Galgameth (1996)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	100:21
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Sean McNamara
Studio Distributor	Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Davin Oatway Sean McNamara Stephen Macht Elizabeth Cheap Johna Stewart
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$14.95	Music	Richard Marvin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Screen, not known whether Pan & Scan or Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Actually, this movie could do with several things: a plot, some actors, and decent props, to begin with. The swords are dreadful - you can clearly see that they have no edge and no point - just strips of flat steel (actually, I suspect that's not steel...). At one point the hero grabs the wrong end of a sword and strikes an opponent with the hilt. Try that with a real sword and you could do yourself some real harm, but it is no problem with these lousy props. And then there's the cannon (singular, not plural)... Clearly no one involved in this movie understands concepts like recoil, nor how long it takes to reload a muzzle-loading cannon, but the classic moment comes when the cannon stops firing for a while - the Chinese scientist in charge of the cannon takes a look at it and reports that it is "jammed". Words fail me!

    At one point the bad guys resort to firing rockets (not impossible - their cannon is the work of a Chinese specialist in gunpowder...). But their rockets are fired from what look like wooden recreations of the missile batteries you see on modern battleships - "anachronism" is the most generous term I can think of.

    There's a point in the plot which I find quite troubling: upon the death of his father, the boy prince (12 years old) is immediately referred to as "King Davin". This is unlikely - in reality a regent would normally be appointed until the boy reached his majority. There are several other holes, but that's the one that bugs me the most.

    There is an important moment early on where Galgameth meets what are supposed to be blackbirds. I guess the budget didn't stretch to real blackbirds - they appear to have used pigeons dyed black, and not very well, either. The budget didn't stretch to believable wine, either - the raspberry cordial they've used is very much the wrong colour.

    The screenwriter has drawn on all of his bag of clichés in concocting this mess. Pratfalls substitute for comedy. Corny dialogue could have been assembled as scraps from a variety of lousy movies, including pseudo-funny asides.

    Galgameth is intended, I suspect, for children. This movie trumpets itself as being "from the producers of The 3 Ninjas". Clearly these producers think that films for children need less attention to basics, like plot. Big mistake - children can be as critical as adults of holes in the plot. The children's films that succeed, in my opinion, pay more attention to good quality basics. They have credible plots and good acting.

    This film cannot have been cheap to make. It has a fair-sized cast, quite a few extras, not to mention a number of rubber suits and quite a bit of compositing. What a waste.

Video

    This film has been treated to a transfer far better than it deserves.

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced; I don't know if this movie was made for TV, so that could be the original aspect ratio.

    The image is fairly sharp and clear in close-ups, but blurry in long shots. Shadow detail is good. There's no low level noise.

    Colour is strong and well-saturated. There are some moments of over-hot whites, but that's the only kind of oversaturation we see.

    There is quite a bit of aliasing, and a moment or two of moire. There are no visible MPEG errors, and few visible film artefacts.

    There are no subtitles.

    The disc is single-sided and single-layered, which means no layer change. A second layer is hardly required for the 100 minutes of movie and no extras.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is a single soundtrack - English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded.

    Dialogue is easy to understand. There are no noticeable slips in audio sync.

    The score is from Richard Marvin. It is a summary of scores from bad movies - no originality required.

    There are no significant moments of directional sound, and the subwoofer switched itself off, indicating no noticeable signal.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The main menu is static and silent. The only entries on the menu are Play Movie and Chapter Selection.

    This movie appears only to have been released on VHS in Region 1.

    Galgameth is a poor movie, presently reasonably well on DVD.

    The video quality is mostly decent.

    The audio quality is fine.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall