Spectacular (2008 Telefilm/Sony DVD)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Telefilm: D
Even though The Jonas Brothers have hit a wall in taking
off as the next big boy band as their 3-D feature was a disappointment, that
has not stopped Nickelodeon and Sony from trying to cash in on imitating them
and the High School Musical
franchise (from some of its makers) with the truly awful and even embarrassing
would be semi-musical telefilm ironically entitled Spectacular. The two male
“singers” on the case look like they even stole the Jonas hairdressers or are
those wigs?
Nolan Gerald Funk (yes, that is his name) plays a guy who
is kicked out of his band (like they had any good taste to begin with) but is
willing to go on singing (nooooooo!) and when he meets Tammi (Victoria Justice)
might just go through the roof. Despite
the name Funk here, the genre of choice is a bad cancerous, saccharine version
of bubblegum pop so many light years away from Rock that The Monkees suddenly feels like a documentary series on The
Learning Channel. This is just silly
fluff to be avoided, plain and simple and the singing is moiré like whining and
deep breathing.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is softer and
more motion blur laden than I expected for a production with its aspirations,
but it is weak. The Dolby Digital 5.1
mix is really pushing it from a recording that obviously was not properly
conceived or mixed for multi-channel in mind; a real handicap for a
semi-Musical. Extras include two Music
Videos and 4 behind the scenes featurettes that are really bad too.
- Nicholas Sheffo
