Three Men and a Baby (1987)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1987
Running Time	98:20
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Leonard Nimoy
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Tom Selleck Steve Guttenberg Ted Danson Margaret Colin Celeste Holm Nancy Travis Philip Bosco Paul Guilfoyle Cynthia Harris
Case	DV-4
RPI	$19.95	Music	Marvin Hamlisch

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Spanish Swedish Norwegian Danish Finnish Spanish Titling	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, Pampers?
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Three Men and a Baby is an American remake of a French film called 3 Hommes et un Couffin. That is not, of itself, a bad thing, but it is not a good sign. Add in the fact that two of the three leads are best known for TV roles, and the third has been in little but B movies, and things aren't looking any better. The fact is, this is not a great film, but if that's not what you are looking for, then maybe this film will do for you.

    If you don't know the plot (let's see, you were abducted by aliens and held for 20 years, right?), then it's not overly complex. Three men, all of whom have jobs starting with "A" (an architect, an artist, and an actor = alliterative agony!), are surprised to discover a baby on their doorstep (they share the world's largest apartment) one morning. There's a couple of minor complications, including a completely unnecessary sub-plot involving a package, but it is basically a comedy about the stereotype of male incompetence when confronted by a helpless infant (there are moments when the baby looks a tad more competent than the men...). They hate the situation initially, but as time passes, blah, blah — hey, it's a cheap American movie — what do you expect?

    OK, so it ain't artistic perfection, but there are worse ways to blow an hour and a half.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. I'm guessing that's the original theatrical aspect ratio, judging by the framing.

    The image is reasonably sharp, with a little softness in places. Shadow detail is fairly good, but you've seen better. There's no low-level noise, but there's some grain, which looks a bit like noise. The picture is a bit variable, looking fairly dark in places.

    Colour is not bad, but not strong and vivid — perhaps a touch faded. It doesn't help that most of the apartment is decorated in light colours. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    The only noticeable film artefacts are in the closing credits, but there's quite a bit of light film grain.

    There is some mild aliasing (such as at 48:59 on the sign), but no moire. There is a heap of light mosquito noise in the backgrounds, but it's not annoying.

    There are subtitles in six languages, including English. We get both subtitles and captions in English — I only checked the captions. They are easy to read, well-timed, and accurate.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered (the cover incorrectly claims this DVD is dual layered). Given the complete lack of extras, there should enough room on one layer for this film.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is available in English and Spanish, and you get to choose first thing. Fortunately, unlike other two language choice menus I've seen, it is really easy to see which one is selected. English is the default, anyway.

    The English soundtrack is a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix of the original Dolby Stereo soundtrack — I don't know why, because the subwoofer is never required, and the surrounds don't get anything to do. This could just as easily been a three channel (left-centre-right) mix, with the centre carrying most of the dialogue, and the score in the left and right speakers..

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand. There are no audio sync problems.

    Marvin Hamlisch's score is fine, but nothing special. It's far from memorable.

    The subwoofer gets nothing to do, and the surrounds are hardly noticeable.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    No extras. Nothing.

Menu

    The menu is static and silent, with nothing on it but scene selection, setup, and play.

    The Region 1 version of this film was released fairly recently. There is some confusion about the aspect ratio of the Region 1 disc (the cover lists it both as widescreen and as pan and scan), but it is the same as ours: 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced. It is single layer, too, so it is pretty much the same as the R4.

    3 Men And A Baby is a popular, but fairly ordinary, film, on a bare-bones disc.

    The video quality is adequate, but not fabulous.

    The audio quality is good enough.

    The extras seem to be missing.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall