Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews
MIA
- Price: £15.99
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo
Whereas Freddy Kreuger had a habit of entering other people’s dreams and turning them intonightmares, Dennis Quaid, as gifted psychic Alex Gardner, is assigned to do the opposite. ThePresident of the USA is having nightmares about the death of his wife which culminate in a nuclearholocaust. Rather than settle for the straight-forward option of a hot mug of cocoa before bedtime, amachine is constructed which will wire Alex into the man’s brainwaves allowing him to enter his mindand put things to rights.
He is recruited by the enthusiastic Dr. Paul Novotny (Max Von Sydow) whose intention is to test Alexon disturbed patients who have the sort of problems usually solved by agony aunts and help themovercome their fears, which may indicate where Flatliners got some of its ideas from. A pre-“IndianaJones” and pre-“Mrs. Spielberg” Kate Capshaw appears as the love interest Dr. Jane DeVries whoassists, but it’s the corrupt government official Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer), who has moresinister uses for the device – going on a fantastic voyage inside the mind of the aforementionedPresident.
Presented in a non-anamorphic 1.66:1 widescreen ratio, the picture is terrible at best. The print isgrainy and contains plenty of flecks and scratches. There’s juddery movement when anyone makesa motion faster than slow, resulting in what looks like an NTSC conversion gone wrong, while thedream sequences pixellate like a ZX Spectrum crashing! The average bitrate is a low and steady3.58Mb/s.
The Dolby Stereo soundtrack only has a little bit of fun when the nightmares come, but elsewhere thedialogue is never as clear as it should be – in addition to which the lack of subtitles is a pain – whilethere is a two-second, very obvious, sound drop-out 17 minutes into the film when Von Sydow isexplaining the situation to Quaid.
The mediocre extras contain cast info, a few pictures of the snakeman mutation, 14 seconds of slientcompilation clips of “Things That Make You Jump” and a trailer. Note also that all the chapters starta few seconds too late.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.