Adam_Reiter
Second Unit
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2001
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From Justin To Kelly
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Year: 2003
Rated: PG
Film Length: 81 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: Full Screen encoded 1.33:1 & Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1 on the reverse side (Double Sided, Single Layer)
Audio: DD 5.1 (English) Subtitles in English and Spanish
Bonus features:
-Never-before-seen extended movie version with 2 new dance numbers
-Full length commentary by Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, and Director Robert Iscove
-Behind-the-scenes featurettes
-From Justin To Kelly "Video Scrapbook"
-Deleted Scenes
-Gag Reel[/b]
Release Date: August 26, 2003
Movie......
Ladies and gentleman, the DVD release you have all been so anxiously awaiting these past few months! The stupendous, the uncompromising.... "From Justin To Kelly"! ........(complete silence in the crowd)........*crickets*......
When I first opened the box and saw this DVD sitting there, I have to admit I rolled my eyes. "Lovely" I thought sarcastically. Strangely enough however, as dorky as this movie seemed to me when I saw the commercial spots for it on TV, I was still curious as to what the movie was like. Well, be careful what you wish for people!
This is the movie description from the back of the DVD cover. "America's favorite "Idols" Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson make the leap to the big screen in this high-energy comedy set during spring break in Miami-where the music, dancing, and fun in the sun never stop. It's love at first splash when a shy singer (Clarkson) from Texas hooks up with a cute Pennsylvania college student (Guarini) at the ultimate beach party, but a series of mix-ups and misunderstanding may prevent their budding romance from reaching the final round!
The movie starts out kind of funny as Kelly is singing her heart out on stage at the Texas bar she works for. As the camera swings around however, we find out she is only singing to a crowd of one. Its a cowboy/hick guy named Luke (Christopher Bryan) who apparently is Kelly's biggest fan and comes to all of her shows. The Luke character strongly reminds me of that guy "Ace" from "The Real World, Paris". Kelly has to explain to Luke that she is not interested in him romantically. She then she finds her two best friends, Alexa (Katherine Bailess) and Kaya (Anika Noni Rose), waiting for her at the bar, having missed their flight down to Florida for Spring Break. Kelly is the only one of them with a car, so they convince her to go and drive down to Miami. This is where our story kicks off.
When the story flips over to Justin's introduction, we find him cruising the beach with HIS two best friends, Brandon (Greg Siff) and Eddie (Brian Deitzen). The story goes that Brandon and Justin, the "Pennsylvania Posse", have their own little company that promotes parties for clubs at Spring Break. Supposedly their parties are the "ultimate" each year and are very popular. One of the biggest downsides of this movie for me, starts right in the begining when we meet the 'Brandon' character. The minute this guy hits the screen and opens his mouth, it makes me cringe. He is the stereotypical "superficial" kind of guy. You know the ones that have no brain, aren't particularly good looking, and think they are WAY cooler than they actually are? If any character ruins the movie for me, it's this guy.
Literally 6 mintues and 50 seconds into the movie, we have our first character busting into song, and suddenly the entire beach full of strangers are now perfectly choreographed and singing and dancing. Obviously I knew the movie was the "musical" type of genre, but I still can't help feeling embarrassed. It's just such a weird thing to watch. Do you ever sometimes get so embarrassed for someone, that you have to look away? Well I do! Like when you watch the people that are trying out for "American Idol" that get up there in front of the 3 judges and make complete fools out of themselves? I get goosebumps when I feel embarrassed for someone. Let me tell you, at 6 minutes and 50 seconds into this movie, I got goosebumps! However, the song that they sing for this dance number, is actually pretty cool. Every main character in the movie does their own singing part. I liked it a lot. Most of them sing really good. However, Brandon really sucks at it. No singing talent whatsoever! On the other hand, anytime Kelly is singing, it's really powerful. There is definitely a reason she won American Idol. Justin is also an excellent singer. After the first dance number, I got used to the singing and dancing stuff for the most part.
Anyway, this first dance scene is were Justin and Kelly meet for the first time. After running through the gambit of partners, they finally find each other and do a bit of dancing together. I guess this is where you could say the "spark of interest" starts. And OH MY GOD, right after this scene, that damn Brandon character does the absolute WORST white boy rap I have ever heard in my life. He makes Vanilla Ice look like a GREEK GOD! And the way he raps it, you can tell that the real-life actor, Greg, thinks he is so cool doing it. Talk about GOOSEBUMPS! Utterly horrid! Especially irritating is that the movie makes Brandon out to supposedly be some chick magnet who gets any and every girl he wants. PUH-LEASE! Whoever casted this guy should be blacklisted.
As you can tell by now, this movie is just a modern day version of a Frankie and Annette movie. It has no substance, and is a very basic story line. No suprizes here though, I am sure.
