6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Just out of prison, Ray Bradstone is determined to make amends with his ex-wife and daughter. He signs on as the chaperone for his daughter’s class field trip, but his old bank robbing crew also wants him for one last job.
Starring: Paul Levesque, Ariel Winter, Kevin Corrigan, José Zúñiga, Yeardley SmithComedy | 100% |
Family | 57% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
There's something inherently comedic in putting a big macho athlete in a position where all that raw power is useless. One of the best examples is Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop, but Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has also worked this territory in The Game Plan and The Tooth Fairy. Less familiar is The Chaperone, a WWE-produced vehicle for another of its stars, Paul "Triple H" Levesque, famous for attacking his opponents in the ring with sledgehammers. In The Chaperone, the 6' 4", 255-lb. wrestling superstar ring has to contend with a busload of junior high school kids and, worst of all, an estranged daughter played by Ariel Winter, best known as Alex Dunphy on ABC's Modern Family. Next to the human juggernaut that is Triple H, Winter looks like a bite-sized morsel, but since they are playing father and daughter, she can bring him to his knees (literally and figuratively) with just a look. Much as in The Game Plan, the father-daughter relationship lends itself to both comedy and sentiment, which makes it the core of the film. The Chaperone was released on Blu-ray by WWE Studios in 2011 and is now being reissued as part of the package licensed by WWE to RLJ/Image Entertainment.
WWE regular Kenneth Zunder (Bending the Rules ) shot The Chaperone on film, with post-production completed on a digital intermediate. The Blu-ray was presumably sourced from digital files. As is so often the case with recent DI products, the goal seems to have been to eliminate as much indication of the image's analog origins as possible, thereby bringing it closer to digital HD. RLJ/Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray sports a clean, detailed and noiseless image with good blacks, a varied color palette and a cheerful visual style that translates easily to the television screen. Zunder and director Herek may be shooting in the French Quarter of New Orleans, but they're also making a family-friendly comedy, so that the setting is bright daytime and the sights are touristy. The violence is precisely choreographed and cartoonish (watch Triple H get hit repeatedly in the face without a drop of blood), and everything—New Orleans, the schoolbus, even prison—looks brighter and shinier than real life. To accommodate both the 104-minute film and the hi-def extras, Image has sprung for a BD-50, but it has unaccountably failed to use much of the available space, resulting in an unnecessarily low average bitrate of 17.99 Mbps. I didn't spot any obvious artifacts, but one has to wonder why studios risk such low rates when they don't have to.
The Chaperone's original 5.1 mix is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA, and it sounds fine for what it is. The film lacks showy action set pieces. The loudest effects are the pops created by a student with an addiction to firecrackers, a few stray gunshots and a vehicle collision that is primarily a joke. Surround activity is limited to ambiance (e.g., bus engines and traffic noise). The dialogue is clear, and the underscoring gives WWE regular Jim Johnston a chance to demonstrate his range beyond such fare as The Smackdown! Special and WWE Armageddon.
There's an occasional twinkle in Triple H's eye in The Chaperone, especially at moments when he has to play disciplinarian with unruly kids. That, plus a few well-choreographed fights, should appeal to the fighter's core constituency, while the rest of the film will entertain the family audience. Nothing in the script or the story is groundbreaking or original, but the film follows a well-established WWE formula of surrounding an appealing star personality with a talented cast of supporting players. Certainly worth a rental; between Ariel Winter and Yeardley Smith, maybe more.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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