6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
After Jude Madigan abruptly deserts her family, husband Robert and their young children slowly build a happy new life with another woman. But when Jude unexpectedly returns three years later, her dangerous obsession to reclaim her former life threatens to destroy everything that dares stand in her way.
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Peter Gallagher, Joanne Whalley, Vanessa Redgrave, Joss AcklandPsychological thriller | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Jamie Lee Curtis' early success in Halloween (1978) condemned her to a long period of typecasting as a B-movie scream queen, but she eventually broke out into a wide array of parts as a comedienne (A Fish Called Wanda and Freaky Friday), sex symbol (Trading Places), woman of action (Blue Steel) or all three at the same time (True Lies). In 1994's Mother's Boys, Curtis applied her talents to the flipside of the stalked victim she'd so often played in her early career. She became the hunter instead of the hunted, but with a distinctively feminine twist. She portrayed a mother so badly damaged that she was willing to rip her children apart psychologically (and others physically) to get what she wanted. Curtis' performance is the main reason to see Mother's Boys, because her portrayal of the desperate matriarch is so uncomfortably manipulative and insinuatingly sexual that it puts to shame the depictions of family abuse that have become a stock explanation for criminal behavior in many police procedurals. Curtis elevates the material for as long as she can (with assists from Vanessa Redgrave and Luke Edwards) by keeping the focus on family dynamics. At a certain point, though, the cast, the director, Yves Simoneau, and the film itself are sabotaged by the derivative script (adapted from a novel by Bernard Taylor), which substitutes trite plot mechanics for credible psychology. You can get away with this sort of thing when your villain is a faceless killing machine like Michael Myers, but when the previous hour has been about real people with credible (if abnormal) psyches, the story needs more than extended stunts for a satisfying resolution.
Mother's Boys was shot by Elliot Davis, who would later become Catherine Hardwicke's cinematographer of choice and was then in the midst of an extended collaboration with Steven Soderbergh (King of the Hill, Underneath, Out of Sight). The 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray from Echo Bridge offers an acceptable but not overwhelming presentation of Davis' photography. Detail is generally decent, and black levels and color saturation appear to be appropriate. There is no indication of grain reduction or high frequency roll-off. However, the grain pattern in the image is far from natural-looking. While not frozen in place (so-called "hanging" grain), the grain doesn't flow with the natural movement that one experiences in a film-like image. Instead it jumps and shifts in quick, sharp motions that bespeak digital manipulation. The effect should not be noticeable unless you're looking for it (and, in the process, sitting much closer to your display than any recommended norm), but it has the effect of conferring a processed, artificial sheen over the entire image. The same digital processing is also responsible for an occasional phenomenon that looks like video noise, but on closer inspection, more closely resembles the shifting pattern associated with aliasing. It's generally limited to long shots. Compression artifacts did not appear to be an issue, which is hardly surprising, given the film's short running time and the complete lack of extras and additional audio options.
The film's original stereo mix is provided as DTS-HD MA 2.0, and it certainly sounds as good as one would hope. The dialogue is extremely clear, and various key sound effects that are obviously intended to be heard above all others (e.g., a dead frog being pierced with a scalpel in a science class, bath water running and sloshing in a tense scene) register with the intended force. George Clinton's suspenseful score manages not to go over the top until the end, when Clinton has no choice but to follow the film and crawl out onto a very long (and fragile) limb.
Mother's Boys played in very few theaters, following a common practice by the Weinstein Brothers when they owned Miramax. If audience tracking didn't bode well for a film's prospects, they spent as little on prints and advertising as possible and looked to recoup their investment on video. Many interesting films (some of them far superior to Mother's Boys) were pushed out of theaters as a result, and most of those are now being shunted over to Echo Bridge by the new owners of Miramax. At least Echo Bridge seems to have improved the quality of their output. Their Blu-ray of Mother's Boys is a watchable version, for the street price, of a film that may not be good, but has good things in it. No recommendation either way. Decide for yourselves.
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