Tomcats (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Coming-Of-Age	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Dolby Digital Trailer-City Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Joe Dirt; Animal Filmographies-Cast & Crew
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	90:48
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Gregory Poirier
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Jerry O'Connell Shannon Elizabeth Jake Busey Horatio Sanz Jaime Pressly
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$36.95	Music	David Kitay

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/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 French Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Croatian Czech Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Polish Turkish	Smoking	Yes, very minor
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, outtakes during the credits

    The plot follows Michael (Jerry O'Connell), one of a group of college graduates who all put down money for a bet to pay the last un-married member of the group the entirety of the pot. Cut to seven years later, and Michael finds himself attempting to impress an overly endowed red-head to the tune of $50,000. Michael's only hope of repaying the money is to somehow get the only other remaining bachelor, Kyle (Jake Busey), to marry and thus land himself the pot, now worth half a million dollars. To that end, he enlists the help of Natalie (Shannon Elizabeth), a woman who has her own history with Kyle. What could go wrong? Well, if you can't guess that, then you haven't watched enough of this genre, for Michael and Natalie find themselves falling for each other. How will they deal with these problematic feelings? Will Michael get the money he needs to get out of debt? Will Michael remember his own rule about "no more red-heads"? Well, you will just have to grab the movie to find out, but suffice it to say that if you have seen even one of the other films I listed above, you could probably write the remainder of the plot blindfolded and with one hand tied behind your back.

    Certainly Tomcats brings nothing in the way of enlightenment with it (aside from sage advice about staying away from red-heads), but it is a good way to switch off for an hour and a half and not have to think, and it will bring enough laughs to make it worthwhile.

Video

    Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, the transfer is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is extremely sharp, carrying an exceptional level of detail at all times. There is a small problem with background grain, but this really only becomes very obvious during a short sequence from 72:30-72:42, and for the most part is almost unnoticeable. Shadow detail is exceptional, with every detail coming out in the darkest scenes, which is somewhat important as there are a few key sequences that take place outside at night. There was no low level noise detected in this transfer.

    Colours were perfectly rendered, with highlights showing up nicely, while everyday colours were neither jumping out, nor receding back.

    There were no noticeable compression artefacts in this transfer. In general there were no film-to-video artefacts, and it was quite pleasing to see such a sharp film with so little aliasing. There are, however, a number of instances of quite disturbing wobble that occur between 74:56 and 76:00, although this is most likely source-related as the wobble seems to be restricted to one particular camera angle. There were a few film artefacts throughout the transfer, however all were small and while occasionally noticeable, never really created a problem.

    The subtitles were very close to the spoken dialogue, only dropping the occasional word or sentence for pacing. The jokes and comedy were still carried effectively through the subtitles.

    This is a single layer disc, and hence does not have a layer change

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are two audio tracks present on this DVD, being the original English dialogue, and a French dub, both in Dolby Digital 5.1, and both at the higher bitrate of 448Kbps. I listened to the English dialogue track.

    Dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times. Sound effects and score mixing never interfered with the dialogue, and there were no drop outs.

    Audio sync was generally not a problem, apart from a few lines that were just enough out as to be annoying.

    Tomcats features two varieties of music. Firstly, as is typical for this genre, there are a large number of contemporary songs from various bands used throughout the movie. Secondly, credited to David Kitay is the "score" music. This is very much a genre-typical score, being a contemporary sound of pop/rock stylings used to fill the gaps where an existing song could not be found. It generally does its job well, never calling attention to itself.

    The surround channel use is extremely frustrating. On the one hand, surrounds are used extremely aggressively to support the music, but on the other hand, they tend to fall silent when there is no music, and apart from a very few sequences are never used for ambient effects. It is these sequences that lend the frustration, for they demonstrate what could have been done with this soundtrack.

    The subwoofer track is very solid, supporting both the music, and the occasional effect perfectly. Certainly, it is not anything that is going to knock you off your lounge, but from what it has to work with, it is very impressive.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Theatrical Trailers

Filmographies

Dolby Digital Trailer - City

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Pan & Scan version
• Trailers for Saving Silverman, Jerry Maguire and Starship Troopers.

• Trailer for The Animal

    The video quality is very good, being marred by a few small problems.

    The audio is likewise very good, but is also let down by a very few problems that were just slightly annoying.

    The "special features" are not deserving of the name, and are very disappointing, although this can be overlooked given the content of the film, and its transfer quality.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall