Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Flipped Blu-ray Movie Review

I'd rather watch 'The Revenge of Kitty Galore' again than sit through 'Flipped' a second time. Really.

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown December 7, 2010

Rob Reiner seems to have fallen on hard creative times. The award-winning filmmaker who gave cinephiles This is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and A Few Good Men in the '80s and early '90s soon began churning out less-than-spectacular genre pics like North, Ghosts of Mississippi, The Story of Us, Alex & Emma, Rumor Has It, and The Bucket List. Quite a dramatic shift. Sadly, Flipped isn't Reiner's long-awaited return to form. Instead, it stands as one of his worst; a dissonant heartstring symphony as contrived as it is tiresome, as underdeveloped as it is disingenuous, as irritating as it is forgettable.

Young love blooms...

Based on Wendelin Van Draanen's well-received novel of the same name, Flipped is a mess from start to finish. Its premise shows promise, I'll admit -- a simple story of young love in the early '60s told from two different adolescent perspectives -- but the results are so telegraphed, so sickeningly sweet, that it literally turned my stomach. Australian actor Callan McAuliffe delivers a refreshingly restrained performance as Bryce Loski, a boy struggling to thwart the advances of his classmate and neighbor; a free-spirited girl who wears her heart on her sleeve. Madeline Carroll matches McAuliffe's charm scene for scene as Julie Baker, Bryce's smitten would-be girlfriend and sensitive social outcast. Both young actors deserve tremendous credit for their efforts, despite the fact that Reiner seems bound and determined to stamp out any nuance in their characters' budding relationship. But between Reiner and co-writer Andrew Scheinman's overripe screenplay, hollow period dialogue and shallow, emotionally transparent characters -- not to mention the one-note deliveries of the film's largely miscast veterans -- Flipped falls flat on its face.

Anthony Edwards' presence is by far the most grating. As Bryce's uptight father, he bullies, balks and barks on cue, but approaches crucial exchanges with the bull-meets-china subtlety of an abusive Lifetime Original Movie monster. His scenes are painful to watch, and I found my hand on the remote on more than one occasion, desperate to avoid his pantomimed gestures and obnoxiously staged tirades. (His ludicrous, mid-dinner stand on eggs given to the Loskis by the Bakers is easily one of the film's lowest points. And it has some stiff competition.) Rebecca De Mornay and Penelope Ann Miller don't help matters as Bryce and Julie's mothers. De Mornay's performance is wooden and wholly ineffective; she may as well be reading her every line from a 3x5 card. Meanwhile, Miller is imprecise and shifty, and couldn't land a part in a community college play with the chops shown here. Granted, neither actress is blessed with meaningful material, but they still fail to make either matriarch sympathetic.

Then there's Kevin Weisman as Julie's mentally disabled uncle and Cody Horn as Bryce's sister. Weisman invokes everything from Rain Man to Forest Gump, pushes and pulls without any discernible rhyme or reason, and stumbles at every turn. And Horn merely disappears into the fabric of the film, injecting little more than superficial rebellion into the already dysfunctional Loski dynamic. Thankfully, their screentime is as limited as that of Edwards, De Mornay and Miller, and McAuliffe and Carroll remain front and center at all times. A few actors do manage to join the two young stars above the stocky stageplay fray -- John Mahoney and Aidan Quinn elevate nearly every scene in which they appear (as Bryce's kindly grandfather and Julie's dutiful father, respectively) -- but their seasoned prowess only seems to highlight their fellow castmates' mistakes and the many, many shortcuts and shortcomings that litter Reiner and Scheinman's script, story and vision.

