Review: Cedric is the 'Man of the House'

Posted Friday, July 22, 2005 at 11:33 AM Central

by John Couture

In a shocking role, er, reversal Tommy Lee Jones plays a Texas Ranger protecting a bunch of cheerleaders from the "bad guys." OK, so the subject matter isn't exactly fresh or inventive, but Man of the House provides plenty of funny moments with the occasional action sequence thrown in for good measure.

The real hero of the movie though is the comic genius of Cedric the Entertainer. As the only classically trained comic in the movie, he is given free rein to make this movie his and he doesn't disappoint.

As I said, there isn't anything here that you haven't seen a dozen times by now, but it is entertaining and you should definitely pick it up for Cedric's performance alone.

VIDEO The disc contains both an anamorphic widescreen presentation and a full-screen presentation. Having both versions on the same disc certainly give the consumer more choices in terms of their aspect ratio, but the space tradeoff means that some bonus features were left off the disc for the second transfer of the movie.

Overall, the video quality is good on both transfers, but the loss of the extra features takes something away from this.

AUDIO The 5.1 Dolby Digital is a standard inclusion for the movie. In particular, the sound in the Texas football stadium is rich and vibrant and helpts to make the viewer fell as though he or she is actually watching a University of Texas football game.

Beyond this scene and the few action sequences in the movie, the high quality audio track is really an after-thought and doesn't add or detract anything from the movie. SPECIAL FEATURES As mentioned earlier, it seems that the one thing that took a back seat on this disc is the special features. Besides, the requisite previews (trailers), there are only two extra items. Fortunately, the high quality of these features add value to the disc, but they also leave you wondering what other quality items were left off the DVD.

The Cheer Camp Featurette gives the viewer an in-depth look at the process that actors and actresses go through to prepare for their roles. In particular, at first glance in the movie, you are left with the impression that the more difficult moves and routines by the cheerleaders are done by stunt people and not the lead actresses.

But, "Cheer Camp" shows the progression of the training as the lead actresses learn to do basket tosses and pyramids like the best of them. An interesting aside from this feature is that you get to see all five of the main actresses without make-up juxtaposed next to a shot of them in full make-up. After this feature, you will begin to appreciate the role of a make-up artist on the set of a movie.

The second item is a "Making-Of" featurette which adds to the overall experience by relating how this movie was the first one able to actually use the University of Texas in a movie. It also gave the viewer an interesting look at the inner workings of a movie set.

RECOMMENDATION

Thankfully, the scant extra features make up in quality what they lack in quantity and barely nudges this disc over the line into the Rent recommendation.

As I said, there isn't really anything new in this movie, but it is worth the rental for no other reason than to check out Cedric's dance moves.