HTF REVIEW: Love Don't Co$t A Thing. (1 Viewer)

[Herb Kane]

Love Don’t Co$t A Thing





Studio: Warner Brothers
Year: 2003
Rated: PG-13
Film Length: 101 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Enhanced Widescreen
Audio: DD 5.1
Color/B&W: Color
Languages: English & French
Subtitles: English, French & Spanish
MSRP: $27.95
Package: Snap Case





The Feature:
Love Don't Cost a Thing is a remake of the 1987 film, Can't Buy Me Love. Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film written by Michael Swerdlick and Troy Beyer and directed by Troy Beyer. The film stars Nick Cannon (Men Black II and Drumline), Christina Milian (Torque) in her first lead role, and Steve Harvey (The Steve Harvey Show).

The film is about an academically gifted but geeky kid, Alvin Johnson (Nick Cannon), who is about to be handed his future with a GM scholarship, but not unlike the other kids in school, he wants to be cool and wants a girlfriend. The problem is, he drives around on his motorized scooter holstered with an assortment of pool cleaning utensils dressed like an el supremo dorko and stands no chance of landing a girlfriend. Luckily for him, the most beautiful and popular girl in school, Paris Morgan (Christina Milian), happens to have crashed her mother’s Cadillac Escalade SUV. The body-shop wants $3000 for the repair, a sum Paris doesn’t have.

Alvin overhears the exchange of words and offers to make the necessary repairs for half the amount. Still, Paris isn’t able to come up with that amount of cash. Alvin has a stash of summer cash that he’s made cleaning pools and offers to buy the parts she needs and repair the car, on the condition she pretends to be his girlfriend for two weeks. Repulsed by the thought initially, she’s knows it’s a decision she must agree to before her mom learns of the damage. What he doesn’t tell her, or his parents, is that the money he just spent was to go toward car parts he needed for his science project for the potential scholarship.

Alvin’s plan seems to work as he soon becomes the newest cool kid on the block and has all of the beauties in school swooning over him. In an interesting twist of fate, Paris starts to see many of the qualities in Alvin she would never have been able to see had it not been for their arrangement. She realizes that he’s a pretty decent guy, a great listener and someone she truly enjoys spending her time with. Unfortunately, his newfound popularity soon goes to his head. Not only does he soon forget his science minded geeky friends, but he forgets how he became so popular and who got him there in the first place. Even his sister describes him as “Urkel gone gangsta”…

After Paris’ real boyfriend Dru Hilton, claims he’s really a “free agent” in an ESPN interview, she learns that not only is he leading her on but that Alvin is more along the lines what she is looking for and makes her even more determined than ever to begin a relationship with him. Caught up in the frenzy of beautiful girls and cool friends, he embarrasses her in the school hallway in attempt to make himself look even cooler and the plan works… to an extent.

The film has a pretty good chemistry between the two young stars. It’s a film that most of us can relate to and the teen angst we had to endure through our school years. Both young stars have a magnetic screen presence and offer up decent and believable performances. Steve Harvey steals the show with an over the top “that’s my boy” performance, always wanting to “talk” with his young son and make sure he’s getting the right advice. The talk includes a ceremonial passing of a shoebox filled with condoms and a very detailed explanation as to what each style serves. How the young actor kept a straight face during the explanation, I’ll never know.

Lastly, and on a disappointing note, WB has included two forced trailers which play upon inserting the disc. The trailers are for their upcoming release of Torque and the already released Looney Tunes - Back In Action, both of which are easily skipable using your FF button.



Video:
Warner has delivered another solid video presentation with this disc. The colors were extremely vibrant and very nicely saturated. Flesh tones always seemed real and natural. Black levels were as deep as imaginable and whites looked exceptionally bright.

While the image was mostly sharp, there were a few instances of slight softness but overall, a very defined image is presented. There were many great examples of the movie showing great depth and rendering a nice sense of dimensionality.

There is virtually no film grain present to speak of and the print, as we would expect, is spotless. I was unable to detect and compression errors but did notice a couple examples of slight enhancement during a few of the outdoor scenes.

A very nice job.

Beware – There is a FULLSCREEN version available as well.



Audio:
A 5.1 encoded track is included but is rather blasé. There is a ton of music that accompanies the film, most of which is fairly aggressive, but overall I felt the track was a little lacking, particularly for a new release for this kind of movie.

Dialogue was always clear and fairly bold. The track was almost entirely up front and the soundstage was somewhat wide with a decent dynamic range. With much of the accompanied Hip Hop, there’s plenty of bass and you’re sub will thank you for a decent workout, but that’s pretty much where it ends.

There’s no real surround info to speak of, save for some music filler and some gymnasium crowd effects, which only crept in on a couple of occasions and was barely noticeable.

The track accomplishes it goal but don’t expect it woo your guests.



Special Features:
There are several special features included on this disc starting with:
[*] Additional Scenes and an Alternate Ending. There are eight deleted scenes as well as the alternate ending. Most of these scenes don’t really offer us anything that isn’t already provided for in the film. Same with the ending, the original is preferred.
[*] Next up is a Making Of Love Don’t Cost A Thing which is nothing more than each cast member going through their basic part in the film. It’s not a “making of”, it’s a brief “summary of”. If you’ve watched the film, there’s nothing to see here folks, move along. Duration: 21:51 minutes.
[*] There are two Music Videos included. They are Shorty (Put It On The Floor) by Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe, Chingy and Nick Cannon - Duration: 4:24 minutes, and Luv Me Baby by Murphy Lee – Duration: 4:35 minutes.
[*] Finally, the Theatrical Trailer is included. Duration: 2:26 minutes.



Final Thoughts:
Let’s face it, we’ve seen this story many times. Love Don’t Cost A Thing doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, however it is a well done feel good movie that delivers a couple of solid performances from several likeable actors who are all worthy of praise. As for the film being realistic, well the geeks take on the high school basketball team, and a young and beautiful girl leaves an NBA player for a pool cleaner, so you figure it out. The true beauty of the film is the message, in that inner beauty alone should be enough, so long as you have the confidence to discover it.

Warner Brothers has done a nice job of putting together a release that is on par with most other new releases which includes an A/V presentation that is satisfying.




Release Date: April 27th, 2004