Joe Dirt: Collector's Edition (2001) |
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Joe Dirt: Collector's Edition (2001) |
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| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Comedy |
Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Dolby Digital Trailer-City Audio Commentary-Dennie Gordon (Director) Audio Commentary-David Spade (Actor) Deleted Scenes-7 (3 with optional director's commentary) Outtakes Filmographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Loser; Can't Hardly Wait |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 2001 | ||
| Running Time | 87:30 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Dennie Gordon |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Sony Pictures Home Entertain |
Starring |
David Spade Brittany Daniel Dennis Miller Christopher Walken Kid Rock |
| Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
| RPI | ? | Music | Waddy Watchel |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0  (192Kb/s)English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/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 Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Croatian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Swedish Turkish Dutch Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary |
Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | Yes, Subtle | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
The movie Joe Dirt is one that will appeal to a wide audience, but especially to viewers that enjoy watching lead characters with a dry sense of humour. I found this an interesting and quite often hilarious movie with the subtle movie references particularly appealing to this film fanatic. (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) Just keep your eye out for the psychotic cannibal played by Brian Thompson. For a movie that was made on a relatively shoestring budget of $13 million, we are presented with a nice balance of quality filming, locations, sets and actors. David Spade, Brittany Daniel as Brandy, Kid Rock as Robby and especially Dennis Miller as the local D.J. Zander Kelly all do a wonderful job and play their parts in a convincing and appealing manner. The smaller roles played by Brian Thompson and Christopher Walken from A View To A Kill were also beautifully crafted considering these roles are not typical of their previous work. Last but not least, some funny scenes involved little Joe Dirt, played by Eric Per Sullivan (Dewey from Malcolm In The Middle).
To overcome the limited budget, Director Dennie Gordon used some innovative methods to come up with a quality production that does not look obviously cheap. A quick $50,000 was saved by not buying a film permit for the Grand Canyon, but instead moving these production shots to Utah - visually, you wouldn't know. Another problem Gordon had was with Dennis Miller as he was only available for 1 day to shoot all of his scenes. This was pulled off well and none of the scenes look rushed but in fact have a subdued and laid-back atmosphere about them.
In order to understand the movie, and a bit about Joe, I should point out a few things before getting down to explaining the story. Joe (David Spade) was born with a hole in the top of his scalp, which his parents and the doctors in the delivery room felt was quite ghastly to look at, so his mother decided to have a wig stitched onto his scalp to cover the hole over. Unfortunately for Joe, fashion changes over time, and a wig featuring a "Mullet" style haircut is frowned upon in this modern world of brand-name clothing and electronic accessories.
As an 8-year-old, Joe was abandoned by his parents at the Grand Canyon, but that was 30 years ago now. Ever since that day, Joe has been searching for his Mom, Dad and little sis', happening across a vast array of scum and low-lifes along the way. When he comes across the stunning Brandy (Brittany Daniel), he nearly gives up looking. But, as those feelings start gnawing away at his soul again, he decides to head to L.A. to seek his answers once and for all.
He soon finds work at a local radio station and one day is hauled in front of the microphone to discuss his life story with the studio's arrogant and uncaring D.J. who uses him as a pawn to obtain better ratings. As Joe relives his pitiful life story, the station's listeners find themselves so captivated that they have to stay tuned in to hear and relive his every feat. These listeners encourage Joe and it is through this painful process that he comes to learn a lot about himself and realises that the real questions he seeks answers to are not necessarily those which he has to look for in the past.
Sit back and enjoy the journey that Joe and his friends will take you on . . .
The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.
The transfer is nice and clear with sharp detailed edges being commonplace. Shadow detail is excellent, but there are few low light situations where this could have become a major problem anyway. Just look at 46:44 and the beautiful deep black background to see the level of detail. There is no low level noise.
The colours are clear and natural in appearance but not stunningly bright. The bright natural sunlight backdrops help alleviate any problems here.
There were no MPEG artefacts to be seen. I expected to see problems in a few areas, such as in the heat shimmer at 18:28, but luckily none were evident. Aliasing was limited to one brief shot at 28:10, which also suffered from a slight shudder as the camera panned. Film artefacts were very rare and not distracting at all.
There are a huge number of subtitles on this disc and the English ones that I checked were very close to the actual spoken word.
This disc is RSDL-formatted, but the layer change was unnoticeable on my review player. I am yet to find the actual layer change point, so clearly if there is one, it is well-hidden. It is possible that the movie is on one layer of this disc whilst the extras have been placed on the other.
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As with the video transfer, the audio is of excellent quality.
There is only one feature soundtrack on this DVD, in English Dolby Digital 5.1. The other two tracks are both English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded tracks. I listened to all tracks.
The dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times with no hiss apparent. Audio sync was not a problem at all with this transfer, and was completely spot on.
The selection of music was excellent from start to finish. Joe's theme song is "Sweet Home Alabama" plus there are other classics such as "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet", "Listen To The Music" and "Bad To The Bone". The theme music is by Waddy Wachtel, and whilst good, pales in comparison to the additional music cues played throughout the movie. All music has been mixed across the 5.1 channels and suits the scenes it is used in well. The volume levels did not drown out the dialogue at any point during the movie.
The surround channels were used well for ambience, music and for special effects. The best examples can be heard at 19:44 where the echo flows fluidly through all of your speakers. Another fine example of sound can be found at 32:39.
The subwoofer was used whenever required. At around the 9:00 minute mark, the subwoofer makes a mighty thump perfectly in tune with the on-screen action.
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From the moment the logo appears, David starts yakking and provides a nice insight into the movie, characters and funny snippets that happened along the way. He delivers it using his own style of dry wit and this track was just as enjoyable to listen to as the main feature was.
This section is actually a non-stop collection of smaller film snippets joined to make the one feature. There are some funny scenes here and it was nice that it was included on this disc. There are quite a lot of film artefacts present and it only has a Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track. At 2:46, there is a pop in the rear speakers.
A collection of 7 deleted scenes are available and for those marked '*' you can turn on the Director's commentary or leave it with the original feature's soundtrack.
The film credits for the main characters are presented here in an easy-to-read format. No biographical information is included.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;
Joe Dirt was a movie that I enjoyed from beginning to end. It is the type of film where you can leave your brain in neutral and head off into Joe's world.
The video quality is good with very minimal problems.
The script does not lend itself to relying heavily on the use of strong surrounds or subwoofer presence, but when these features are required, the audio track handles them well.
There are a good selection of extras befitting a Collectors Edition.
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| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer DV-533K, using S-Video output |
| Display | Loewe 72cm. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Denon AVR-2802 Dolby EX/DTS ES Discrete |
| Speakers | Whatmough Audiolabs Magnum M30 (Mains); M05 (Centre); M10 (Rears); Magnat Vector Needle Sub25A Active SubWoofer |