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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Addicted to Love (1997)

Addicted to Love (1997)

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Released 7-Oct-1998
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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Romantic Comedy	Biographies-Cast & Crew Production Notes-Behind The Scenes (10 pgs), Camera Obscura (9 pgs) Theatrical Trailer-1.85:1, 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0, 192Kb/s
Rating
Year Of Production	1997
Running Time	96:23
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme	Cast & Crew
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Griffin Dunne
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Meg Ryan Matthew Broderick Kelly Preston Tcheky Karyo
Case	Amaray-Transparent	Starring	Meg Ryan Matthew Broderick Kelly Preston Tcheky Karyo
RPI	$29.95	Music	Rachel Portman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No	Miscellaneous
Subtitles	English Arabic English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

Sam (Matthew Broderick) is an astronomer and is madly in love with Linda (Kelly Preston) - and who can blame him! When Linda leaves him to go to New York for two months, he can hardly let her go, but instead of returning after the two months, she writes him a Dear John letter advising him she is breaking up with him and is not coming back. Sam immediately leaves for New York, determined to win her back. He visits the school where she was teaching and the hotel she was staying at in an effort to find out where she is. He eventually gets her new address, but when he goes to visit her, Sam is confronted with the realization that Linda is now with someone else and is living in his apartment. So, he sets up shop (so to speak) in an abandoned building across from theirs, so that he can spy on them and find the most appropriate time to win her back.

Enter Maggie (Meg Ryan). Meg Ryan does not play her usual sweet innocent character in Addicted to Love. This time, she plays the bitter and jilted fiancé of Anton (Tcheky Karyo), Linda's new lover. Maggie wants revenge for being dumped and used. At first Sam does not want to help Maggie get her revenge, which includes splitting Anton and Linda up, but as the days go by, seeing and hearing (!) Linda with another man takes its toll and Sam agrees to help her. I enjoyed the dynamics of Maggie's character a lot, but in the end, I felt the character just went too far in trying to exact her revenge, and so her character became less appealing to me.

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Transfer Quality

Video

The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

The picture is clear and sharp at all times, with great foreground detail. The background detail is definitely left wanting on a couple of occasions, but I do not believe this was a transfer-induced fault. Only one instance of low-level noise was seen at 14:25 - 14:28, but it is minor and is not detrimental to the picture quality. No instances of edge enhancement or edge bleeding were noticed. There is a nice amount of subtle shadow detail present when required, which is not too often as this picture mostly takes place during the night, so generally the black areas are just black. To me, the black level of the picture always looked natural and visually pleasing.

For the first ten minutes the colour appears slightly flat, as most of Warner Brothers earlier DVDs do, but once we are in New York the colour looks much fuller, which is probably because of all of the night-time scenes. In this particular regard, this title is much better than most of the other early Warner Brothers titles.

There is a slight grain in the picture for most of the movie. Thankfully however, most of the time it is barely noticeable. Its effects can still be seen if you look closely enough though, but overall it is pretty good, so there isn't too much to complain about here. The most noticeable instances can be found at 0:37, 1:55, 4:22, 13:57 and 34:26. This graininess could still be seen when viewed on my 68cm TV set using the composite input.

No MPEG artefacts were seen and no instances of aliasing were noticed either.

There are quite a few film artefacts, but they were usually small and black, so they were not really disruptive to the picture quality. If I hadn't been deliberately looking out for them, I expect many would have flown straight by without me even noticing them.

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

Audio

There is only one audio track on this DVD, which is an English 384Kb/s Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

The dialogue was extremely clear and easy to understand throughout the entire movie and no audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer.

The musical score is by Rachel Portman and it suits the movie.

The surround channels were lightly used. They were predominantly filled with music, with the odd sound effect thrown in here and there. Since this is a largely dialogue-driven movie, the lack of enveloping sound is easily forgiven and I never felt the sound was lacking at any stage. There are a couple of scenes that do have some good surround channel use, though. There is also good sound separation and placement across the front soundstage, which really enhanced the front soundstage, and kept it from collapsing into the centre speaker.

The subwoofer receives a very light work-out, which is to be expected with this type of movie.

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

Extras

There is a limited but nicely presented selection of extras.

Reel Recommendations (3 pages)

The static-only recommendations include; Ladyhawke, Ace Ventura-Pet Detective, Arthur, Beetlejuice, Blazing Saddles, Caddyshack, Grumpy Old Men, Police Academy, Private Benjamin, Risky Business and Tin Cup.

Cast & Crew

This section contains Biographies and Selected Filmographies for Meg Ryan, Matthew Broderick, Kelly Preston, Tcheky Karyo, Maureen Stapleton, Rachel Portman (Music), Andrew Dunne (Director of Photography), Robert Gordon (Writer) and Griffin Dunne (Director).

Production Notes-Behind the Scenes (10 pages)

Ten pages of behind-the-scenes information. Each page has a different background picture.

Notes-Camera Obscura (9 pages)

A description of the Camera Obscura (the device Sam uses to spy on Anton and Linda). Each page has a different background picture.

Theatrical Trailer (2:12 minutes)

This is of good quality, presented in the 16x9 enhanced aspect ratio of 1.85:1, with a 192Kb/s Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded soundtrack. It is nice to see a 16x9 enhanced Theatrical Trailer, even if the colour is a little flat.

R4 vs R1

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;

Additional Pan & Scan version

The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

Nothing

With no significant extras missing from the R4 version and with both the R1 and R4 discs having similar picture and sound shortcomings, the R4 disc is an easy choice and in my mind is undoubtedly the superior disc.

Summary

For me Addicted to Love, was an alright movie, presented on a fine DVD.

Overall the video quality is very good, with only some minor grain and film artefacts lowering its rating.

The audio has been flawlessly recorded, with only the limitations of the original soundtrack lowering its rating.