She's the Man (2006) |
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She's the Man (2006) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Comedy |
Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Making Of Featurette-The Troupe, What makes A Man?, Making Up The Man Featurette-Inspired By Shakespeares Twelth Night Deleted Scenes Featurette-Gag Reel Music Video-"Let Go" By David Lichens Gallery-Photo-Cast Theatrical Trailer Audio Commentary-Jack Leslie, Andy Fickman, Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum Audio Commentary-Writer Jack Leslie and Producer Lauren Schuler Donner |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 2006 | ||
| Running Time | 100:42 (Case: 106) | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (73:51) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 4 | Directed By | Andy Fickman |
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Studio
Distributor |
Dreamworks Roadshow Home Entertainment |
Starring |
Amanda Bynes Channing Tatum Laura Ramsey Vinnie Jones David Cross Julie Hagerty Robert Hoffman |
| Case | Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip | ||
| RPI | $39.95 | Music | Nathan Wang |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) |
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | ||
| 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 | Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | Yes | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
She's the Man is a Hollywood teen homage/update to Shakespeare's The Twelfth Night in much the same vein that 10 Things I Hate about You was to The Taming of the Shrew. It takes many of the fundamental plot devices and names of The Twelfth Night, waters down the societal aspects and substitutes a soccer rivalry between schools in place of parts of the romantic rivalry and to broaden the appeal of the story. This is, however, a far cry from Shakespeare's classic.
Viola (Amanda Bynes) 'washes up' at Illyria high school, posing as her twin brother Sebastian, after her soccer team is cut from her previous school's, Cornwall High, sports roster. Her goal is to get onto Illyria's boys team and beat Cornwall's boys team in the annual inter-school grudge match... which happens to be on in 12 days. In the process Viola falls for the team captain Duke (Channing Tatum), who is in love with Olivia (Laura Ramsey), who has fallen for Sebastian (who is really Viola)... and that's the simplified version! Needless to say, romantic chaos ensues in between soccer!
Amanda Bynes turns in a likeable, but a little over-the-top, performance as Viola. As with many a teen comedy, however, the supporting cast ultimately steal the show. David Cross' performance as the creepy jack-of-all-trades principal is almost reason enough in itself to watch this one! Admittedly, the character is really Tobias Fünke, of Arrested Development fame, transplanted into a high school principal, but even a one trick pony is worth the admission if it's a good trick!
Football legend turned actor Vinnie Jones adds a significant degree of credibility to the soccer aspect of the film in his role as the head coach of the Illyria team. The 'making of' extras on the disc make note that every time the filmmakers strayed into implausible territory with the soccer, Vinnie was quick to pull them up and it shows. You certainly won't find anything in She's the Man that is up to the standard of the spectacular football seen recently in Goal!, but what is on offer is certainly a step above what you would normally expect in a teen comedy of this ilk.
On the whole, She's the Man is a very welcome surprise. It is by no means an instant classic, but certainly one of the better teen comedies to have surfaced over the last few years.
The video transfer is very good for most of the feature, but some night time scenes are noticeably worse than the rest of the film.
The PAL transfer is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.
The image is generally quite sharp and not noticeably grainy for most of the film. There are a handful of night time scenes (e.g. at 92:23) in which the video is noticeably less sharp and quite grainy. These darker scenes also suffer a lack of shadow detail.
There is vibrant use of colour throughout the film which has translated well to DVD. One scene in particular makes great use of coloured filters to illustrate a manic dream.
There are no problems in this transfer with MPEG or Film-To-Video artefacts. The odd film artefact appears throughout, but they are barely noticeable and never distracting.
The layer change takes place at 73:51 in the middle of a scene. It was not noticeable on the players I tested the disc in, but would be distracting if played on equipment that does not handle layer transitions smoothly.
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Four audio tracks are available; English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kbps), English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 Kbps), and two Audio Commentaries in Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 Kbps).
The dialogue throughout the film is clear and soundtrack well mixed. At no point does the dialogue appear out of sync.
The surround channels are adequately used for background effects and ambience. There is not much call for surround effects as the movie is largely dialogue driven. There is not much use of the subwoofer, nor much call for it.
The music throughout She's the Man is a fairly cookie-cutter mixture of formula Hollywood score and teen pop (what's a teen movie without montages underscored by cheesy pop rock?). No points for originality, but the shoe fits.
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There is a huge swag of extras on this disc that are largely targeted at a teen audience. Amanda Bynes fans will probably get a lot out of these. All are presented in varying wide aspect ratios, but are not 16x9 enhanced.
A generic "making of" featurette that covers a wide range of production aspects, from the scripting through to soccer training.
A brief featurette about the cast and crew and just how wonderful they think each other are.
Men and women are different. Amanda Bynes, the director and producer discuss this fact and how they got Amanda to learn to be a guy.
It seems like overkill hiring the lead makeup guy from Batman Begins and The Matrix Reloaded to make Amanda Bynes look like a guy, but that's what the producers did. This fairly interesting little featurette tells you how.
A brief run through on what bits the writers pinched from The Twelfth Night and other little nods to Shakespeare that made it into the movie.
Three minutes of bloopers and the cast pulling faces.
Deleted scenes with optional commentary from the writer, director and Amanda Bynes. A mixed bag, but well worth a look for David Cross fans!
A dull music video for one of the main songs featured in the movie.
Generic photo gallery feature.
A pretty standard theatrical trailer.
Too many cooks spoil the broth with this one. The commentators are reasonably chatty, but they rarely have more to say than "I love XXX!". It's not long before this one devolves into the commentators yelling "look it's person X! YAAAAY!". It is also often hard to recognise which commentator is talking at any one point.
This commentary is largely a wasted effort. It takes a pretentious tone throughout (e.g. "You guys probably don't know what I'm talking about, but there's a real Doris Day/Rock Hudson thing going on in this scene") and doesn't really add anything you would not have picked up in the other extras. As the movie goes on these two have less and less to say and don't add much when they do.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
Region 4 misses out on:
Region 1 misses out on:
A surprisingly entertaining modern do-over of a classic play.
The video transfer is decent, but has issues in dark scenes. The audio quality is very good.
The swag of extras is not likely to disappoint, even if it is quantity over quality in some regards.
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | LG V8824W, using S-Video output |
| Display | LG 80cm 4x3 CRT. Calibrated with THX Optimizer. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Pioneer VSX-D512. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Digital Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Pioneer VSX-D512 |
| Speakers | 150W DTX front speakers, and a 100W centre and 2 surrounds, 12 inch PSB Image 6i powered sub |