Swingers (1996)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Menu Animation & Audio Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	92:20 (Case: 96)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Doug Liman
Studio Distributor	Magna Home Entertainment	Starring	Jon Favreau Vince Vaughn Ron Livingston Patrick Van Horn Alex Desert Heather Graham
Case	Click
RPI	$29.95	Music	Justin Reinhardt

    Swingers was written and co-produced by Jon Favreau, who also performed in the lead role. Personally, I found it had a lot of possibilities but just never seemed to get out of second gear. Although there were some funny moments, there were just not enough to keep up the momentum or to live up to the claims made on the front cover of this DVD.

    Swingers is a movie that centres around Mike (Jon Favreau) and his close friends. It has been 6 months since his girlfriend of 6 years left him and Mike finds it hard to come to grips with being thrust back into the singles scene. Too much time is spent checking the answering machine in the hope that his ex will call and ask him to come back. His good buddy Trent (Vince Vaughn) decides that the best thing he can do for Mike is to lead him astray. He convinces Mike to go to Las Vegas for the night where they head to (where else but) the casino.

    This sets the scene for the rest of the movie where they try to hook up with as many women as possible, resolving to call them back no sooner than 2 days later. When Mike finally does score, he shows his total lack of self esteem by breaking the 2 day rule and obsessively calling the poor girl up constantly.

Video

    The transfer is presented in the non-original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (OAR 1.85:1), and is therefore not 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer was clear and sharp even during the frequent low light scenes. The shadow detail at night was very well controlled and it showed in the transfer. There is very little low level noise.

    The colours were quite well defined and contained no bleeding or other visual problems.

    There were no MPEG artefacts seen and aliasing was very rare and very mild when it did occur. Film artefacts are rare and not distracting at all.

    There are no subtitles available on this disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio transfer was more problematic than the video transfer.

    The dialogue was usually recorded at quite a low level and the music had a tendency to overpower it at times.

    There was one sequence at 45:01 where audio sync was a problem, but there were no other sync problems.

    The musical score by Justin Reinhardt went along with the movie's jazz theme and was well-suited to the on-screen action. The dialogue did tend to be a little soft in comparison to the music which had me readjusting the audio a few times during the movie. An example can be found at 24:30.

    The surround channels were monaural and only used for the backing music.

    The subwoofer was lightly used like the surrounds, but did provide a nice bottom end to the music.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• 1.85:1 widescreen presentation
• English and Spanish subtitles

• Spanish subtitles

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• 16x9 enhancement

    Swingers was for me a once-only movie that needed faster pacing.

    The video transfer had no specific problems.

    The audio quality was passable.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall