Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

The Chaperone Blu-ray Movie Review

Don't Tell Mom the Chaperone's a Con

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 30, 2014

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.

After serving a seven-year sentence for robbery, Ray Bradstone (Triple H) is released from prison determined to turn his life around. Formerly a top "wheelman" known as "Ray-Ray", he has been transformed by a radio self-help guru, Dr. Marjore (Lucy Webb), on whose show he is a popular caller from the prison payphone.

But Ray faces formidable obstacles. His ex-wife, Lynne (Annabeth Gish), doesn't want him back; she has a new man in her life, a successful doctor (Veronica Mars's Enrico Colantoni), who is preparing to pop the question. His daughter, Sally (Winter), is no longer the little girl he remembers but an angry 'tween who has never recovered from her father's abandonment. And Ray's automotive skills are hopelessly outdated in a world of hybrids and computerized engines. As is usually the case when someone has a prison record, getting a decent job proves to be a challenge.

His former associates are waiting for him, though. Phillip Larue (Kevin Corrigan) meets Ray outside the prison gates and immediately proposes a bank heist. Ray is tempted, but at the last minute he bails in favor of an offer by one of Sally's teachers, Miss Miller (Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson), to help chaperone a weekend trip that Sally's class is taking to New Orleans. (Miss Miller is under the mistaken impression that Ray is a "regular" dad who misses parent/teacher conferences because he travels for business.)

Sally is furious when her father appears on the bus, but her attitude softens when Ray's take-charge manner impresses the rest of the class, especially the cute guy, Josh (Israel Broussard), on whom Sally has a crush. But as luck (and the machinations of screenwriters) would have it, the bank that Larue and his dimwit associate, Goldy (Kevin Rankin), are robbing is right next to the school, and their bag of cash gets mixed in with the kids' luggage on the bus. They follow Ray and the class to New Orleans, pursued by two police detectives, one of whom, Carlos (José Zúñiga), arrested Ray the first time and is certain he has fallen back into his bad old habits.

While evading multiple pursuers behind him and managing the drama of junior high kids on an outing, Ray has to find a way to overcome Sally's resistance to letting him back into her life. Director Stephen Herek (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure) has the good sense to let the absurd size differential between Triple H and Ariel Winter take the edge off the sentimentality, which keeps the main storyline refreshingly sharp. Herek plays almost everything except the Ray/Sally story for laughs, from the incompetent bumbling of Goldy and Larue to the kids' pranks, the apparent cluelessness of Miss Miller and the intense sincerity of Dr. Marjore, whom Ray continues to call as he navigates the treacherous emotional waters of the world outside prison.

Herek also makes good use of his New Orleans locations, including a warehouse in the Algiers district where huge Mardi Gras floats are stored and a major fight sequence occurs. Somehow the massive, colorful figures give it greater scale, like some papier-mâché version of a WWE smackdown.

The Chaperone Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

The Chaperone Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Ariel's Video Diary (1080i; 1.78:1; 9:11): Ariel Winter's personal behind-the-scenes video footage is intercut with cast interviews commenting on Ariel.



• I'm the Chaperone: Triple H (1080i; 1.78:1; 8:36): A portrait of Triple H, as seen by the cast and crew in The Chaperone. As Kevin Corrigan says, "I'd never get in a fight with a guy like Triple H, except in the movies."



• "Come Back" Music Video: Original Song by Ariel Winter (1080i; 1.85:1; 2:51): The song is inspired by the film but does not appear in it.



• Busload of Bloopers (1080i; 1.78:1; 6:02): Not just bloopers, but cutting up on set.



• That's a Raptor (1080i; 1.78:1; 4:40): Since there is no natural history museum in New Orleans, the production had to create a dinosaur exhibit from scratch. This featurette documents the process.



• Get Schooled on the Stunts (1080i; 1.78:1; 9:43): Director Herek and stunt coordinator Jeff Galpin describe the process of shooting several key stunts, on one of which Galpin broke his leg.



• Here's Looking at You, Kids (1080i; 1.78:1; 10:12): A portrait of the film's junior supporting cast.



• Photo Gallery (1080p; 1.78:1): Approximately 49 photographs from the production.



• Bonus Trailers: The film's trailer is not included. At startup the disc plays trailers for additional titles from WWE Studios: Barricade, Bending the Rules, Inside Out, Knucklehead, Legendary, No Holds Barred, The Reunion and That's What I Am. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

The Chaperone Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.