It may not seem like much of a battle, but for anyone who cares about pop music, it's a near-war of epic proportions...
In one corner we have Mandy Moore, that quasi-prepubescent diva and singer of such pop classics as "I Wanna Be With You" (from Center Stage) and "Candy" (the remix of which on Mandy's long-playing "I Wanna Be With You" CD is still one of the best pop songs of the last few years). She's hosted MTV shows and proven her acting chops with supporting roles in kid's fare like The Princess Diaries. Now, with A Walk to Remember, a light-as-air adaptation of Nicholas Spark's saccharine novel, she has a chance to not just be the neighborhood teen beauty queen, but to dig her well-manicured fingernails into a surprisingly (and unbelievably) dynamic character. But does she pull it off?
Wait! In the other corner - you might have heard of her already - we have (drum roll, please!) Miss Britney Spears, or Ms. Britney if you're nasty. Yeah, she's everywhere - promoting Pepsi products, cranking out multi-platinum albums one after the other, and (sniff sniff) presently dealing with her breakup from fellow platinum-seller Justin Timberlake. She's America's darling, a NASCAR princess, and even gave Bob Dole a hard-on in one of the sickest commercials ever aired.
But with her feature-film debut in Crossroads, it seems as though the backlash might finally drown her out. It did moderately well during its theatrical run, but it didn't shake anything up. And while critical response was predictably biting, a few writers had not-so-bad things to say about Miss Spears' debut performance, so it was no Glitter-sized bomb. But is Britney: The Movie deserving of Britney the mega-star?
Let's talk Mandy first: Hers is not an entirely incompetent film. Sure, the story about a preacher's daughter falling in love with the town rebel is as old and tired as the new Michael Jackson record, but it's presented to us with the full power of new-millennium teen angst. Everyone looks beautiful, the streets picture-perfect, and the birds are all tweeting - it's a cavity-causing pleasantville, the ideal, surreal setting for a pop princess to reign. Yet it lacks camp appeal, the essential ingredient in any pop star movie. That is, until Mandy reveals her tiny, "tingly" little secret...
In any overblown melodrama, the main character has to have a tingly secret (a liaison, a deathly illness, etc.) that, after being hidden for about an hour-and-a-half, which then explodes in everyone's faces with such virile, unbelievable silliness during the final act that one can't help but marvel at how ridiculous it all has become.
For example, let's take Here on Earth with Lelee Sobieski: In that terrible movie, she's just another country girl until the film's last half hour (please, for the love of God don't read the rest of this paragraph if you haven't seen the movie) when she gets cancer and dies. Yep, the film goes from being a moderately inept romantic comedy to becoming an unbelievably weepy, histrionic sob-fest. So embarrassing it was, it gave me the tingles.
Yes, Mandy has a tingly secret (trust me - I won't give that one away), which sends the last twenty minutes of the film into a painfully silly tailspin, but - honestly - that's when the it's the most fun. We like celebrities with hidden pasts and dark secrets; it's fun, and how boring would it be if Matthew Perry didn't weigh 300 pounds? So while Mandy's movie may be a weepy bore, she emerges as a true teen diva, giving a performance that isn't so much good as it is memorable. She's the MTV princess we can't help but like - even if she the musical version of 7th Heaven.
Britney, on the other hand, tries to her credit t to keep Crossroads more of an ensemble piece rather than a star turn. It's the story of Britney and her two far less pretty friends, one a stuck-up town princess, the other a trailer-trash sass-basket with nothing to lose. They travel across the country with their requisite boy toy (Anson Mount), looking for adventure and opportunities to sing and dance like the circus monkeys that they are. And you know what? I'll end this competition right here: Crossroads is ten times the cinematic chuckle that A Walk to Remember is. Sorry, Mandy, it's a hundred times sillier, a thousand times more inept, but a million times more fun.
Watching this new packed DVD edition of Crossroads is even more exciting than it was watching it in the theater. You can rewind and rewatch the scene where Brit sings her "Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" song for the first time (one of the more embarrassing and wonderful camp moments ever put on celluloid), or play the Madonna's "Open Your Heart" in her skivvies bit nonstop - there's no end to the good times via the wonder of digital technology.
A Walk to Remember may try harder to be "legitimate," but Crossroads is everything a Spears fan could possibly want from their idol. You see her in her underwear. She gets multiple chances to sing in her lovely nasal whine. She gets to wear a smorgasbord of different types of clothes (cute, mysterious, vixen.) What more could you want? If you're a pop music aficionado and haven't had a chance to see either of these films, I'd give both of them a look, especially Crossroads. It's so memorable (read: embarrassing) you just have to watch it six or seven times to really understand why it is so brilliant.
Video: How Does The Disc Look?
Alright, Crossroads may have won the battle of the bands, but how do they look? Both are presented in anamorphic widescreen and were produced around the same time, so all things should be equal, more or less. Mandy's transfer here is actually quite nice, and more panoramic - the film was shot very lushly in 2.35:1, with an emphasis on the perfect neighborhood in which our story takes place. Color saturation is really nice and clean, and blacks are just about spot-on. Detail is good as in shadow delineation, even in the darker scenes. There are a few signs of edge enhancement and some compression artifacts, but nothing too severe. In all, a very fine transfer.
Crossroads, on the other hand, doesn't quite measure up. Britney's film is not as fancy-looking as Mandy's - it's only 1.85:1 flat, and they spent more time on Brit's antics than they did on visual scope and grandeur- but things look all right. (Britney always looks good!) Color saturation is just okay - maybe a bit flat and fuzzy during some of the brighter road shots in the film, but Britney's peachy fleshtones look just great. Blacks are nice and deep but the print sometimes appears grainy and soft, with fair detail and murky shadow delineation. There is also a bit too much compression artifacting, likely due to so many extras being squeezed on a single disc. Still, it's not terrible, only fair.
Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
If Mandy wins the video round, the audio has to go to Britney. But let's start with the loser first. A Walk to Remember boasts very simple and understated sound design, thus so is this 5.1 Dolby surround track. Except for the obligatory music cues that have a ringy thinness to them, dynamic range is good but doesn't fare that well on the score. Highs sound especially cramped, with only the dialogue really sounding natural. Surrounds are rarely used to good effect, but the separation of the score is nice and the .1 LFE channel punchy with the music. Again, there's nothing really bad about the mix, it's just not particularly noteworthy.
Crossroads is also presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, but Brit's mix is nicer, if only just a bit. Dialogue - when it's not painfully obvious it's ADR - is balanced pretty loud in the mix during some of the road scenes, but otherwise sounds clear and distinct. Dynamic range is a bit all over the place - the music and the score are nice and full, but the rest of the mix is predictably flat. Some of the outdoor scenes have some nice surround use with immersive ambiance, but like Mandy's mix, the sound design is very simple. The .1 LFE is strong, so at least in terms of the songs this comes across quite well.
Crossroads also includes English and French 2.0 surround tracks and English subtitles and Closed Captions, while A Walk to Remember offers a French 5.1 dub, English, French and Spanish subtitles, and English Closed Captions.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
Okay, this contest is easy: Crossroads wins, hands down. But certainly, A Walk to Remember is no slouch in the extras department if taken on its own merits. The big draws are the two screen-specific audio commentaries, one with Shane West, Mandy Moore and director Adam Shankman, the other with author Nichloas Sparks and screenwriter Karen Janszen. It should be obvious which one is more fun. While Mandy and her crew don't have too much to say about the film, they always find a way to get in some funny anecdotes, my favorites being the ones about having to deal with shooting around Mandy's limited time on set (she's a minor and could only be on set for a certain number of hours a day). Sparks' commentary sheds light on what was cut out from the book in the movie and how certain things were put together. There are a few good moments on this commentary - including the screenwriter talking about what the studio added after principal shooting (dialogue Karen Janszen didn't write) - but Mandy's is cooler.
Also included are the film's theatrical trailer in anamorphic widescreen, and a music video for Mandy's song "Cry".
Now, on to Crossroads. This DVD's extra features are astonishingly extensive and interactive, and this just may well be Paramount's most feature-packed DVD ever. Scary? You bet. So, where to begin...
My personal favorite extras is Britney's DVD Welcome, a ten-second intro in which Brit wears amazingly silly Native American-themed earrings and speaks with an almost yokel twang. Solid. Then there's Break Through Britney, a pseudo-commentary that has Britney's head pop up at different points in the film to talk about hear favorite scenes and how it was working with fabulous actors. It's hilarious - out of nowhere, her face will just POP UP with a funny little cartoon stinger and she'll talk - nothing more than a few seconds. Awesome. Too bad the actual screen-specific audio commentary by producer Ann Carli, director Tamra Davis, and writer Shonda Rhimes isn't all that revealing. It sounds like Britney's lawyers didn't want them to say anything questionable or doubting of Brit (this is, of course, complete conjecture on my part), so they're left telling benign, often boring stories of shooting such an "exciting" film. Snore.
Next we have 40 Days With Britney, which sounds like a Zalman King HBO late-night special about Britney's sexual fantasies gone bad, but it's merely a 20-minute "making-of" featurette with totally vanilla insights and - even with Britney - a boring sense of dullness. First in Line: Inside the Crossroads Premiere follows fellow cast member Zoe Saldana as she leaves her L.A. hotel and travels via limousine to the Westwood premiere of Brit's film. It's all right, but why couldn't we get Britney on the way to the premiere?
But wait, there's tons more. Treat yourself to 7 deleted scenes with on-camera introductions from director Tamra Davis, but there really isn't much here. She's assembled a couple of slapstick moments that are really only funny to those involved in making the film, and the exposition told in the more narrative cut scenes are lackluster. Taryn's T-Shirts is also an amazingly entertaining extra: Britney's trailer-trash co-star in the film gets to show us how to make the T-shirts the characters wear in the film, and she sounds positively stoned the whole time. She's reading off a cue card, and she rarely looks directly at the camera - making the shirts is cool, sure, but watching Taryn's droll delivery is the real treat.
The edit-your-own-video gives the viewer the chance to reedit Britney's "Not a Girl" video in parts. I couldn't get it to work right, but a friend of mine had it work perfectly, but said that it wasn't really all that exciting. An interesting addition, however, and who wouldn't want to be Britney? Then there are not one but two traditional music videos, for "Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" and the exclusive Dark Child remix of "Overprotected", a track that is much better than the song's mix on her Britney album. My friend Cash's favorite extra was the Sing Along With Britney karaoke versions of "Overprotected" and "Not Yet a Woman". Britney's lead vocal track is completely removed, giving the viewer a chance to be Ms. Spears. Amazingly good fun.
Rounding it all out, we have 4 MTV spots, and domestic and international theatrical trailers for the movie presented in anamorphic widescreen. Whew!
DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?
No ROM extras have been included on either release, and given all the super-Britney extras on Crossroads, that's a bit surprising.
Parting Thoughts
Both of these films are worth watching on DVD, if just for the camp glee of it all, but for you pop-music-files out there, Crossroads is just about the coolest thing around. The movie is fun, and when Britney pops up in her pseudo-commentary, it's a wonderful, silly explosion of ridiculous euphoria, and the extras may, in fact, be better than the film. If you're reading this review and honestly trying to figure out whether or not to by Crossroads, let me make it easy for you: Buy it! If you may feel you're siding with Mandy or just think it's all silly anyway, rent 'em both and watch the fur fly.
