Adventures of Power (2008)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio Interviews-Cast & Crew Short Film-7 web shorts Trailer-x 5 Deleted Scenes
Rating
Year Of Production	2008
Running Time	89:30
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ari Gold
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Ari Gold Michael McKean Jane Lynch Shoshannah Stern Chi Ling Chiu Adrian Grenier
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Ethan Gold

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	Yes
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Second generation mine worker Power (Ari Gold), lives for one thing; air drumming. When air drumming on the job ends up costing him that very job, moments before his union leader father (Michael McKean) leads a bitter strike, Power flees his small town. Leaving behind his home town "fans" and a room at his Aunt's (Jane Lynch) house, Power finds recognition in an underground Mexican air drumming competition before heading to the city, Newark (insert laboured Newark/New York jokes here), and joining a dedicated air drumming crew. As the crew prepare to compete in the air drumming championships, it becomes clear that their main rival will be self-styled cowboy, and real drummer, Dallas H (Adrien Grenier, who is usually better known for starring with a character called Ari Gold in Entourage), whose father owns the very mine that Power's family are striking against. Along the way, Power also manages to hook up with a blind lass (Shoshannah Stern) who can feel music through his air-pounding.

    Adventures of Power has a decent enough concept for the quirky, absurd comedy that it wants to be, but the movie fails in just about every way it could. The movie is consistently amusing, but never laugh-out-loud funny. The story is a jumble of broad cliches, none of which are terribly well fleshed out and all of which hang together haphazardly.

    The supporting characters lack distinct personality, despite a solid supporting cast. Each is pretty much solely defined by their role and, particularly in the case of the villains, this is utterly underwhelming.

    Newcomer writer/director/star Ari Gold's Power character, which was originally created for a series of web shorts, lacks the charisma to hold things together and Gold's inexperience in storytelling shows at every turn. It makes for frustrating viewing as it is easy to see how things could be improved. Chalk this one up as a missed opportunity.

Video

    The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, but is not 16x9 enhanced (thankfully a rarity for recent films).

    The video looks decent, but is far from great. The image is a little soft and lacks fine detail, an issue which is compounded by the reduction in available pixels due to the lack of 16x9 enhancement. There is only mild grain in the image. The colours and general look of the video is somewhat of a throwback to the 1980s, which fits the style of the film.

    Aside from mild background pixelation on occasion, there is no sign of unpleasant video artefacts. There is no sign of film artefacts at any point.

    In a turn of cosmic irony, despite the film featuring a substantial deaf character, this disc contains no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The film features an English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kbps) audio track.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand. The audio is well synchronised to the video.

    The film features a varied soundtrack, though one that is heavy on the classic rock. Rush (whose drummer Neal Peart cameos in the film) are particularly featured, although in this case when I say "particularly" I mean they play the classic Tom Sawyer to death.

    The surrounds are not used at all. The subwoofer gets the odd thump to support the music in the film, but little else. Not bad for an indie comedy, but not particularly good either.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Interview with Cast/Crew (17:33)

    An interview, recorded specifically for this Region 4 edition, featuring writer/director/star Ari Gold and star Adrian Greiner. Gold's contribution is particularly interesting as he more or less unintentionally explains how everything went wrong with the finished product. Essentially, it appears as though his attachment to the Power character and lack of understanding of character-driven comedy resulted in him neutering the material.

Deleted Scenes

    Half a dozen deleted and extended scenes, each running 1-2 minutes. There's some funny stuff (most of which is sorely missing from the movie) in this lot and only one real miss.

More Power Shorts

    7 shorts, running twenty odd minutes in total, all taken from the film's website. These shorts add a lot more depth to the Power character, and offer a lot of Rush worship, but are fairly hit and miss. The highlight being Power getting a drumming lesson from Frank Zappa's giant-kit-wielding pal Terry Bozzio.

Trailers

    5 radically different trailers for the film; one actual theatrical trailer and four Internet concept trailers. The concept trailers are a lot of fun.

    Adventures of Power is yet to find its way to DVD in Region 1.

    A moderately amusing quirky indie comedy that struggles for real laughs.

    The video suffers from a lack of 16x9 enhancement, and subsequent lack of fine detail, but is otherwise of fair quality. The audio is basic, but adequate. The extras are excellent in number and decent in quality.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall