Sugar & Spice (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation Dolby Digital Trailer-Rain Scene Selection Anim & Audio Filmographies-Cast & Crew Interviews-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Deleted Scenes-4 Biographies-Character
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	77:37
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Francine McDougall
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Marley Shelton Marla Sokoloff Melissa George Mena Suvari Rachel Blanchard James Marsden Alexandra Holden Sara Marsh
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	Mark Mothersbaugh

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/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	No

    Sometimes Hollywood will produce two or even three movies at the same time dealing with almost exactly the same subject. It is often claimed that this is pure happenstance (by the lawyers), or cosmic synchronicity (by the New Agers), but I have my own theories: I suspect that someone has been hawking a script around, and although the studio turned down the script, they liked the idea, and gave the go-ahead to a similar effort. Sometimes the two movies are equally good (or bad): consider Deep Impact and Armageddon, for example. And sometimes one of the movies is good, and the other is not. In this case I rate Bring It On as the good one, and Sugar and Spice as the one that is not. And as is not uncommon, the good movie is mentioned on the cover of the other... 

    This movie has one simple theme: cheerleaders are stupid. Well, actually, there are a few themes: 

• cheerleaders are stupid
• cheerleaders are shallow and obsessed with appearances
• football players are stupid

    These themes are hammered home repeatedly, with a distinct lack of finesse. Add in the horribly obvious moral: "Teen pregnancy is disastrous", and you have a movie that is rather cringe-inducing. 

    This movie is a sequence of events leading up to their "big idea" - you can picture the executives pitching this movie: "five cheerleaders dressed as pregnant cartoon characters rob a bank". 

    There are one or two scenes that are funny, or close to funny, but they are separated by quite a few scenes that aren't. The sequences in the women's prison are entertaining.

    The ending is very weak. I guess they blew all their creative energy on their big idea.

Video

    There's a theory that the worst movies get the best transfers. This movie is another example to support that theory.

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is gloriously sharp, with excellent shadow detail, and no trace of low level detail.

    Colour is strong and well balanced. There is a whole lot of pink on display, and the cheerleading uniforms are bright blue. These colours are fully saturated.

    There are no visible film artefacts. There are tiny touches of aliasing, but nothing troubling. The only other visible flaw is a moment or two of background shimmer.

    The only subtitles are in English. They are presented in an attractive simple font, and are easy to read - they're accurate and well-timed.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered, so there's no layer change. Given that the movie is so short, and the extras fairly limited, there's plenty of room on the one layer for everything.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The English soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, and in 2.0, not surround encoded. I listened to the 5.1 soundtrack, and sampled the stereo.

    The dialogue is easy to understand. There are no visible audio sync issues.

    The score is credited to Mark Mothersbaugh, but also includes a number of songs, a couple of which I recognised.

    There's nothing much for the surround speakers to do, and the subwoofer turned off partway through the movie from lack of anything to do.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menus are very pink, with a lipstick kiss as the selector. They are animated, with music.

Cast and Crew

    This is rather more than usual. For each person we get a character profile and a filmography, and for most we get a filmed interview (called a sound bite, even though it includes vision) as well. The interviews are poorly done, with each person answering questions, but we don't know what the questions are. The people covered are:

• Marley Shelton
• James Marsden (you saw him in X-Men)
• Mena Suvari (from 3 American films: American Pie, American Beauty, and American Virgin)
• Marla Sokoloff
• Alexandra Holden
• Rachel Blanchard
• Sara Marsh
• Melissa George (yes, the one from Home and Away)
• Francine McDougall (director)

Trailer (2:15)

    It's an average trailer. At least it is presented wide-screen.

Deleted Scenes (4)

    These aren't bad - you can see why they were deleted, but they provide some amusement.

    The Region 1 version also includes a pan-and-scan version as well as the widescreen, and some DVD-ROM extras, but it's in a snapper case. I'd suggest that the Region 4 is just as good, unless you need a pan-and-scan version.

    Sugar & Space has a dreadful plot, but it is well filmed and nicely presented on DVD.

    The video quality is excellent.

    The audio quality is very good, although lacking in direction.

    The extras are reasonable.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall