5.8 | / 10 |
Users | 1.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.4 |
Janey is new in town, and soon meets Lynne, who shares her passion for dancing in general, and "Dance TV" in particular. When a competition is announced to find a new Dance TV regular couple, Janey and Lynne are determined to audition. The only problem is that Janey's father doesn't approve of that kind of thing.
Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Lee Montgomery, Helen Hunt, Shannen Doherty, Biff YeagerComedy | 100% |
Romance | 68% |
Music | 14% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.86:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Once upon a time, low-budget film legend Roger Corman founded a company called New World Pictures. In its heyday, it owned Marvel Comics, bought the company now known as Lionsgate Films, and helped start the Fox TV network. But today no one hears about New World except when the logo pops up attached to a film like Girls Just Want to Have Fun, an obscure 1985 trifle that's worth watching primarily because its lead players, Helen Hunt and Sarah Jessica Parker, grew up to be stars. (Shannen Doherty, who has a smaller part, also grew up to be famous, but not for her talent.) The movie doesn't amount to much, but Hunt and Parker already display the indefinable quality that draws your eye to them whenever they're onscreen. The rest of the cast doesn't stand a chance. Lee Montgomery, who plays the "ooh, he's cute!" love interest, had been acting in movies since childhood and had starred in Ben, the successful sequel to the killer rat movie Willard, but Hunt and Parker blow him off the screen. The film was so cheaply made that it used the Cyndi Lauper hit for its title, but not Lauper's recording, because it cost less to record a cover version by an unknown. The script was cobbled together from spare parts lifted from obvious sources like Saturday Night Fever (appropriately sanitized), Fame (ditto), Footloose and Flashdance, and there are moments when the film almost feels like a throwback to Sixties beach blanket musicals, but relocated to an urban setting and shot like an Eighties music video. Appropriately enough, the screenwriter, Amy Spies, would later write for both Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place. The director, Alan Metter, went on to direct Rodney Dangerfield in his best starring vehicle, Back to School.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun was just shot quickly and cheaply, and it looks it. (The cinematographer was Thomas Ackerman, who was certainly capable of providing a rich, polished image when given sufficient time and budget, as he demonstrated a few years later shooting Beetlejuice for Tim Burton.) The source material for Image Entertainment's 1080i, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is in relatively good shape, with little in the way of scratches or print damage, but the image is only moderately sharp, and detail is only fair (though it is substantially better than what one would expect on a DVD). Blacks tend to be slightly crushed, and detail suffers in darker areas of the frame, but I suspect this is a flaw in the lighting and exposure of the original photography. Colors are on the dull side, even when it comes to the dance costumes, where one would expect intensity and heavy saturation. Grain is plentiful, especially during the opening title sequence with its optical superimpositions, and there is certainly no evidence of detail-stripping or high-frequency filtering. To the extent the image lacks sharpness and definition, this is a function of either the original photography or the quality of the source material (or both), and no attempt has been made to compensate by artificial sharpening. The film runs only 87 minutes, and with no extras other than a trailer, compression artifacts are not an issue.
The film's credits indicate that it was released in Dolby Stereo. Although the Blu-ray's jacket indicates "Dolby Digital Mono", in fact the soundtrack is PCM stereo, and it is possible to hear some degree of separation between left and right channels, but this is almost entirely limited to the musical selections. When played through a matrix decoder, the remainder of the left and right channels collapses toward the center, effectively rendering them as mono. It's a serviceable mix, with clear dialogue and decent dynamic range. The musical selections sound as good as an Eighties-vintage pre-CD recording.
If you remember the film or the era, this Blu-ray is an acceptable rendering as long you aren't expecting miracles from a low-budget source. If all you know is the names "Helen Hunt", "Sarah Jessica Parker" and "Shannen Doherty" on the cover, then beware—the film on this disc bears almost no resemblance to any of the work for which these three are famous. With those caveats, the Blu-ray is recommended as a faithful presentation of a rare curiosity from a bygone day.
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