6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
Imaginative quiet teenager Rafe Katchadorian is tired of his middle school's obsession with the rules at the expense of any and all creativity. Desperate to shake things up, Rafe and his best friends have come up with a plan: break every single rule in the school and let the students run wild.
Starring: Griffin Gluck, Lauren Graham, Alexa Nisenson, Andy Daly, Thomas BarbuscaComedy | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
English, English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
A propos of nothing other than some passing curiosity, when did junior high become middle school in the United States, or have there always been areas that referred to the institution between elementary school and high school as middle school? In both Salt Lake City and Seattle where I grew up, it was always called junior high, though the junior high I attended in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue evidently now calls itself a middle school. In what might be thought of as the flip side to Shakespeare’s immortal line from Romeo and Juliet about a certain flower smelling the same (sweet) way no matter what you end up calling it, the perilous grades of either 6-8, 6-9 or 7-9 (I've seen all three in various regions, but it was 7-9 where I attended junior high) would probably be as horrifying for many kids even if you called the building Wonderland. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life’s title doesn’t just circumscribe the general tenor of this fitfully engaging film, it probably also provides an apt general summary for how many felt about their travails during their adolescence.
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. I haven't been able to track down any authoritative data on this shoot, but cinematographer Julio Macat's last several films have been digitally shot with Arri Alexa cameras, and this production certainly has the glossy and generally nicely detailed ambience of that technology. There's very little if any overt color grading on display, and as a result the palette looks natural and quite fresh, especially in outdoor scenes, and detail levels are generally very good, at least in the (many) brighter lit moments. As can be seen from some of the accompanying screenshots, the film exploits a number of visual bells and whistles, including animated interstitials (see screenshot 5) and text superimpositions (see screenshot 11). There are also occasional uses of what appear to be fisheye and similar techniques, though there are a couple of odd moments where things seem weirdly squeezed with resolution not at the level of the rest of the presentation (see screenshot 19). There are no problems with image instability and no issues with compression anomalies.
While not shot through and through with source cues, there are enough in Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track to provide good, consistent immersion, an aspect that is also supported by some of the noisier moments in the middle school itself, where there's been good attention paid to spatial differentiation between foreground conversation and the general hubbub of the background crowds. Quieter scenes (and there are a surprising number of them for an often raucous outing like this one) obviously don't offer much in the way of surround activity, but feature excellent fidelity nonetheless.
If you pay attention to each and every character introduction in this film, you may get a brief but telling visual clue as to what's going on with one of them, something that plays into what is this film's most intriguing but also seemingly ill fitting gambit. That conceit, which has been danced around in this review as much as I'm able to, will no doubt be touching for some, but for others will come off as cloying and overly manipulative. Unfortunately it's just one of many ill fitting elements in a film that wants to have fun with taking down a tyrant, but doesn't seem to know exactly how to go about doing it, cinematically speaking. Technical merits are strong for those considering a purchase.
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