| Beautiful Thing | Studio: VCI / Film Four |
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| Starring:: Linda Henry Glen Berry Scott Neal Tameka Empson Ban Daniels |
Director: Hettie Macdonald |
Regional code: 2 |
Disc Format: Single Sided, Single Layer |
| Screenplay: Jonathan Harvey |
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 |
Anamorphic: Yes |
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| Year: 1996 |
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 |
Subtitles: None |
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| Genre: Romantic comedy |
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| Extra disc featues: Theatrical Trailer, Biographies and Filmographies |
Length: 85mins |
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Review of the DVD - rating: * * * * |
Review of the film - rating: * * |
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| Whatever the shortcomings
of the movie itself, this disc is yet another beautiful
thing from people's favourite VCI. The picture here is
absolute perfection, occasionally achieving the
impossible by imbuing Thamesmead with a sense of
atmosphere. Say what you like about Film Four, but with
this and Brassed Off, they show that even at this humble
end of the film making spectrum we have some damn fine
artists and technicians in this country. What goes for the picture goes for the sound too. It may only be humble Dolby Surround, but the quality is excellent - lots of well recorded location dialogue (no nasty re-dubbed voices here) and the atmospheres and acoustics are spot on. A few extras grace the disc - VERY subtle animated menus with music (and full motion scene selections), a shockingly bad 4:3 trailer, and biographies of 4 of the principals and the writer. Niggles about slightly illogical cursor navigation aside, this is a quality product through and through - yet more congratulations to our local heroes VCI. |
It's
becoming something of a cliche that "gritty"
British films must be set on housing estates, and
Beautiful Thing suffers badly on this score. Coming over
as a film made by the middle classes trying to slum it,
things would have been better if the film makers'
themselves had come out of the closet, and set it in
Surbiton where it belongs. Instead, Berry and Neal get to fall in love as neighbours in Thamesmead, a disastrous New Town London suburb child of the 60's - 70's. Most of what happens is amiable enough, but the predictability surrounding both plot and stereotypical characters don't help to take your mind off the scenery. Worse, some of the dialogue is truly painful, laid on the celluloid canvas with all the subtlety of an industrial spray gun. The performances aren't bad, and the film positively cries out "like me, you homophobes!" But with all the goodwill in the world, this is a movie destined never to cross over into the mainstream. New town housing estates and dodgy dialogue are just not the stuff of inspiration, really. Sorry. |
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