Flipped is period melodrama, pure and simple. It doesn't mine the Loskis or the Bakers for any compelling complexities, it shamelessly plucks heartstrings rather than evoking genuine emotion, and it populates Bryce and Julie's lives with conventional conflicts and sketchy adult caricatures. Some will say Reiner intentionally presents each family from Bryce and Julie's fundamentally flawed childhood perspectives; that each gentle spirit and selfish soul is as two-dimensional as they are because children view their parents and older siblings through such a narrow lens. But that argument doesn't hold water, particularly since Bryce and Julia's constant narration sometimes reveals a distinctly different take on their parents than the realities we see play out on screen. The continual contrast Reiner employs suggests his intention is to do the exact opposite; to explore the gap between the imperfect adults parents are and the strange, oft-times temperamental caretakers that dominate their children's fledgling perspectives. And with so much to accomplish in eighty-five short minutes, is it any wonder little of substance emerges?

What could have been a poignant study of the trials and tribulations of adolescence-- an insightful film in the vein of, say, Stand by Me -- is nothing of the sort. Rent Flipped if you must. Avoid it if you can.

Flipped Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Warner continues its long-teased conversion to AVC MPEG-4 encoding standards with Flipped's faithful 1080p presentation. The results aren't exactly stunning, but neither is the film's diffuse photography. Soft at times, hazy at others, Reiner's return to the golden age of his youth is a slow-roasted bit of heavy-handed nostalgia; one marinated in rich, amber hues and warm, savory primaries. Skintones occasionally appear oversaturated, but remain relatively lifelike throughout; black levels are generally deep and absorbing, but weaken under difficult lighting conditions; and contrast, though inconsistent, is well within the filmmakers' period framework. Uneasy about the transfer itself? Don't be. For better or worse, any and all perceived shortcomings trace back to Reiner's intentions. The same can be said of the presentation's detail. Fine textures are reasonably refined but inherently underwhelming, image clarity is in a constant state of slight flux, and edges, while fairly satisfying on the whole, are sometimes misty and indistinct. Again though, all signs point to Reiner, not the studio's encoding efforts. Artifacting, banding, aliasing, crush and unseemly smearing are held at bay, and the banding that appears around a handful of light sources is altogether negligible. Is the Blu-ray edition of Flipped going to drop any jaws? Hardly. Is its transfer true to Reiner's vision? Without a doubt. Ultimately, little else matters.

Flipped Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Flat, front-heavy and more repressed than Bryce's father, Flipped's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is neither immersive nor engaging, falling short regardless of what fills the screen. It isn't a complete loss by any means -- dialogue is clean, clear and perfectly prioritized, and the film's conversational nature and persistent narration sounds every bit as good as it should -- but it also fails to draw the listener into Bryce and Julie's world. Low-end output is merely serviceable (not that the LFE channel has many opportunities to be anything more), rear speaker activity ranges from uninvolving to non-existent, directionality is unconvincing, dynamics lack power and presence, and other fundamental qualities of the mix don't contribute much of note. While I suspect the film's original sound design is largely to blame, Flipped's lossless track isn't going to woo anyone.

Flipped Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Be sure to set aside a weekend (or, I don't know... twenty minutes) to dig through Flipped's small stack of special features, none of which resonate, amuse or reveal anything of note.

• The Differences Between a Boy and a Girl (HD, 7 minutes): A look at the two young stars' chemistry.
• Anatomy of a Near Kiss (HD, 3 minutes): First kisses can be awkward. Film crews don't help much.
• Embarrassing Egg-Scuses (HD, 5 minutes): This egg-hatching featurette is as dull as its punny title suggests.
• How to Make the Best Volcano (HD, 5 minutes): McAuliffe demonstrates proper volcano-crafting technique.



Flipped Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 




If your family's TiVo is continually pointed at the Hallmark Movie Channel, Flipped may hold some appeal. But if you loathe unmuzzled melodrama, sticky screenwriting, muddy dialogue, and the sort of unlikeable characters that frequent Reiner's love story, I would suggest steering clear. Warner's Blu-ray release is just as uneven. While its video transfer faithfully captures the filmmakers' every intention, its dull DTS-HD Master Audio track will keep audiophiles at a distance and its twenty-minute supplemental package will disappoint even the film's biggest fans. My advice? Move along, there's nothing to see here.