Basically, the rest of the story is that Kelly's friend Alexa, aka the "Blonde Bitch", likes Justin as well. There is a scene were Justin is running away from some girls that want free passes to one of the parties he is promoting. He escapes into the bathroom only to find out he ended up in the girls bathroom with Kelly. After he escapes out the window, Kelly writes her number on a napkin and throws it out the window. It lands in a puddle and washes off her number. So Justin finds Alexa to get Kelly's number. Alexa actually gives Justin HER phone number instead. This is where the roots of all the deception start. Justin sends text messages to Alexa, who he thinks is Kelly. Alexa sends back messages saying she is not interested in Justin. But then when Justin meets Kelly face to face, he gets a different vibe. Kelly and Justing set a time and place to meet. Then when Kelly tells Alexa the plan, Alexa text messages Justin a change of plans and location. This of course leads to Kelly being stood up and Justin being stood up. Alexa always ends up being in the right place and the right time to try and work her moves on a Kelly-less Justin. Her plan works, as Justin and Kelly get more and more pissed off and confused at each others motives. "She likes me, she doesn't, he likes me, he doesn't like me" kind of thing. This basically happens in one form or another throughout the movie until they finally figure out what Alexa is doing. Once everything is out in the air, Justin and Kelly can finally confess their love for each other and live happily ever after dancing and singing their way through life. The end.
I can't say that I disliked the movie. I think the one thing that kept me from going belly up is the suprizingly good songs. Especially the songs that only Kelly and Justin sing. I was also suprized about the acting ability of both Kelly and Justin. They actually did a really good job considering it's their first acting gig. I have seen much, much worse acting. Read "Greg Siff".
However I must warn you that there is a sequence where Alexa has her own singing and dance number. I have one phrase for you, "Nails on a chalkboard". That girl is major eye candy, but yikes, why did they make her sing? I have another word for you, "goosebumps".
Picture... [/b]
Picture quality for this DVD was actually pretty darn good. The picture had a very nice vibrancy to it. I especially liked sunny scenes where they were outside, or at the beach. The picture has a nice crispness to it, generally. According to power DVD, the video bitrate is 9.80Mbps. The only scene I noticed that was slightly soft and possibly a little washed out color wise, was Alexa's dance number. However, she was in a club, and its looks like the entire set had a slight fog applied so that you could see the beams in the overhead dance floor light. I am sure this was the culprit.
The colors were saturated. Skin tones, I thought, were spot on. They were usually rich and lush. At first I wasn't sure of the black levels, but there were some good night scenes at the beach. You almost couldn't distinguish the black on the screen from the black bars. I'd say that is pretty good in my book.
There were only a few points where the video wasn't perfect. I did notice some gradiation in solid colors. For instance right before Kelly is supposed to do the bikini contest, the girls are talking in front one of those big blue blowup platforms on the beach. You could notice the gradiation in the solid blue. Also, some problems in a scene where Kelly is buying a hotdog at a stand next to some palm trees. As the camera moves in, you can see some pixelation on the palm tree trunks and the guys standing by the trees.
One big flub I did notice while watching the movie a second time, was a "frame dropout" or "jolt". It comes right around the 41:00 minute mark where the cast sings a "Grease" inspired song. Justin starts off the song and rises from his table. Then he does this little dance move where he is throwing his shoulders forward. As he is pulling off the move, he "jolts" forward. I played it over and over, and the best way I can describe it, is that it looks like someone cut out 2 or 3 frames of film, and then spliced it back together. It is very noticable to me. I should point out that I do not find any scratches on the DVD.
Throughout the flick, there are a few instances where you will see pixelation and jagged edges on people. I only noticed it on white, or light skinned people that were in the background. Keep in mind I was really looking for stuff too. Chances are you may never see any of these problems. Really, the only scene where its easy to spot video problems is scenes where the sky was overcast. Mainly the first song with Justin and Kelly when they are alone on a boat. The sky looks like grey and white snow. Some definite video noise. I am not sure what to call it. Compression artifacting? Gradiation? My best guess would be to call it grain. I am not always positive what lingo to associate with what I am seeing. (Any help from you guys would be nice)
Here are some screen shots for you.
Picture Rating:
Picture: 4 / 5
:star: :star: :star: :star:
Sound... [/b]
The sound wasn't perfect, but it was good. It was especially good on the songs. The music was clear and loud. In fact, the only sightly irritating thing was that the dialog was a tad quiet. But, when the music kicked in, it really kicked in. I found that I turned up the sound to hear the dialog better, but when a song came on, I had to turn it down. This movie is almost exclusively front soundstage. I never once noticed any surround sound. I am sure there is some there, but it was not enough for me to notice at the volume I was watching at. I didn't have the volume up very loud (-17 to -22ish). However, due to the type of movie, I didn't expect any rear sound. No car chases, no gunshots, no explosions, no flyovers, usually means not much happening in the rear.
