All of Me (1984)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Biographies-Cast
Rating
Year Of Production	1984
Running Time	87:31 (Case: 93)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Carl Reiner
Studio Distributor	Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Steve Martin Lily Tomlin Victoria Tennant
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$32.95	Music	Patrick Williams

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Screen, not known whether Pan & Scan or Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Steve Martin has made a number of comedies. Some have been pretty poor. Some have been extremely good. I really enjoyed LA Story, and I liked Roxanne. I didn't much like The Jerk. I was not expecting too much of All of Me, but I hoped to enjoy it. For a start, it has Victoria Tennant in it, and I like her (did you know that she is married to Steve Martin?), and it has Lily Tomlin, and I like her too.

    All of Me starts with a montage of Steve Martin's day as a struggling lawyer - going to work, in court, going home, and rushing off to a jazz club just in time to pick up a guitar and play his solo (cute). We meet his girlfriend, his boss, his secretary - all very ordinary. Then we meet Lily Tomlin - a rich woman who is dying, and who has plans to get a second chance at life by transferring her soul to a young and healthy body (Victoria Tennant) with the aid of a Tibetan shaman and a magic bowl. We all think she's nuts, but the transfer works - only problem is that she gets transferred by mistake into Steve Martin's body instead. And that's where things start to come unravelled...

    Steve Martin does a superb job of acting as though two people have control over his body - one controlling the left side, and one the right. And the idea that he looks in the mirror to see Lily Tomlin and talk to her works well. I just wish the plot were a little better. It is reasonably amusing, and I ended up liking it a bit more than I expected, but not as much as I might have. I think one reason was that I had difficulty liking the characters I was supposed to like, and the resolution was a bit too quick, and too pat - almost as if they ran out of money and had to wind things up in a hurry.

Video

    This is not a good video transfer. In fact, it looks like it may have been transferred from a good quality VHS master.

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is not 16x9 enhanced (naturally). I have been unable to discover the original aspect ratio of this movie, but I suspect it was 2.35:1. Looks like we have a Pan & Scan effort here. The Region 1 disc is 1.33:1, but it was released back in 1999, back when studios hadn't really caught on to DVD. This is a 2001 release, so there's no excuse.

    The image is grainy, with reduced shadow detail, but very little low-level noise. Colour is somewhat washed out, with no fully saturated colours on show.

    There are very few film artefacts and no aliasing. There was an interesting problem at around 57:30 on the back of Steve Martin's suit - it looked like an MPEG error, but I couldn't put a name to it - it was possibly macro-blocking. 

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    This disc offers a single soundtrack, in English. The soundtrack is supposed to be Dolby Digital 2.0, surround encoded, but it sounded like mono.

    Dialogue was clear enough to understand readily.

    The score, by Patrick Williams, was not memorable.

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were used very briefly for the Infogrames intro - which I hate because it sounds like a faulty disc - then got the rest of the night off. 

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The extras are basic.

Menu

    The menu is static and silent. At least it was easy to use.

Cast Biographies

    Bios and filmographies for Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin - 6 pages each.

    The Region 4 disc misses out on:

• Subtitles
• Trailer

    The Region 1 disc misses out on:

• Cast Biographies

    Both versions are 1.33:1. My gut reaction is to suggest that you buy neither.

    This DVD is a poor transfer of a modestly amusing film.

    The video quality is not good, and it is 1.33:1.

    The audio quality is adequate.

    The extras are rudimentary.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall