6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 3.3 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.2 |
The inventor of Number 5, Ben Jahrvi, now trying to earn a living making toy robots, has Number 5 as his one-man assembly line. Number 5, however, has a hard time resisting the temptation to have "more input" out on the street.
Starring: Fisher Stevens, Michael McKean, Cynthia Gibb, Jack Weston, Tim BlaneyComedy | 100% |
Family | 62% |
Sci-Fi | 22% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
My VHS copy of the first Short Circuit was well worn by the time I grew out of my obsessed-with-robots phase. (Okay, alright, I’ve never entirely grown out of it.) Johnny 5, the film’s sentient robot hero, was a childhood icon right up there with He-Man and the Mario brothers, so much so that I even begged my mom to buy the “Five Alive” brand of juice at the grocery store because I was convinced it had something to do with the film. (Obsessed, right? At least I stopped short of shouting “Input!” before guzzling it.) That fervor carried over to the sequel, which I remember loving—and being traumatized by—precisely because of how dark it seemed. The mohawked punks! The slimy loan shark! The car stereo- stealing street gang, with their threatening chant: “Los Locos kick your ass, Los Locos kick your face, Los Locos kick your balls into outer space!” For a kid’s film, Short Circuit 2 has an inordinate share of colorful language, including plenty of hells, more than a few damns, and at least one bullshit. And then there’s that scene—if you saw the film as a kid, you know the one—where Johnny 5 gets brutally chopped up by two ax-toting thugs. This didn’t exactly scar me for life—like, say, watching Salo at twelve would’ve—but I can’t imagine a scene with that kind of intensity making it into a children’s film today.
Johnny 5, robot about town...
Color me surprised. Given its age and, well, genre—live action 1980s kid flicks don't always get the best high definition treatments—Short Circuit 2 looks fantastic on Blu-ray, miles better than it ever looked on DVD. Working off a nearly pristine print—there are only a few scattered white specks, and no major scratches or debris—Image Entertainment has assembled a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's consistently sharp and colorful. It doesn't appear that Image has tampered at all with the source material; grain is natural, DNR and edge enhancement are absent, and the image hasn't been boosted or altered in any significant way. No tampering is necessary. A few soft shots aside, the picture is surprisingly crisp. The back streets of Toronto— standing in for New York—are revealed in all their grimy, graffiti-covered glory, and the actors' faces and clothing all display discernable textures. Better yet is Johnny 5 himself, whose mechanical workings are rendered with satisfyingly fine detail. The film goes for a realistic, unstylized palette, with balanced skin tones, sufficiently deep black levels, and frequent splashes of vivid spray paint color. Finally, although the film sits on a single-layer Blu-ray disc, I didn't discern any apparent compression issues. This is definitely the best the film has ever, and perhaps will ever look.
While it's unfortunate that the film couldn't have been given a full 5.1 presentation—there are, after all, sequences in Short Circuit 2 that practically call out for city street ambience and swooshing cross-channel effects—I have no real qualms with this disc's uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo track. Sure, some of the effects lack punch and there's little separation between the left and right channels, but there's really nothing wrong with this capable, if understated mix. The most prevalent element is probably David Shire's bouncy, stereotypically 1980s score—complete with popping slap bass straight out of the Seinfeld theme—and the music sounds as clear and dynamic as can be expected. Likewise, the front-anchored mix does what it can with the film's action scenes, and while there's little low-end presence, I can at least say the mix doesn't sound tinny, mid-heavy, muffled, or clipped. Throughout the film, dialogue is always well-balanced and easy to understand. The disc comes with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, but the white-lettered subs are somewhat unnecessarily contained in black text boxes.
There are no bonus features whatsoever on the disc, although, really, I can't imagine many supplements exist at all for Short Circuit 2.
The Short Circuit sequel isn't quite as good as the first film, and it definitely shows its age, but there's something lovably goofy about Johnny 5, the predecessor to future cinematic robots like Wall-E. Image Entertainment's Blu-ray release features a strong audio/video presentation, so if you were a childhood fan of the series and you're looking for a nostalgia kick, I see no reason not to pick this one up. Newcomers might want to try a rental first, though.
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