Dear Frankie (DVD)

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"Dear Frankie" is perhaps a bit too sappy and gushy at times to be entirely effective, and there are elements of pathos that can be something of a downer as well. But the movie never cops out; it never takes the easy route, and it finishes up with a resolution you might not expect yet seems perfectly comfortable. "Dear Frankie" is a rare and endearing portrait of a mother's unconditional if not always judicious love for her only child. It's engrossing from beginning to end.

Video:
A quick check of the bit-rate counter tells us that Buena Vista did their best to transfer the picture to disc as well as possible, but the results are still mixed. The screen dimensions stretch to about a 1.78:1 anamorphic ratio, nicely filling out a widescreen TV, but the picture itself is slightly blurred, noticeably grainy, and often soft. The color is deep and rich, but it's a touch too dark for absolute realism. This is especially odd since the color pallette is quite subdued, like the story, and probably didn't need any further shading.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound reproduction might just as well be good monaural for all the use the speakers are put to. The midrange is exemplary, with clear, clean, quiet, well-balanced sound for dialogue. But not even the music gets much ambient, rear-channel reinforcement from the surrounds, and the front-channel stereo spread is modest. I doubt that anyone will notice since it's a quiet, dialogue-driven film, anyhow.

Extras:
The extras include the usual elements, some of them a tad redundant. The audio commentary with director Shona Auerbach presents good, cogent explanations of what the filmmaker was trying to accomplish in each scene. Although some of her observations are self-evident, others are more revealing. The nine-minute featurette, "The Story of Dear Frankie," includes the actors, producer, and director discussing the origins of the film and their roles in its production. This is probably the best item among the extras because it gets to the heart of the movie most quickly. The other things, like the twelve-minute interview with the director, tend to repeat much of what was already said. Then there are eight deleted scenes, with optional director commentary, about eight minutes' worth, in widescreen; fifteen scene selections, with a chapter insert; English and French spoken languages; and
Spanish subtitles, with English captions for the hearing impaired

Parting Thoughts:
The two knocks I can see some people bringing against "Dear Frankie" are that it's awfully simple and it's awfully sentimental. Despite the comments of the director, the producer, and the actors in the various extra features, who would have you believe that every glance and gesture in the film signifies something deep and profound, the story and its themes are really quite straightforward and the characters fairly obvious. But simplicity is here a virtue, not a vice, and the film is all the more moving for its lack of pretentiousness. As far as sentiment goes, what would life be but a pretty shallow existence without it? So I appreciated the film for what it was: a sweet, affecting slice of life that leaves one feeling just a little bit better about the innate goodness of mankind. It may not be the most satisfying feel-good movie ever made, but it is uplifting, nevertheless.

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