This movie does have some very nice LFE tho! Man, when those songs kicked in, I got a VERY nice bump in the bass department. We're talking a nice DEEP bass, not a boomy bass. Turn up the volume at 6:50 into the movie. The song "The Luv" has some nice deep reaching bass. The song is cool and funky. I liked it a lot. A couple of notes I wrote down when watching, puts a "cool song" at the 41:00 minute mark. This song reminds me of something out of "Grease". I liked how they put it together. I also have the notes "OMG, please stop with the white dork rapping!!!" somewhere around the 41:00 minute mark. Again, for such a corny movie, especially in this day and age, I am really impressed by the quality of most of the songs. I also have notes for "BASS" at the 57:00 mark. Yet another cool and bass heavy song.
The last song "Anytime" was my favorite of the movie. It starts off with Kelly, and Justin joins her toward the end. That was the moment that I finally realized that I MUST own a Kelly Clarkson CD. Her voice is just awesome and she has such command of her singing. "Anytime", is very powerful, and I cannot tell you how much I love this song. It gave me the "good" goosebumps.
The worst song of the movie by far is the ending entire cast dance number. They do a rendition of "That's the way I like it". I hated every minute of it. We also get treated to another horrid "Brandon rap" again!! ARRRRGGG!
Sound Rating:
Sound: 4 / 5
:star::star::star::star:
Extras...
This DVD has some pretty good extras considering the movie. I was expecting a bare bones type of DVD. Not so! They have some pretty nice stuff. I also should say that I watched the extended version of the movie with the 2 extra dance numbers.
Commentaries with Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, and Director Robert Iscove.
The cool thing about the commentaries is that it's Justin and Kelly's first time seeing the movie. I thought that was kinda neat. There is a lot of suprize reactions for the two with certain scenes and little tidbits of info from the director. Most of their reactions involve the word "Cool!" To my delight, there is also a little bit of ragging on Greg Siff, aka "Brandon". Just as I thought, the guy is pretty much an idiot in real life. They were saying that he was so proud of his retarded little rap that he had to do. We find out that he wrote it himself. Gee, imagine that? They also talked about how the idiot was convinced that Theresa San Nichols, who plays the beach cop that continually writes Brandon tickets throughout the entire movie, actually liked him in real life even though she has a boyfriend. "Brandon" gets Officer Cutler in the end of the movie, not so for Greg Siff, however. hehe.
There was also just some talk about how many extras they hired for the beach scenes (300-ish). They were saying that every beach scene was freezing cold and what troupers the cast and extras were. Hardly no complaining at all from them. Apparently they had a lot of problems with the crane shots. Cranes were always breaking on them. We hear a lot of Kelly and Justin critiquing their acting and whatnot. The director talked about how Justin and Kelly were always playing practical jokes on each other throughout filming.
Deleted Scenes
There are 3 short deleted scenes. The first two are nothing special. The 3rd one is kinda funny. A slightly different ending for a certain character.
Video Scrapbook
Basically, this is just a behind the scenes type of extra. Interviews with the cast. Excerpts of footage after scenes. You know, the usual. Good stuff for the Kelly and Justin fans tho.
"Center Stage" With Kelly and Justin
This is more interviews with Kelly and Justin and focuses more on their "American Idol" experiences. Also, stuff about their take on filming their first movie.
Singers Who Dance?.... Dancers Who Sing?
This is more of a focus on choreographer, Travis Payne. More of what his vision for the movie was and things he tried to accomplish. He talked about how anxious he was because of the big task at hand. He had an awful lot of choreographing to do for this movie. We also see tidbits of video from rehearsals of dance numbers.
Gag Reel
Nothing much to talk about here. Nothing really funny. Very bland. Only one part made me chuckle where Kelly flinched because she thought she was going to get hit with a camera crane.
Here are some screen shots of menus:
Extras Rating:
Extras: 4 / 5
:star::star::star::star:
Conclusion...
This is not my usual type of movie. But I also cant say it was necessarily bad either. For me, the music is what saved it. Also the fact that I like both Kelly and Justin helped a bit. They seem like very down to earth people. If the "Brandon" guy wasn't in it, I'd like this movie a whole lot more. I would definitely not mind this movie playing in the background, like if my kids were watching it over and over as they do other movies.
I am RECOMMENDING this movie if you are a Justin or Kelly fan, or a "Frankie and Annette" beach movie fan. For everyone else, when in doubt, rent first!
THIS HAS BEEN,
