region 1 Unrated Version misses out on:
From the reviews I have read of the Region 1 release I have good reason to believe that our Region 4 version has received a superior video transfer. These reviews universally described the Quickie featurette as a waste of time. Given that the DTS soundtrack is also superior to the Dolby Digital I am inclined to feel that our Region 4 version is the better choice.
Date Movie is a spoof of recent romantic comedies and reality TV shows and it’s frankly pretty awful. The extras, while plentiful, don’t amount to much and the soundtrack is basically serviceable at best. The one redeeming thing about this DVD is the fact that the video transfer is utterly superb.
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer DV-696AV-s, SACD & DVD-A, using HDMI output |
| Display | Panasonic PT-AE900E HD LCD Projector onto 90" 16x9 Screen. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Digital Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 720p. |
| Audio Decoder | Logitech 5500 THX. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Digital Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Logitech 5500 THX |
| Speakers | Logitech 5500 THX |