Lake Placid (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Featurette TV Spots-3 Biographies-Cast & Crew
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	78:41
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Steve Miner
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Bill Pullman Bridget Fonda Oliver Platt Brendan Gleeson Betty White
Case	Six-Sided Star Clamp
RPI	$36.95	Music	John Ottman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    Everyone remembers the old joke where someone asks if it is dangerous in a particular area because of bears. The expert answers that there are no bears. Then, in a lower voice, add "the crocs ate all the bears". Well, David E. Kelley has written an entire film based around this joke. Now don't get me wrong, I really liked this film. It is a good comedy film.

    To be honest I don't remember Lake Placid appearing at the cinema and I suspect that it did not do too well. I have a theory on why this happened. One of the extras on this disc is a series of three 'TV Spots', basically 30 second commercials for the film. All three of these commercials present the film as a serious film of the Jaws genre. If you went to see this film with that in mind, you would be seriously disappointed - it is a comedy, and a take-off of this type of film. Now either the adds are a big mistake, or they wanted to make a 'real' film and got it very wrong. I don't know whether this matters. As long as you are in the correct frame of mind for this type of film you will enjoy yourself.

    David E. Kelley has been responsible for some very good TV shows including Chicago Hope, Picket Fences, The Practice and Ally McBeal. While there is a 30ft crocodile in this film, the real strength is the dialogue. It is extremely well written. It has a similar feel to some of the more quirky parts of the abovementioned shows.

    To create this film they have put together just about every silly plot mechanism that we see in the scary monster/animal eats people genre. If you were at a lake with a 30ft crocodile, would you go out in a small boat and stand next to the edge? Well, our leading lady does. It is not a question of if she is going in the water, just when.

    This film also includes some of my favourite popcorn film actors. We have the "president of America" Bill Pullman (ID4) playing a park ranger along with one of the "Disney Musketeers" Oliver Platt (The Three Musketeers) playing a rich madman that likes to swim with crocodiles. We also have Bridget Fonda and Brendan Gleeson and Betty White (I) from The Golden Girls. Yes, the characterisation is all over the place, but my take is that this is again a spoof on the characters that normally appear in this sort of film.

    I won't outline too much of the plot as there is so little of it. Anything further that I say would probably be a spoiler. This is a standard scary creature plot but with the added spice that the group of people threatened are a very quirky bunch. This is a spoof, intentional or not, and a great night's entertainment.

Video

    I was a little concerned when I saw that this was a single layer disc. Thankfully, due the the short running time (78:41), and the lack of extras there was enough space to give us a reasonable transfer.

    We are presented with a 2.35:1 transfer that is 16x9 enhanced. This appears to be the original ratio for this film.

    Sharpness in the foreground is quite good. Objects in the background are not quite as sharp and distance shots suffer as well. The shadow detail is good and there is no low level noise.

    There are no problems with the colours. The saturation is good and there are some vibrant colours. The skin tones are slightly affected by posterization, particularly in the early part of the film, although this seems to clear up after the first third of the film.

    The film has been compressed onto a single layer, which has lead to some very subtle macro blocking. At no stage was there an example you could plainly point to, but it was more a subliminal impression that we were just on the edge of breaking out into macro-blocking. This was most noticeable in the slight loss of sharpness in the backgrounds. There are some clear examples of posterization such as at 16:49 on the girl's cheek. There is a small amount of aliasing present such as on the edge of the boat at 31:42. They have also applied a small amount of edge enhancement visible in ringing on sharp luminance transitions. This can be seen at 39:06 on the left side of the actor.

    The film master used for this transfer is near-perfect with very few marks or spots visible and no scratches.

    The subtitles are listed as 'English for the Hearing Impaired'. They were easy to read and reasonably accurate, though they sometimes had trouble keeping up with the quick banter between the characters. They also included some sound cue descriptions.

    As mentioned, this is a single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The dialogue was easy to understand at all times and the audio was in sync with the on-screen action.

   While the audio track was nothing spectacular, it works perfectly for this film. They have managed to produce a spoof of the music normally associated with this type of film. I found this very clever and it added to the overall comedy.

    The surrounds were present but not at any really noticeable level. They drew the soundtrack out of the front soundstage a little and there were a few surround effects. Not as good as we have come to expect from recent films.

    The subwoofer received some redirected bass. This was a missed opportunity in my opinion, though perhaps I expected too much considering that this is a spoof.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    A static 1.78:1 menu that is 16x9 enhanced with no audio.

Featurette

    Basically a 5:25 trailer with a few interviews thrown in. This gives a far better impression of the film than the TV Spots.

TV Spots

    Three 32-33 second TV commercials. I have no idea why they would present the film in this light.

Biography: Cast and Crew

    The usual information but presented slightly differently. As you select each bio you are presented with an instruction screen that informs you to use the chapter skip button to access each subsequent page.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Original theatrical trailer
• Dolby Digital 2.0 surround track
• Dolby Digital 2.0 surround track (French)
• Menu animation and sound
• Spanish subtitles
• Closed captions

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• 16x9 enhancement

    I believe that the 16x9 enhancement far outweighs any of the extras on the Region 1 disc, giving us a clear Region 4 winner.

    You must keep in mind the type of film this is. We are talking about a 30ft crocodile, in a remote lake in Maine.... that eats helicopters.

    The video is good considering the level of compression.

    The audio is acceptable

    The extras are really just afterthoughts.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall