Mama's Boy [Widescreen & Full-screen]

The characters in "Mama's Boy" are stereotypes, and the plot is clichéd. The story line is tedious and slow and never finds a comic spark. In fact, the movie never strikes any comic vein and practically bleeds to death poking itself and the audience in all the wrong places. The ending, when it finally and thankfully arrives, takes us from boring and trite to simply corny. I'm not sure which one is worse.

Video:
Warner Bros. offer the film in two screen formats, standard "full-screen" and original widescreen on flip sides of the disc. Undoubtedly, this saves the studio money by not having to press and release separate discs in separate formats, and it saves retailers shelf space by their not having to double stock the same title. The "full-screen" business, however, is WB's designation, not mine. They claim at the outset of the film that they formatted it to fit my screen. It doesn't "fill" my 16x9 screen, so maybe in this day of widescreen TVs, it's time for all of the studios to drop this disclaimer altogether.

Anyway, the full-screen is a 1.33:1 pan-and-scan rendering of the film's original 1.85:1 theatrical ratio. The P&S cuts away a bit of the image left and/or right. I watched in widescreen, which looks fine. Colors, especially skin tones, are good. Black levels are strong but don't always allow much shadow detail. There is also a noticeable amount of natural print grain present, which is not at all objectionable but gives the picture a slightly rough-looking appearance some of the time.

Audio:
The film contains mostly dialogue and a bit of soft background music, so there isn't a lot for the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio to reproduce. What can I say? The audio does its job. The front stereo spread is fairly narrow until an occasional car whizzes by; there is no need for wide dynamics or deep bass; and the surrounds hardly make themselves known. Excellent midrange, though.

Extras:
There are two primary extras. The first item is an audio commentary by the movie's director, Tim Hamilton, who doesn't sound as if he liked the picture any more than I did. But he tries his best to be as upbeat as old Mert in the film. He concludes by saying he hoped we liked the movie but if we didn't, well, he guesses we wouldn't be listening to the commentary in the first place. I suppose he didn't figure on a reviewer listening to it. The second item is a set of four additional scenes, a little over six minutes' worth, in non-anamorphic widescreen. The extras conclude with twenty-two scene selections but no chapter insert; English as the only spoken language; French and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
"Mama's Boy" is not hopelessly, painfully, irredeemably bad, but unless you are related to Keaton or Heder, I wouldn't advise you go out of your way to see it.

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