Unaccompanied Minors (DVD)

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The film's pacing is herky-jerky, the airport setting is static, and the slapstick routines are clumsy. By the time the ending rolls around, the story gets soggy and predictably sentimental, yet that is the only part of the movie with any heart. Maybe you should just watch the last ten minutes of "Unaccompanied Minors." You might be better off.

Video:
Warner Bros. offer the film in two screen formats on flip sides of the disc: the original 2.40:1 ratio theatrical version, anamorphically enhanced for 16x9 televisions, and a 1.33:1 pan-and-scan, "formatted to fit your screen." The P&S version cuts out a good deal of the film's image left and right, but it does display a bit more information at the top and bottom. The picture is clean and bright, the colors perhaps a tad too intense to be realistic. Definition is a trifle rough, though, and I noticed some occasional moire effects, rippling lines.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio processing ensures that everything on the soundtrack comes through loud and clear, with an emphasis on "loud." Although there is not much in the way of surround sound, the front-channel stereo spread is wide enough to keep one's attention. Actually, it's a fairly ordinary soundtrack, sonically speaking, with enough but not too much bass, enough but not too much treble, and enough but not too much dynamic range. Mostly, the audio track just has to convey a lot of inane dialogue and annoying music. In that regard, it does its job.

Extras:
The extras include most of the same items we've come to expect. Things start with an audio commentary, this one by actor Lewis Black, director Paul Feig, and writers Jacob Meszaros and Mya Stark. They are honest enough to admit from the outset that critics hated the film, and they even crack a few jokes at the film's expense. There is also a captioned version of the commentary for the hearing impaired. Next is "Charlie's Dance Reel," about three minutes of Tyler James Williams doing an outtake of his dance number, along with a few other outtakes for good measure. Then there are seven additional scenes, about six minutes total, followed by a twenty-minute featurette, "Guards in the Hall," in which the actors playing the airport security guards do some funny business that isn't all that funny but is probably better than anything that made it into the movie.

The extras conclude with twenty-four scene selections but no chapter insert; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
OK, maybe I'm being excessively harsh on this film. Maybe there were worse films in 2006, and I just didn't see them. So, let me put it another way: "Unaccompanied Minors" is the worst film that I personally saw from the year 2006. While it's true that for sheer awfulness it can't hold a candle to something as thoroughly offensive as "Freddy Got Fingered," "Unaccompanied Minors" is still bad, an affront to the good name of children and adults everywhere, since it reduces everybody in the picture, young and old, to stale, idiotic clichés and gives them nothing worthwhile to say or do.

I would not watch this DVD unaccompanied; after WB's familiar opening logo, you need someone to pull you away from the TV set lest you be tempted to spend any more of your valuable time on it.