BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer(s)	No
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	No
Year Released	1993	Commentary Tracks	No
Running Time	102:43 minutes	Other Extras	No
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (62:36)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	2,4	Director	Bill Duke
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Whoopi Goldberg Kathy Najimy James Coburn  Maggie Smith
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	$36.95	Music	Miles Goodman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	No
Subtitles	English Dutch French English for the Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, in credits

    In this case, the original film - Sister Act obviously - was not that great a film, but it was a least a mildly amusing film to wile away a couple of hours with, which is more than can be said for this sequel. It simply lacks the element of unforced situation that made the first film mildly amusing. Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit is marred somewhat by the forced attempts to repeat the original film, and falls short by some margin.

    The story begins with Sister Mary Clarence, otherwise known as Deloris Van Cartier (Whoopi Goldberg) strutting her stuff as a headline singer in the lounge of a Las Vegas casino. During her final show, she is visited by some of her friends from the nunnery including Sister Mary Patrick (Kathy Najimy) and Sister Mary Robert (Wendy Makkena), who happen to be on a mission from God - well at least from Mother Superior (Maggie Smith). The mission this time is to become a teacher at the (sort of) high school from hell - St Francis High School, the former school of Sister Mary Clarence. The purpose of the mission? To bring order to a high-spirited and mildly rebellious bunch of students coasting their way through a "bird" class - music. This high-spirited class includes Rita (Lauryn Hill) and Margaret (Jennifer Love Hewitt). Sister Mary Clarence takes this high-spirited bunch and turns them into, of all things, a choir, and a darn good one too. So good, in fact, that the ever-faithful sisters enter them into the California All State Music Competition. Well, since this is a Disney film, you know what happens in the end.

    The story is not a classic, and it really does drone along with barely anything approaching a laugh. It is as predictable as the absence of extras on a Disney DVD and even some of the cast look like they are just going through the motions. Whoopi Goldberg has been known to reach substantial heights in her acting career, but this is generally when she is given superb material to work with and good direction. Sadly, both are missing in action here, and so her performance is really just marking time. Wendy Makkena is obviously so disenchanted with proceedings that she does not even bother to hide the fact. The usually skatty Kathy Najimy is similarly unable or unwilling to really get into the spirit of things and the rest are just plain forgettable. About the only thing here that even gets any sort of interest is the singing - and there is some quite decent stuff here. The whole clichéd story is moved along by some rent-a-director type by the name of Bill Duke - I have never heard of him before and never heard of him since. Probably says an awful lot really.

    To be very kind, this is really mediocre stuff of the highest order and there is little here that would make me run out and buy the disc. Sister Act 2 is an eminently forgettable film that should not have made it onto DVD until budget-priced ranges become available.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced. The reference on the packaging to a ratio of 2.35:1 is erroneous.

    Well, we are not talking razor blades here as far as detail and sharpness are concerned. It is a decent enough transfer demonstrating decent sharpness and decent detail, but nothing remotely approaching anything to really make one sit up and take notice. This is a reasonably clear transfer, not really grainy at any point but really not demonstrating anything approaching sparkling clarity either. The shadow detail was reasonable but could have been significantly better at times. There were no low level noise problems in the transfer.

    This is definitely not a vibrant transfer, and this is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the transfer. Even when there was an opportunity for bright, vibrant colours to shine, such as with the bright graffiti segments, the overall tone was a little too reserved. At least there was a degree of consistency in the colour rendering. The transfer is, however, blighted with a number of instances of oversaturation, most notably in the red lighting of the audience in the theatre shots. The whole thing loses a major amount of detail in these shots and this is as poor an example of oversaturation as I have seen for a while. There was also some evidence of colour bleed during the opening credits and in the song during the closing credits.

    There are no apparent MPEG artefacts in the transfer. Film-to-video artefacts were something of a problem with some shimmering noticeable on a couple of occasions: the worst example is some rather off-putting shimmer in the buildings at around the 7:25 mark. There were also some fairly noticeable film artefacts thrown in for good measure, although I would be hard pressed to suggest that they actually detracted from the film.

    This is an RSDL format disc with the layer change coming at 62:36: this is during a scene change and is only moderately noticeable and is certainly not disruptive to the flow of the film.

    The packaging manages to omit the listing for the French subtitle option that actually is included on the DVD.

Audio

    There are three audio tracks on the DVD: an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a French Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded soundtrack and an Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded soundtrack Not wishing to tempt fate any more than necessary, I stuck with listening to the English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Cue the usual rant about Disney DVDs not allowing you you select language options on the fly.

    The dialogue was clear and generally easy to understand throughout.

    There did not appear to be any problems with audio sync in the transfer.

    The music score comes from Miles Goodman, and a thoroughly ... mediocre ... effort it is, too. There is certainly nothing memorable about this effort.

    There is really not much to say about the soundtrack. The film is obviously one that does not call for excessive use of the bass channel, and so its usage is pretty limited. Overall, I felt that the surround channel use was quite ... mediocre ... and this really could have been a lot better, as there was ample opportunity for greater rear channel ambience here. Apart from when Lauryn Hill and some of the others sing, this is really quite a flattish-sounding effort, distinctly lacking a high degree of believability.

Menu

• Theatrical trailer

• 16x9 enhancement

    A mediocre video transfer.

    A mediocre audio transfer.

    A non-existent extras package.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
28th July 2000