5.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 1.0 | |
Overall | 1.0 |
A female aerobics instructor meets a male reporter doing a story on health clubs, but it isn't love at first sight.
Starring: John Travolta, Stefan Gierasch, Kenneth Welsh, Rosalind Allen, Chelsea FieldRomance | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
None
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 0.5 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 1.0 |
1985’s “Perfect” is generally regarded as a low point in 1980s cinema, also cited as the film that brought down star John Travolta’s career after a string of hits and interesting misses, disrupting a career that once seemed destined for greatness. Perhaps in its day and age, the feature was a strange, humorless production that was marketed as a celebration of the superficial, boasting a title that teed up opportunity for widespread ridicule. Today, “Perfect” certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s a far more interesting picture than its reputation suggests, generating a celebration and critique of journalism that’s rich with professional detail and carries a lived-in quality during all the fictional reporting. The theatrical cut ends up a mess, but never a tedious one, with the film handling the grind of the news-making machine with palpable fatigue, while Travolta and co-star Jamie Lee Curtis make credible transformations into fallible people.
Shot in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio for its original theatrical release, "Perfect" arrives on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded, 1.78:1 aspect ratio presentation, successfully destroying the picture's compositions and general breathing room. The cropped viewing experience looks sourced from an older scan, highlighting an absurd blurriness that bats away all detail, removing texture from the parade of bodies and costumes. Colors are flat and lifeless, losing the impact of the era's interest in extreme hues, while skintones look bloodless. Grain is chunky, reaching noisy extremes. Delineation reaches points of solidification. Speckling is detected. It's a cruel BD release for "Perfect," which is actually a wonderfully shot feature, retaining none of its original artistry here.
The 2.0 Dolby Digital sound mix doesn't provide "Perfect" with the crisp listening experience it deserves, leaving emphasis on dialogue exchanges, which sound acceptable, but fail to create a precise sense of drama. Soundtrack selections are also lacking in power, but the essentials of instrumentation are presented acceptably, giving a little oomph to montages and workout sequences. Club atmospherics are comfortable but never remarkable, adding only a thin sense of group interactions and workout activity.
There is no supplementary material on this disc.
Again, "Perfect" loses attention to detail in the final act, finding Bridges possibly under orders to whittle a larger cut down to size, dropping nuance with Adam's other role as a journalist embroiled in a first amendment fight, refusing to hand over interview tapes to the government. The subplot is only vaguely defined, but it plays a major role in the final act, which is more of a woozy comedown than a secure conclusion to a story loaded with sophisticated emotions and professional standards. Instead of journalistic integrity, a love story rises to the forefront, and not a terribly convincing one at that. "Perfect" is held together by a few great scenes, a fascinating look at an exercise fad, and strong performances that manage to survive mangled editing. It's the overall dissection of professional and personal honor that's lost in the shuffle, keeping the picture confused but never easily dismissed.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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