Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent DVD!, June 24, 2001
By A Customer
I just watched the DVD today, and I have to say it's EXCELLENT! The picture quality is EXCELLENT, and so is the sound. I'm really impressed with this DVD. Sure, it doesn't have many extras (just a few "bonus trailers" and very short featurette), but the quality of the DVD itself is astounding.I'm glad I've finally been able to watch the movie again in widescreen. I've seen Short Circuit 2 recently on HBO (a few times), and I didn't notice that in the full screen version that I was missing so much going on in the movie. If widescreen isn't your thing, you still have no worries. The DVD comes with the "full screen" version as well. The disc is a flipper, meaning one side is widescreen while the other is fullscreen, thus satisfying both crowds. As for the movie itself, I love it. I've always loved this movie. I like it more than the first Short Circuit, and mainly because this one focuses more on "Number Five" (Johnny Five) than the first movie. It's funny at times, and there's even one part of the movie I get teary-eyed, no joke. I think this movie teaches many important things, such as building and strengthening friendships (through the interaction between Johnny Five and the other characters), and it shows how to break the boundaries and treat everyone as equals. It also shows you the delicacy of life.... (later in the movie--I won't SPOIL IT for you!). I recommend this DVD for anyone that might need a good laugh here and there. There are a few "cuss words" in the movie, so I don't know if I would recommend this for children that are too young.... but I would hate for children to miss such a movie. I saw it when I was 8, and now I'm 21 and I still love it. That says a lot for a movie that's now "old." If you decide to not buy it, then please at least rent it. I think you'll find it to be a charming movie that most people will get something out of.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If Phillip K Dick had done Pinochio as a kids film..., August 18, 2006
It would probably be much like this; two everyman protagonists, themes of loneliness and isolation and yearning, a robot who is far more humane than his human counterparts...
Unlike the first Short Circuit Movie where there wasn't much time to explore the character of Jonhhy Five, or invest the machine with character, the second film does just that and it does it very well. The viewer's suspension of disbelief is fully engaged- even as an adult I find myself lulled into feeling a deep sesne of pathos and compassion for Number Johnny Five. This is in part due to an amazing pre-CGI special effects/machine team and also due to the exceptionally unselfconscious acting of the human cast: Fisher Stevens ((the bad guye from hackers)) is truly phenomenal as Ben Jharvi, an Indian ((I think)) computer programmer who is as inept at expressing his feelings as Johnny Five is as understanding his own); Michael McKean and Cynthia Gibb are also great (McKean is perfect as a petty conman who betrays and then saves Johnny Five). The actors did an amazing job interacting with the machine and their performances add subtly dazzling layers of humor and sentiment to whta could have been a really awful movie but instead becomes a marvelous thing to watch.
OK. The script is somewhat shoddy at times and the pacing is not so well-handled. There are some dead-end scenes, but for the most part everything really hangs together well- Johnny Five stumbles through several mishaps trying to understand why humans behave as they do and why he feels what he feels. Oh, there's a chase scene set to the godawful "I need a hero," song. The kitschy 80's pop score wears a tad thin afterawhile. But then, this is a kid film at heart, and a rather unique one at that.
One scene always breaks my heart, one of my all-time favorite poignant scenes: Johnny five, after being caught by the cops, is taken and chained in the police basement- the stolen property room. He is slowly reading two books, page by page. His friends come to have him released- when allowed to leave he breaks his chains easily and sadly leaves (you see, he could have left at anytime had he wanted to; there's some Sadean undertones in how #J5 repeatedly allows himself to be demeaned and debased and almost destroyed by humans without fighting back lethally- which he easily could... a postmodern and mechanical kin to Justine, perhaps).
The books he was so slowly reading were Pinochio and Frankenstein. It always slays me, just like the Rockbiter's monologue in The Never Ending Story ("They look like big, strong hands...").
This one is so much better, in my opinion, than Spielberg's execrable A.I., if only in that Stevie over-reached himself (again) on that crite film; trying to make a 'serious' film about 'serious' issues... and then he tacked on a completely odious ending.
This film has no such pretensions- it mostly aims at fun. Because of that it achieves more than most serious cinema struggling with the same themes of technology and identity.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Short Circuit fan is only slightly disappointed, October 4, 2002
I've been a long-time fan of Short Circuit and it's sequel, Short Circuit 2. When it comes to DVD's, I'm there! They're great in so many ways. The Short Circuit DVD is great in some ways, but definately could've been better.
First off, the film transfer is pretty good. For the first time ever, I was able to watch the film in widescreen, while before I was only able to view the "fitted to TV" 3:4 aspect ratio (for any fans of the 3:4 picture, this DVD IS double-sided and HAS the 3:4 picture size version as well). The colours are vibrant (but not too vibrant), the picture is sharp, and there are only a few blemishes and dirt marks on the film. The sound was great! Sure, it hadn't been remastered in Dolby 5.1, but it still was Dolby Surround. The music was MUCH clearer than what was heard on the VHS version. Many areas of the film's musical score which were barely audible before were very clear on the DVD.
Here's the bit of down-side to this DVD: there are hardly any extras. The making-of featurette is at most five minutes long, and though we do get to see that Fisher Stevens is very unlike his character Ben Jarhvi, it ends very abruptly. The movie trailer section doesn't even include the Short Circuit 2 trailer. It would have been nice if more extras had been inserted, like the Short Circuit Special Edition DVD.
If you're a fan of Short Circuit though, you should get this DVD. It's more worth it than getting the VHS version :)
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