THE MOVIE

When Ken (Michael Palin) teams up with Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis), Otto (Kevin Kline) and George (Tom Georgeson) they plan the perfect robbery. But unbeknown to the others, Wanda is using her charms to doublecross both Otto and George.

When George gets arrested for the crime, Wanda uses her charm on his attorney, Archie (John Cleese).

What follows is a game of cat and mouse to see who will get to the diamonds first. While Otto is dim witted and not the full two bob, Ken has a stutter while Wanda is a woman with charm (and she definately knows how to use it).

THE TRANSFER

Video:

Very clean and well presented.

No obvious faults of any sort. The only niggling problem, which seems to plague these MGM/UA releases, is the smallest amount of compression faults. There are a few scenes (mostly in K-K-K-Kens apartment) where the out-of-focus background exhibits pixelisation beyond what we should expect.

There are a very film artefacts such as dirt and grit. This has not been taked from a pristine print. There is also a fair amount of film grain, possibly suggesting a bit of over sharpening during the authoring process.

Colours are average, perhaps a little muted (but then again, the movie is set in London where things are pretty mute anyhow :)

The picture is presented in 1.85:1 but despite what the cover says, it is not anamorphically enhanced for widescreen TV's. This would normally help reduce aliasing artefacts but luckily Wanda has gotten away with it with little artefacting.

Audio:

Mono! Yep, you get a big fat mono track output via the left and right channels of your 5.1 decoder.

My idea of a mono track is very undynamic, limited range and downright cheap. Thankfully, A Fish Called Wanda improved my perception of mono tracks somewhat.

Dynamic range was reasonable, although not startling.

Obviously the surrounds and sub-woofer got a well deserved rest during this movie.

Dialogue was clear and intelligable.

No audio synch problems were present.

THE EXTRAS