5.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A young playboy who learns he has one month until he becomes infertile sets out to procreate as much as possible.
Starring: Ryan Kwanten, Sarah Snook, Bojana Novakovic, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Ryan CorrRomance | 100% |
Comedy | 68% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
It’s one of the cruel ironies of life that women, those naturally gifted nurturers and cradles of life, have a biological clock that starts ticking somewhere in their 30s and gets progressively louder as the years go by, while men, who are often prone to (to use a not particularly graceful metaphor) scatter their seed indiscriminately, have no similar expiration date, at least relatively speaking. But what would happen if a man didn’t just have a biological timepiece, but an actual alarm clock that was ringing furiously and didn’t have much of a figurative snooze button? That’s the basic premise of the generally genial if unambitious Australian rom-com Not Suitable for Children, a film which posits a hero who receives an unexpected diagnosis of testicular cancer (hardly the stuff of most comedies, one must admit) and decides virtually instantaneously to stop his wild oats sowing, or at least to channel those wild oats in a more focused fashion to try to father a baby before his condition renders him infertile. It’s kind of an odd setup for a comedy, and one which Not Suitable for Children can never completely overcome, despite some agreeable enough performances and occasionally deft handling of a kind of depressing basic premise. There’s little doubt that writer Michael Lucas and director Peter Templeman wanted to bring a little Aussie flair to a sort of "Judd Apatow lite" conceit, but neither has Apatow’s panache when it comes to easily blending sweetness and coarseness, with the result being a curiously bland offering that only occasionally rises above a sort of “beige” generic ambience. The film also has decidedly few real laughs in it and instead is a rather bittersweet rumination on being deprived of choices.
Not Suitable for Children is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This digitally shot feature is a bit on the soft side and has less than fulsome contrast in many of its dimly lit interior scenes (many of which appear to have been shot with natural lighting), but otherwise offers a nicely crisp and well defined image. Though some scenes have been pretty aggressively color graded (Jonah's trip to the hospital is awash in blue tones, for example), the bulk of the film features very natural and nicely saturated color. Close-ups reveal very good fine detail, but the film never really pops very well, perhaps an intentional choice to give it a bit of that slacker ethos that Jonah himself is so representative of.
Not Suitable for Children features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 that really comes vibrantly alive in the party sequences as well as its copious use of source cues. Otherwise, though, the film is a fairly quiet affair made up of small scale dialogue scenes which almost always are between two people. Fidelity is excellent, with dialogue and score very well prioritized, though dynamic range depends mostly on those boisterous crowd scenes to offer any real shifts in amplitude.
- Peter Templeman, Director
- Ryan Kwanten (Jonah)
- Ryan Corr (Gus)
- Sarah Snook (Stevie)
Julia Sweeney managed to mine cancer for some considerable laughs years ago with her God Said 'Ha'! outing, but Not Suitable for Children is a pretty morose affair when you get right down to it, despite the trappings of Jonah's party hearty lifestyle (or maybe because of them). While the actors are all very enjoyable, the writing here never rises to either the heights of dramatic tension or manic hilarity that would have pushed this film solidly into one genre or the other. Instead it's a kind of middling effort that has reasonable charms, but never manages to amount to much of anything at all. Kwanten fans will probably want to check this out in any case, for this role is decidedly different than the one he essays in True Blood.
2023
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