Review by Leonard Norwitz
Studio:
Theatrical: Fox & Bays Thomas Productions
Blu-ray: Fox & Bays Thomas Productions
Disc:
Region: All
Runtime: approx
Chapters: 24
Size: 50 GB
Case: Standard Blu-ray Case w/ flip-page
Release date: September 29, 2009
Video:
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Resolution: 1080p
Video codec: AVC @ 18 Mbps
Audio:
English DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1
Subtitles:
English SDH, Spanish & French
Extras:
• Audio Commentary on Selected Episodes
• Barney Stinson: The Guy's Awesome Music Video
• A Night With Your Mother Panel Discussion
• Gag Reel
• Season Three Recap
The Film:
6
As I see it, there are two kinds of people in this world:
those that find Jay Leno funny, and those that don't. Leno
has a certain way of telling a joke that milks more laughs
with simple cascading riffs on the punch line. So he gets
three sets of laughs for the price of one. To me, it's like
telling the same joke three times. I feel insulted – like I
got it the first time. I even got the permutations before he
says them – usually. So I fall into the latter group about
Leno – Not Funny!
I feel much the same way about How I Met Your Mother. A
truly clever line is milked for all its worth with
permutations on theme. I'm not so clever as to having
thought of all of them the instant the original line was
spoken, but the follow-ups feel old before they
half-uttered. To me, less is more. The rest is clutter.
The set-up for the series is at once simple and clever: The
year is 2030 and Ted Mosby relates to his teenaged children
the story of how he met their mother. He spins his tale out
for at least five TV seasons worth of half episodes. And,
like Scheherazade, Ted knows well enough not to give away
the identity of the “lucky” girl, else he (and the TV series
he has innocently spawned) will have lost the interest of
his audience. His story involves a couple sets of friends
(think: Friends) from the today time in the Big Apple
(that’s New York, not Cupertino): himself of course (Josh
Radnor), an architect at the beginning of his career; his
former girlfriend, Robin (Cobie Smulders), now a reporter;
Ted’s best friend, Marshall (Jason Segel, who manages to
keep his clothes on, so far); Marshall’s wife, Lily (Alyson
Hannigan, who has given up her Buffy witchy ways for more
mundane fare); and most delightful, Barney Stinson (Neil
Patrick Harris – hard to believe this guy’s 16 years older
than Doogie Howser), who believes he is God’s gift to women,
and proves it repeatedly.
Throughout the series, Ted and his friends fall in and out
of love and whatever else
late-twenties-going-on-thirty-something-going-on-sixteen can
manage to challenge their hormones, career aspirations and
identity strivings with. Guest characters come and go, any
female of which might turn out to be the “Mother” in the
title – hell, she might even be Robin – or, more bodaciously,
Lily. I can’t imagine this series without Barney – or
Harris, for that matter. He, or they, adds the necessary
spice to what is very well trod sitcom territory.
Image:
6/8
NOTE:
The below
Blu-ray
captures were ripped directly from the
Blu-ray
disc.
The first number indicates a relative level of excellence
compared to other Blu-ray video discs on a ten-point scale.
The second number places this image along the full range of
DVD and Blu-ray discs.
The image for How I Met Your Mother: Season Four is as
conservative as Barney is not – with its quiet absence of
dynamic scale. You could go ten minutes without a single
stray or deliberately overexposed light source. Color is
saturated – vivid in some places, underexposed in others.
Some indoor scenes especially suffer from shadow crushing,
especially in the pub. Sharpness is good; and technical
anomalies do not present a problem.
CLICK EACH
BLU-RAY
CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION
Audio & Music:
5/6
The first thing that I noticed – and once, having noticed,
could not readily escape, is the atrociously judged laugh
track. Everything about it spells: careless. It is
monotonous, without the dynamic range that an actual
audience should have in response to the action. Are they
bored? Are they real or canned? We, the real audience,
shouldn’t be asking questions like this. But it doesn’t stop
there: The laugh track is both too quiet and too loud – it
becomes a kind of background noise instead of something that
offers impulse to the proceedings. When I pushed myself to
get past the laugh track I found the dialogue to be a mixed
bag – clear and “normal” timbres in some locations, peculiar
in others. Ambient sounds are less problematic and helped to
present a fuller, if contrived, soundstage.
Operations:
6
I still say I prefer a menu design that displays the whole
table of contents in one go - barring that, a pulldown list
of chapter and extra features. Why this trend of hiding the
numbers of chapter and titles of features that you have to
click on one at a time? I don’t get it.
Extras:
6
The extra features include a recap of season three (which,
by the way, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever if you
haven’t been watching the show), episode commentaries, a gag
reel, an Academy of Television Arts & Sciences panel
discussion titled "A Night with Your Mother,” a video that
showcases the special qualities of Barney Stinson, and an
extended scene from "The Fight."
Bottom line:
6
If you’re a fan of the series, I imagine you’ll want Season
Four. The question is: Blu-ray or DVD? The Blu-ray, which
doesn’t present a particularly good image or audio, costs
half again as much as the DVD, but both are being released
concurrently, which should make the decision easy.
Leonard Norwitz
October 9th, 2009