Protocol

Goldie Hawn. 35. 1984. Wow, she really is that old! Well she is up for her 60th in 2005, so not quite 35 in 1984, a little older, but still wow, the question now remains, who has had more plastic surgery – Goldie Hawn or Michael Jackson?

Goldie Hawn has a huge list of films behind her now, and rightly so as she’s coming up to her 60th soon. So let’s take a bit of a peek over the past few years... um no, decades, at her resume of films. Recently, The Banger Sisters and The First Wives Club, but also comic hits such as Overboard, Private Benjamin, Death Becomes Her, Foul Play and Bird on a Wire have hit the box office with some nice results. Her comic sense is just what audiences want for pure and utter entertainment, and that is it. Period. She has a tendency to play the ditz, airhead or slightly oddball roles, but that is what she does best. Let’s see, can you picture her playing opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet? I think not.

"Oh I have the napkins that match your hat."

It’s highly implausible. It’s highly idiotic. But it’s also very funny. Goldie Hawn plays Sunny Davis, a simplistic cocktail waitress in a cheesy bar where she has a heap of trouble explaining the concept of an emu (note: apparently, according to the Americans, it is pronounced ee-moo) that she has to dress up as. So on her way home after work, she comes across an Arab terrorist (hmm a little too recent, eh?) and she inadvertently saves the life of an important dignitary. Suddenly thrown in the media spotlight, Sunny Davis is now a U.S. hero, so the U.S. government give her a job in protocol. But it is soon seen that the government officials have more in store for her than she can imagine, such as a sale to an Arab official. So if you’re after a bit of fun, this is a good one to grab – stupid, silly and something great for a rainy Saturday evening.

Originally presented theatrically in an aspect of 2.35:1, this NTSC transfer from Warner has been pan and scanned for the DVD release. So this means no 16:9 enhancement, no black bars, and not a terribly nice picture. The image looks like a VHS tape stuck on a DVD. The image is very soft in appearance, with a relatively low clarity which is watchable, but just not a good example of what DVD can do. Colours are reasonable, but nothing brilliant, and suffer from the usual NTSC discolourations - well, in comparison to the PAL colours anyway. Blacks are a little grey, and colours are very bright indeed, but just not terribly realistic. The only thing scarier than the colours is the 1984 fashions - now they are crimes against humanity. MPEG artefacts are not an issue at all, but film artefacts ruin the film with a variety of specks and hairs skipping onto the screen consistently throughout. Now the biggest gripe is the wobble of the image, with some slight horizontal movement, and more noticeable vertical movement in the image. It may be an old film, but there is no clunky old projector here so it should all be in order. But oh well, you can’t win them all. No subtitles are present, and the film fits easily on a single-layered disc.

The solo audio track is in English, and is surround flagged. Dialogue is relatively crisp throughout the film, but the addition of subtitles may have helped for some parts where dialogue is a little muffled and distorted. The surround channel picks up with the score, and provides a solid backing to the soundstage. The front half of the soundtrack features dialogue from the centre channel, and the odd effect from the left and right channels. Bass levels are nice, with the music bouncing around the soundstage with buoyancy and energy, even though there is no discrete subwoofer channel. So overall the odd crackle in the audio is the only fault in this simple and neat audio transfer – a 5.1 remix would add very little to this genre of film.

Uh, the old clunky Warner menus really don’t count. Can there be minus marks?

For a Goldie Hawn fan this title is a must-have, and for those who are in the need of a big old implausible laugh, grab this one for a bit of a giggle. The video is um... well NTSC, need we say more? While the audio is sufficient for the age and genre of the film. Extras? Yeah, dream on, nothing here, but still it’s a brainless Goldie Hawn film so who really notices? It’s a corny laugh, but a good one at that.