Review of Mask, The

Introduction

I think this movie is one of those that you know you will love or hate before you go and see it. For fans of Jim Carrey, The Mask is an excellent vehicle for him to be, well, Jim Carrey! If you don’t like the man – don’t bother with the movie! Without Carrey in the title role, The Mask is unlikely to have been the hit it was.

The Mask is a wonderful excuse for fun cartoonish special effects (a la ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ with Bob ‘It’s Good To Tork’ Hoskins), and you get the feeling that the visual effects crew really enjoyed themselves on this movie. The movie is fast paced and has many funny moments that will have you laughing out loud, and it is not overly long either. If the timing ran over the two hour mark, I imagine you would get the feeling that the comedy would be a little strained, but just over the 90 minutes as it is, you end up viewing the final credits having felt you enjoyed the movie.

Video

Generally the video quality is very good, even if the picture seems a little ‘soft’. While not really a problem, it can be noticeable when viewed on a DVD-Rom. TV and projector viewers are unlikely to notice this.

Compression is not overly noticeable, and colours are natural.

Audio

I first started watching this film and thought my Dolby Digital set up wasn’t calibrated properly. So there I was fiddling with my ‘Controls 6 machines adequately but not tremendously well’ remote control trying to remember which little buttons I had ‘learned’ it with the rear, centre and subwoofer channels up/down functions of the amp. After much tweaking I decided that there wasn’t much rear channel action at the start of the film as the white noise belted out of each channel at an equal volume.

So I got up and cleaned my ears.

One cotton bud later (in each ear I hasten to add – I’m not *that* tight), and the disc rolling again I settled down to continue the movie.

As soon as Carrey made his first appearance as The Mask, things changed. The rears burst into life as Carrey whirl-winded himself around the projected screen. The subwoofer boomed at the crashes as he hit the walls of the apartment!

Oh yes – this is better!!

From then on the sound was much more vibrant. This kind of film is bursting with cartoon type sound effects and is a great soundtrack for a Dolby Digital set up.

Features

This is one of the notable Region 2s that does not disgrace itself with a total lack of any extras.

Firstly, the menus are beautifully animated. None of your boring static jobs on this disc. This leads the way to the theatrical trailer, ‘interview bites’ which seem to be snippets of a full interview that is user selectable. Why they bothered is beyond me, as there is no ‘play all’ option, so you have to manually select each bit, that may be only 5 seconds long!!

You get lots of info on the cast, a B-roll, and a short making of documentary which is about the minimum length you can get…

Also you get a cool director’s commentary that is well worth listening to.

All in all a very good package.

Conclusion

Well this is a truly fun film, and a good DVD.

If you like the main star, and have ‘Ace Venturer’ and ‘The Truman Show’ bursting out of your DVD shelves, then there is no reason not to buy The Mask.