Review of Honest

Introduction

Honest is the story of 3 girls from the East End of London who are determined to get out of the life they`re in by pulling off various roberies. The 3 girls in question are Natalie Appleton, Nicole Appleton and Melanie Blatt - 3 of the 4 girls from All Saints. Whilst their musical talents aren`t in doubt the same can`t be said for their acting skills.

What is it with pop stars and movie stars? Why do they both assume that because they can do one they can automatically do the other? The list of TV and Movie stars who have tried their hand at pop stardom is long however the list of those that were actually any good is very small indeed. The same holds true for the opposite so to say my expectations of Honest were low would be a massive understatement.

Video

Honest is quite a new film so I was expecting a sharp transfer. Wrong. What we have here would best be described as average. It`s an anamorphic widescreen picture that, for the most part, looks a bit on the grainy side throughout. I didn`t spot any film artefacts but I couldn`t help but think that the picture should have been a touch sharper. It`s not bad and has possibly allot to do with fact that I watch my DVDs on a 41" rear screen projector. Play this disc on a std CRT set and you probably wouldn`t have cause to complain.

Audio

This disc has a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack that matches the picture in the fact that it`s best described as average. No amazing use of any of the rear channels but enough to make you realise that they are still there. The sound is clear enough but suffered from 2 main problems.

Firstly the lip-synch was absolutely awful. Towards the start of the movie it was so bad that I almost turned it off. The lip-synch problem is more noticeable in certain scenes than others however the instances are so bad that I`m not entirely sure that there`s any part of the movie that doesn`t suffer from this problem to some degree.

My last complaint is the music soundtrack. Set in the 60`s it`s peppered with some hits of the time but what I don`t understand is why we aren`t treated to some renditions by the All Saints. I`m quite a fan of their music and it would have made perfect sense to use their talents to boost what is a pretty weak soundtrack.

Features

Erm, a trailer. Say no more.

Conclusion

This film is terrible. To have the low expectations that I had going into this and then to come away realising that it`s even worse goes a long way to describing just how bad it is.

The story is the biggest load of rubbish I`ve seen in a long time. Indeed at one point it`s almost as if the Director (Dave Stewart) realises this and proceeds to take the movie into a badly disjointed drug induced haze that has nothing to do with the main plot and only made the whole experience even more of a waste of time.

The acting is uniformly appalling with no exceptions. The All Saints should stick to singing, in fact after seeing this movie all I wanted to do was shoot them so I could prevent any possibility of them making anything this bad ever again.

Where is all goes wrong is simply that you have 3 young girls whose main talent is undoubtedly their singing who attempt to do a film in which they don`t sing. The omission of any blatant All Saints links means this won`t even appeal to fans of the group either which seems like lunacy to me.

How about this for an endorsement of just how poor this movie is . . . the Spice Girls sort of got it right with Spiceworld the Movie. The didn`t even attempt to act and spent the entire movie sending themselves up accompanied but some Spice Girl tunes. Even Nicole and Natalie Appleton getting their tits out doesn`t save this movie but at least I can`t put it down as a totally wasted experience :).

So, bad DVD and a dreadful movie, avoid like the plague.