5.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 1.5 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
Eliza Welch is a former fiction writer-turned-mom-blogger who lives and works in two rent-stabilized apartments in a walk-up tenement building smack in the middle of an otherwise upscale Greenwich Village. Starting at dawn, her to-do list is daunting: prepare for and throw her daughter's 6th birthday party, mind her toddler son, battle for a parking space during an epic alternate side parking showdown, navigate playground politics with overbearing moms, and mend a rift with after posting her best friend's confession on her blog. On top of it all, Eliza decides to enter a contest run by an upscale parenting magazine. All she has to do is write 500 words answering the deceptively simple question, "What Does Motherhood Mean to Me?"
Starring: Uma Thurman, Anthony Edwards, Minnie Driver, Daisy Tahan, Alice DrummondComedy | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 1.0 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
Hollywood’s depiction of family life rarely mirrors the real-world trappings of raising children. Mothers and fathers that populate the television world are often portrayed as happy individuals sitting around the breakfast table with obedient children nibbling on a bowl of cereal. After whisking the youngsters off to school, the parents proceed with their daily occupations that typically lack constant disturbances by their precious children. At the end of the day, dad pulls into the driveway, walks up to the front door, and there’s little Jimmy waiting with two baseball gloves and a huge grin on his face. After rustling the hair of his boy, the cheerful father walks triumphantly into the kitchen to give his wife a peck on the cheek and grab a taste of the spaghetti sauce warming on the stove (which his 5-year old daughter helped prepare). As nice as that probably sounds, the show eventually ends, and you’re left wondering why your life can’t feel more like the television version of happiness. Motherhood throws those happy-go-lucky notions of child-rearing out the window, by presenting viewers with a single day in the life of a stressed out mother on the verge of a mid-life crisis.
Mommy's not a happy camper...
Presented in 1080i utilizing the AVC codec (at an average bitrate of 23Mbps), Motherhood offers an extremely soft visual presentation from start to finish. In fact, the dismal lack of fine object detail had me wondering if this was merely a repurposed standard definition transfer, passed off as a high-definition product. Paying close attention to facial textures, you'll struggle to find a single crevice, blemish, or mark, as if every subtle miscue had been air-brushed into oblivion. The lack of film grain left me with the impression this could be a result of digital noise reduction, but I'd wager a portion of the problem lies in overly soft film elements. Adding to the problematic nature of the transfer, it appears there's a degree of brightness boosting which obscures the saturation levels of the color spectrum. This allows other unfortunate side effects to surface, such as black levels that never descend below dark gray, and contrast differentiation that remains incapable of accurately separating varying shades within the image. On a positive note, transfers this poor erase any concerns over digital anomalies such as artifacting, aliasing, or edge-enhancement, allowing us to focus 100% of our attention on the dismal level of clarity.
Further diminishing the merits of the technical presentation on the disc, the primary lossless audio track is uninspired from right from the get-go. I never detected a single element hit the rear sound stage, leaving the front speakers burdened with the entire load. This isn't entirely problematic since the majority of the audio experience consists of dialog and music, but I found it strange that the track never kicked things up a notch. Two particular scenes make use of loud music (one with the courier, and the other during Clara's birthday party), but instead of incorporating the entire spectrum of my home theater, the music emerged solely from the front surrounds. I can't fathom why the separation was doled out in such a weak manner, but the end result is nothing short of disappointing. Dialog fares slightly better than the musical attributes, delivering crisp lines that rarely fall below a certain volume threshold. There are still several instances where conversations seem a bit muffled, but those sparse occurrences weren't egregious enough to warrant a tremendous downgrade in my overall score.
Interviews (1080i, Dolby Digital 2.0, 15:27 min): Consisting of interview clips with Uma Thurman, Minnie Driver, Anthony Edwards, and writer/director Katherine Dieckmann, this supplement focuses on the relationships between characters in the film, the flawed attributes of each role, and general life lessons. Out of the various discussions, I found Uma Thurman's take on real-life motherhood the most interesting.
Rounding out the extras, we have a high-definition trailer for Motherhood, and a feature length audio commentary with Katherine Dieckmann (writer/director) and Rachel Cohen (producer). The commentary track is dominated by Diekmann, who touches on the themes within the film and the technical attributes of setting up each scene. I wouldn't count it among the better director's commentary tracks, but you can certainly do much worse.
Motherhood is definitely not the title I would have picked for this film. Perhaps "Mid-Life Crisis" or "Mental Breakdown" would have been more appropriate, but any connection with the real-life trials and tribulations of a motherly role seem absent from this production. You can't fault Katherine Dieckmann for setting out to make a film with lasting appeal for the mothers in the audience, but somewhere in the creative process she lost track of her original focus. Taking into account the merits of the film and the dismal quality of the presentation, this is not recommended viewing material for anyone with a high-definition display.
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