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Simple Plan - A Big Package For You
Warner Vision/Warner Vision . R4 . COLOR . 100 mins . M15+ . PAL

  Feature
Contract

Punk and pop used to be so much fun. For that matter, so did pop-punk. One of the latest crop to try their hand is a Canadian five-piece called Simple Plan, and while many will find their whiny lyrics and three-minute songs ‘awesome’, others, probably the older folk among us, will no doubt end up thinking, “What a bunch of testosterone fuelled tossers; too much time and too many opportunities.” Let me state right off the bat that I fall into the latter category and try as I might to like them, I cannot.

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The Simple Plan? To jump a lot.

Okay, for the first five minutes I thought they weren't as bad as they might have been, and while their songs are pretty generic in style and substance, they quickly become parodies of each other to a point where they all begin to sound very much alike. When watching this 100-minute film documentary of their 2002/03 world tour, the accompanying songs very quickly start to annoy – or is that accompanying ‘song’ quickly starts to annoy? In all honesty, however, there are a very limited number of songs featured, and hearing them over and over does not help matters.

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And again...

So what is Simple Plan – A Big Package For You? Well, to put it succinctly, it is about two hours of five young Canadian musos being dickheads around the world. Punk my arse, this is just five guys swearing a lot, doing the ‘teenagers on summer vacation with too much money’ thing. Thinly disguised as a tour, the five-piece travel through Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, visiting cities such as Paris, London, Tokyo, Berlin, Sydney, Auckland, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok and Hanover. The places, however, remain irrelevant, as their antics are repeated over and over. They swear a lot, they do stupid things in public, they play some songs on stage (dubbed with studio recordings by the way), jump up and down endlessly (the four screen grabs on this page all come from the first two minutes of the feature) and sometimes smash up equipment. Wow, so rock 'n' roll guys – not!

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...and again...

The band are filmed on tour, in the studio, in airports, in hotels, hassling taxi-drivers, onstage, backstage, at recognisable tourist attractions, shopping malls, filming videos and a variety of places where they can make fools of themselves. The Beatles and The Monkees were similar in their approach to conquering the world using ‘home footage’, but where those bands had wit and charm, these guys have none. They love the camera too, and they play up to it at every opportunity. There must have been an enormous amount of footage shot, as there can’t be a thing they didn’t do in 2002 and 2003 that isn’t presented.

So, spend 100 minutes watching five friends touring the world and being prats every step along the way. It’s only in the last ten minutes that the five show any humility, honesty or appreciation for the charmed lives they lead, but by then it is too late to play the empathy card. Fans, however (and let’s face it, most of them will be girls aged 14–16), will love being up close and personal. The rest of us will not. Let the hate email begin...

  Video
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  Extras
Contract

The full frame video image is a collection of footage from all over the world filmed from various vantage points in a variety of lighting conditions, environments and times of the day, so there is a great variety of colour, black levels, shadow detail, sharpness, clarity, grain and inclusion of black and white footage. All up though, this is passable, although the constant turnover of shots means that it is impossible to really appreciate anything clever that might be going on. The layer change must be tucked away in there somewhere, but I was so mesmerised by their clever and witty antics that I must have missed it.

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...and again!

And queue Dolby Digital stereo. Queue the same three (?) songs on constant rotation over the top of footage of guys being morons. Cool, let’s go! Sorry folks, there ain’t nothing here that will rock your boat if you are a bit of a 5.1 lover, but the stereo effort does sound loud, clear, crisp and deep in the appropriate levels, and basics such as volume and synchronisation are good.

I guess if you are a fan, then you will appreciate the range of extras but they are just more of the same.

Kicking things off are four music videos for I’m Just a Kid, I’d Do Anything,Addicted and Perfect. All are full frame, Dolby Digital atereo and will take you about 15 minutes to watch in total. They can be selected individually, or there is a 'Play All' option. Joy.

The rest is mostly unused footage of the band kicking off with Chuck, David, Jeff, Pierre and Seb Can’t Shut Up: The Interview where the band get all personal telling us how great their bandmates are for almost six minutes.

From the Cutting Room Floor is a little over 11 minutes of footage that, as the name suggests, didn’t make the final cut – just like the rest of these extras. See the guys goofing around even more at airports, hotels, pools, bathrooms, in taxis and generally just being obnoxious. And smashing guitars on stage is not rebellious, rock ‘n’ roll or hard. Spotty gits.

In three minutes you will have you dispensed with Recording Happy Together for inclusion on the Freaky Friday soundtrack.

Simple Plan in Mexico sees the guys goofing around in Mexico –and just as obnoxious.

See 90 seconds of Chuck Golfing in Jamaica.

They sure get around, including a City Tour: London UK .

Seb Gets a Tattoo on his leg and 90 seconds later it’s all over. Phew.

Inside the German Tour Bus is a quick guided tour of the band’s tour bus, Fascinating, but at two minutes it is at least mercifully brief.

Band groupie(?) and stooge, Patrick Cunningham, takes us on a manic trip with the band to the studio, a sound check, on tour and a photo shoot in Extra Super Bonus Patrick Material. It is six and a half minutes of staged macho larks, jokes and frivolity.

The photo gallery will take you on a four-minute ride through numerous stills, accompanied by some instrumental music.

Lastly there is web link to the band’s official site.

Have you ever wanted to sit back and watch dickheads just being – well, dickheads? Now you can. It is so easy to dismiss this band as another in a long line of snotty jerks with little to say that is new, original or entertaining. I realise that kids will find it far easier to relate to the band’s ethos of live fast, die rich, but the rest of us actually expect a little originality and a dash of humility every now and then. It would seem that in this case, it is too much to ask.


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  •   And I quote...
    "Why Simple Plan? Because Simple Minds was already taken and Simple Dickheads was too obvious…"
    - Terry Kemp
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Akai
    • TV:
          TEAC CT-F803 80cm Super Flat Screen
    • Receiver:
          Pioneer VSX-D409
    • Speakers:
          Wellings
    • Centre Speaker:
          Wellings
    • Surrounds:
          Wellings
    • Subwoofer:
          Sherwood SP 210W
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard RCA
    • Video Cables:
          standard s-video
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