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Dom Robinson reviews
Entertainment in Video
- Cat.no: EDV 9029
- Cert: 18
- Running time: 104 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 12 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index, Interviews, Making Of (B-Roll), Featurette, Trailer
Director:
- David Kane
(This Year’s Love)
Producers:
- Michele Camarda
Screenplay:
- David Kane
Music:
- Simon Boswell
Cast:
- Mary: Kathy Burke (Dancing At Lughansa, Kevin and Perry Go Large, Nil By Mouth, Sid And Nancy, This Year’s Love, Two Of Us, TV: Absolutely Fabulous, Harry Enfield And Chums)
Sophie: Jennifer Ehle (Bedrooms and Hallways, This Year’s Love, Wilde, TV: The Camomile Lawn, Melissa, Pride and Prejudice)
Liam: Ian Hart (Backbeat, Clockwork Mice, The Englishman Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, Hollow Reed, The Hours and Times, Land and Freedom, Nothing Personal, This Year’s Love)
Danny: Douglas Henshall (Angels and Insects, If Only, Orphans, This Year’s Love, TV: Psychos)
Hannah: Catherine McCormack (Braveheart, Dancing at Lughnasa, The Land Girls, Loaded, Northstar, This Year’s Love)
Cameron: Dougray Scott (Ever After, Gregory’s 2 Girls, This Year’s Love, Twin Town)
This Year’s Loveis a British comedy that looks at the lives and loves of several relationships between severalfriends and the people they meet along the way.
Danny (Douglas Henshall) has just married Hannah (Catherine McCormack) whenhe finds out that she’s been playing away from home. Disillusioned, Danny explodes with rageat the wedding and then gets as far as the airport where they would’ve gone on their honeymoonand decides to give the trip to Jamaica away to airport-cleaner-cum-pub-singer Mary (KathyBurke) who he just happens to meet. She never quite gets there and, after learning ofDanny’s trademark hobby, asks him to tattoo her arse.
Hannah ends up in a bar with her best friend where she meets up with scruffy Cameron(Dougray Scott), they go to bed and she nearly throws up on him. Elsewhere, Cameron’sflatmate, computer geek Liam (Ian Hart) meets up with dreadlocked posh girl Sophie(Jennifer Ehle) and the two of them hit it off as well.
The film then follows the six twenty-somethings over the course of the next three years.
There’s no problems with the picture at all. Presented in the original 1.85:1 widescreenratio and anamorphic for widescreen TVs, definition is strong and bright colours are striking.The average bitrate is a great 7.5Mb/s, often hovering around 9Mb/s.
The sound is almost perfect. While tunes burst out of the speakers at every opportunityfrom the likes of Stereophonics, Finley Quaye, Ocean Colour Scene, Bryan Ferry, Labelle, Morcheeba,T-Rex and Garbage, it’s suffered EiV’s hand at giving it a Pro-Logic-only soundtrack,not a Dolby Digital 5.1 affair. No reason for it on a £19.99 title.
Extras : Chapters :There are just a mere 12 chapters. Not enough. Languages and Subtitles :There’s just one language on this disc – English in ProLogic and no subtitles, which is ashame as the harsh Scottish accents often require a rewind of the film. And there’s more… :But it’s all the obvious stuff. The Interviews bring together PR soundbites from eachof the cast members in which hardly anyone gets more than a minute to speak apart from thedirector. The Making Of is 6½ minutes showing pieces of behind-the-scenes footagethat EiV would normally call a “B-Roll”. The 7½-minute Featurette is just a seriesof clips from the film interspersed with the sort of PR soundbites mentioned earlier. Finally,the package is rounded off with the Original Theatrical Trailer.
Menu :A static and silent menu with the usual options. No alarms and no surprises.
Overall, This Year’s Love does paint a somewhat entertaining picture at times, butat the end of it all, it’s yet another tale of people falling in and out of love, bed andrelationships. Hence, the whole film does feel rather pointless when it comes to the end.
One to rent, rather than buy, given the lack of substance in the extras.
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.