Review of About Adam

Introduction

About Adam tells the story of Lucy Owen who meets her dream man, Adam whilst working as a waitress/singer. Adam is perfect - handsome, intelligent, has a nice car and knows the right thing to say for every moment and Lucy soon falls in love with him.

Adam`s charm soon wears off on Lucy`s sisters and her brother`s girlfriend, but none of them realise what is going on...

Video

Video comes in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and is of above average quality throughout the movie. There is no sign of any dirt or grain, and the image has plenty of contrast and remains stable at all times.

The film features a mixture of locations, all of which are well filmed.

Audio

The sound comes in a choice of Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 and I watched the movie on my own Dolby Digital system and also on a friends Dolby Pro-Logic system.

There is something "bizarre" about the vocal track on this disc, with the voices too loud and clear compared to the rest of the soundtrack. It sounds as if they were added in at the studio rather than filmed on location, although I don`t think this is the case. This problem is much worse when replayed through a Dolby Pro-Logic system and despite plenty of fiddling with the settings on the amplifier, we couldn`t sort the problem out. It is slightly better on my Dolby Digital 5.1 system, although the vocal track still doesn`t sound right and it really did detract from the film at times.

Consequently the voices drown out the majority of the other sound effects.

Features

Extras consist of the trailer, interviews with the director and cast along with some B Roll footage.

The B Roll footage runs for about 5 minutes and isn`t especially interesting. The interview section runs for about 6 minutes and is comprised of short clips of obviously longer interviews edited together. These interviews are watchable but don`t contain much of interest.

Conclusion

I really struggled through the opening 15 to 20 minutes of this film, the plot jumps about all over the place and I had no idea what was going on. Coupled with the sound problems described earlier in this review, I wasn`t looking forward to the rest of the movie. However, once the (now apparent) crucial moment in the plot had taken place, the film then independently tells the story of the two sisters and brother, with everything becoming clear as the film approaches its conclusion.

I really do feel that some re-editing of the opening is necessary - after the first twenty minutes the film is enjoyable and entertaining, but the opening is a bit of a mess and may put many viewers off.

The film is well shot, and the main characters play their parts very well. The video is good, but the vocal track sounds very odd and when combined with a weak opening is off-putting. The disc is rounded off by a set of unexciting extras.