Drive Me Crazy (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	87:23 (Case: 89)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	John Schultz
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Melissa Joan Hart Adrian Grenier
Case	?
RPI	$36.95	Music	Greg Kendall

    Isn't it funny how some films don't quite fit their stereotypes? I settled down to watch Drive Me Crazy because I was in the mood to watch a mindless teen movie, and given that this film stars Melissa Joan Hart of Sabrina The Teen Witch fame, I was expecting really more of the same. It doesn't help that the beginning of the film reinforces the stereotype (complete with cheesy pop background music, neon-lit opening titles and slow pan across a typical teenage girl's bedroom followed by Melissa answering the phone in her best "a la Sabrina" perky voice).

    What I encountered was a film that is still very much rooted in the teen "prom" genre, but is slightly deeper and sophisticated (as well as more ponderous and slow-moving) than I expected. It's quite a biting and penetrating observation of the high school social hierarchy as well as the conflicting emotions of young love. Think of it as a more serious version of Clueless with a dash of Dangerous Liaisons thrown in.

    Nicole Maris (Melissa Joan Hart) is a pretty and popular girl at the Timothy Zonin High School (definitely in the "in" crowd) who is organising a big formal dance celebrating the centenary anniversary of her school. She has the hots for school basketball star Brad (Gabriel Carpenter) and hopes he will be her date for the dance.

    Neighbour and fellow classmate Chase Hammon (Adrian Grenier) is on the other side of the school social stratum. Sporting a "rebel without a cause" attitude and a grungy appearance, he hangs out with nerdy Ray (Kris Park) and "Designated Dave" (Mark Webber) - the latter so-nicknamed because he doesn't drink therefore he always chauffeurs the other kids when they are blind drunk and want to go back home after a party. At the beginning of the film, the three of them (masterminded by Chase) stage a prank involving putting coloured dye into the school sprinkler system which nearly gets them suspended.

    Incidentally, Nicole and Chase used to be childhood friends but then grew apart into their different ways. Both have single parents (William Converse-Roberts as Mr. Hammond and Faye Grant as Mrs. Maris) as Chase's mum died of cancer and Nicole's father (Stephen Collins) is estranged. Their parents appear to be very "friendly" with each other, and later on in the film we find out why.

    So, when Brad - on the verge of asking Nicole to the centenary dance - falls in love with a cheerleader instead (when he accidentally fell on her during a basketball game), and Chase's girlfriend Dulcie (Ali Larter) dumps him because she thinks he's too shallow (because she is into animal rights and he doesn't seem to be interested), Nicole and Chase strike an unholy deal - they will pretend to be in a relationship with each other in an attempt to make their desired partners jealous.

    Nicole gives Chase a Pygmalion-like makeover and suddenly it looks like their crazy plan may just succeed after all. Or will they fall in love with each other instead? And what about Nicole's best friend - acid-tongued Alicia (Susan May Pratt) - will she throw a spanner into the works?

    The ending may be somewhat predictable, and yet the film as a whole seems to be more than the sum of its parts. The characters are reasonably fleshed out and have complex overtones to their personalities, and the dialogue is reasonably clever in places. However, overall I found the film to be somewhat slow-moving and uninvolving. The problem is, a romantic comedy with artistic pretensions can aspire to become a piece of serious drama, but an ambitious teen movie ends up looking awkward because - let's face it - what is the serious equivalent?

    Incidentally, I think Melissa should really stop playing teen roles. She may still have the pert little body and a perky voice, but she is not as fresh-faced as she used to be and it would be nice to see her play her age for a change in a more substantial role.

Video

    Shame on you Fox! Region 1 gets a 16x9 enhanced transfer in the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 (plus extras), and all we get is pan & scan!

    Although for the most part the film doesn't really require widescreen, many scenes look somewhat boxed in and constricted in 1.33:1.

    The transfer itself is nothing spectacular. The film source is somewhat grainy, and the transfer itself is slightly on the soft side. Colours are relatively undersaturated, creating a somewhat dark "tone" for the entire film.

    Fortunately, MPEG and film-to-video artefacts are mostly absent, and this rescues the overall quality of the transfer from "poor" to "mediocre but watchable." Still, the quality is rather disappointing given that this is such a recent film (1999).

    The single sided single layered disc comes with an English subtitle track, which I turned on for a period of time. The subtitle track is serviceable, and about average as far as accuracy goes (which means some dialogue is abbreviated to fit into the two on-screen lines of text).

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one audio track: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s).

    The audio track is listenable, but about as mediocre as the video transfer. There is a lot of music used in the film, ranging from background music (including an original score by Greg Kendall and David Reynolds) to the sound of a band playing (called "The Electrocutes", but in reality a real band named "The Donnas.")

    Music seems to be consistently mixed across all channels - including rear channels, and in at least one case I can hear music panning from rear to fronts. But generally, this is a fairly front focused dialogue driven audio track, and sound effects are not a feature of the audio track.

    Although dialogue seems relatively easy to understand and sync-free, in general I wasn't very impressed with the audio track. It sounds somewhat "muffled" and high frequencies are attenuated. Although the subwoofer is kept reasonably well occupied (mainly in providing a low frequency extension to the background music), in general the audio track did not sound bass heavy.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    This is a bare bones disc and there are no extras present.

Menu

    The menu is full frame, static, and pretty boring.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• 1.85:1 16x9 enhanced video transfer
• French Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track and subtitle track
• Theatrical trailer and TV spots
• Music videos for Britney Spears' Drive Me Crazy and Jars of Clay's Unforgetful You

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• Pan & scan video transfer

    If you really like this film, it looks like the Region 1 release is the one to get.

    Drive Me Crazy tries to be an intelligent teen flick, and even nearly succeeds, except there is no such thing as an "intelligent teen flick" - that's an oxymoron!

    The video transfer has been butchered into a mediocre pan&scan video transfer, mated together with an okay but somewhat muffled audio transfer.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall