One Fine Day (1996)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Romantic Comedy	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	104:11
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (68:13)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Michael Hoffman
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Michelle Pfeiffer George Clooney Mae Whitman Sammy D. Linz Charles Durning
Case	?
RPI	$36.95	Music	James Newton Howard

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English 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	Czech Danish English for the Hearing Impaired Finnish Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    One Fine Day is a romantic comedy that follows the standard rules for such films and as such doesn't break any new ground as far as the genre is concerned. All of the main actors do a creditable job with their respective parts but I think the outstanding performance is from George Clooney since he basically plays a very annoying character and he sure as hell annoyed me!

    George Clooney is Jack Taylor, an investigative journalist for the local paper, and the divorced parent of Maggie (Mae Whitman). Michelle Pfeiffer is Melanie Parker, an architect, also divorced, who is trying to raise her son Sammy (Alex D. Linz). Jack has never really grown up and has a fun-loving nature. Melanie, on the other hand, is responsible and mature. On the day that these two meet it's anything but a fine day; Jack's big story about corruption in the Governors' Office is about to fall apart because his source has decided to renege on the story, and Melanie has to make a major presentation in the hope of wining a big project for her firm. From the outset, the day starts badly. Jack is supposed to ring Melanie to arrange for her to take his daughter to school but in his typically irresponsible manner he doesn't. This results in Jack and Maggie meeting for the first time on the steps of their children's school. Melanie sums up Jack's nature pretty quickly and since this is fundamentally different to her own she takes an instant dislike to him. The failure of Jack to make arrangements for Melanie to take both children to school results in them both being late. The consequence is that Maggie and Sammy miss their school field trip and when both parents are unable to arrange babysitters they are faced with helping each other look after the children while still meeting their hectic work commitments. As I'm sure you've guessed, the rest of the story is how, despite the various trials and tribulations of this anything but One Fine Day, these two totally opposite characters come together.

    From a comedy point of view, the highlight is Chapter 6 where Jack has to describe to his Psychiatrist (Robert Klein) the problems with his relationship with his ex-wife, but he has to do this with his daughter present and does it using analogies and substitute words to prevent his daughter understanding what is being said.

    Overall, this is a romantic comedy with very little romance and only slightly more comedy.

Video

    This is a very nice transfer with only a few small problems which could easily go unnoticed by most people.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, which is the original aspect ratio of this movie. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is very sharp with only a couple of scenes exhibiting a slightly soft appearance. Shadow detail was excellent in this transfer which is important as there are quite a few scenes shot in relatively low light conditions. There was no low level noise. Minor edge enhancement was noted rarely so was this was not a problem in this transfer.

    I found the colour to be somewhat muted in appearance although I believe this is true to the source material rather than being a defect in the transfer. In fact, the whole movie generally has a drab colour palette limited to mainly earthy tones with relatively few splashes of vivid colour. Despite this, flesh tones still exhibited a natural appearance.

    For the most part this is a very good transfer. Aliasing was very rare and of a minor nature when it did occur even though there were plenty of opportunities for this artefact to reveal itself. In the MPEG artefact department, some pixelization was noted, particularly in Chapter 5 starting at 14:16 where this effect is easily seen in the sky which appears in many scenes in this chapter. This transfer was taken from a very clean source and I was able to spot only a couple of small film artefacts in the way of small black or white marks.

    I sampled about 15 mins of the English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles. These are displayed in easily readable white text at the bottom of the picture. While they are not 100% accurate to the dialogue, the small errors that I noted didn't detract from the story.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change placed between Chapters 17 and 18, at 68:13. Even though it is at a scene change I found it to be somewhat disruptive as the the picture freezes for 1/2 a second or so.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    This was basically a flawless audio track in that there were no obvious defects and the music was supportive of the on-screen action.

    Only one audio track was provided on this disc, being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 track.

    There were no problems with the dialogue. I found it to be always clear and easily understood. I didn't detect any problems with audio sync, either.

    The musical score (original music by James Newton Howard) is a nice mix of music from various artists and includes the title song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and performed once by Natalie Merchant (who sounds more than a bit like Carole King) over the opening credits and then again by The Chiffons towards the end of the movie.

    The subject of this movie doesn't really lend itself to an explosive, enveloping type of audio track that you would expect from an action movie, however despite this there was noticeable surround use by the music and effects elements to provide ambience as required by the on-screen action. The front left and right speakers are used very effectively to support the various split screen sequences.

    The subwoofer did not make its presence felt. If it was used to support the lower frequency components of the music score then it did this with such subtlety that I couldn't detect it from my standard listening position.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Only a bare minimum of extras are included.

Menu

    The menu is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. Neither animation nor audio is provided.

Theatrical Trailer

    The trailer runs for 2:29 and is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 but is not surround encoded.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded audio track
• French Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded audio track
• 6 theatrical trailers for other movies
• Spanish subtitles

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• RSDL formatting
• 16x9 enhancement
• Additional subtitles

    One Fine Day was an OK romantic comedy, but not a great movie as far as this genre is concerned.

    The video quality is generally very good except for some noticeable MPEG artefacts.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are limited to a theatrical trailer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall