Big Stan Blu-ray

Big Stan

 (2007)

Comedy



In this hilarious and outrageous, marital arts comedy, Rob Schneider stars as Stan Minton a two bit con man that is found guilty of cheating mostly elderly women out of their retirement saving on fraudulent vacation properties. With the help of his crooked lawyer, Lew Popper (M. Emmet Walsh), Stan is able to postpone his jail sentence for six months in order to tidy up his affairs. Stan quickly goes into a depression that not even his gorgeous and bubbly wife, Mindy (Jennifer Morrison), can pull him out of. However, when Stan receives news from an ex-prison inmate that his frail and weak body will be targeted and "loved" by all of the large men in jail, Stan realized his "tender parts" are on the line and as a last ditch effort he enlists the help of a mysterious martial arts guru know only as The Master (David Carradine).

Over the course of the remaining months, The Master transforms Stan into a lean and mean fighting machine much to the dismay of Mindy who cannot see past The Master's other "abilities" such as eating Scorpions at the dinner table and smoking a hundred cigarettes a day.

Stan is finally shipped off to jail and he soon realizes that prison is not at all like he imagined it's worse! Thankfully Stan has been trained well and he soon brings the warring gangs together and establishes peace inside the prison walls. This is much to the disgust of the prisons Warden Gasque (Scott Wilson) who has been hatching an evil plan to shut the prison down and sell off the land to a Vietnamese development company that he just so happens to be a silent partner in. Gasque offers Stan a deal that will get him out of prison far ahead of schedule if he'll help him with his diabolical plan. With the clock ticking, Stan must decide between his own freedom and protecting the lives of the inmates that he has grown to respect.

For more details about Big Stan on Blu-ray, see the Big Stan Blu-ray Review

Big Stan Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

Big Stan arrives on Blu-ray with a mediocre 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that comes up short in almost every regard. Colors are notably vibrant, but skintones are often flushed or bronzed, blacks are sometimes unresolved, and primaries waver from shot to shot. While outdoor exteriors look better than anything else on display, low-lit interiors and nighttime scenes are haunted by dull contrast, weak dimensionality, and bursts of distracting, intrusive noise. Moreover, spiking grain, poor delineation, and other digital clutter frequently disrupt texture clarity and fine detail -- all of which contributes to an at-times soft presentation. Object edge definition is also inconsistent, appearing crisp in some sequences and unrefined in others. Worse still, the film doesn't look that much better than it does on DVD. While the picture benefits from the inherent improvements you'd expect from a Blu-ray disc, it's a minimal upgrade that will leave most viewers disappointed and underwhelmed. I'm sure some will blame the transfer's shortcomings on the film's low budget, but it doesn't change the fact that Big Stan just doesn't cut it.

Big Stan Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

HBO has granted Big Stan a solid DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track, but the film's front-heavy soundfield and shallow sound design leave too much to the imagination. While dialogue is generally crisp and clear, a few too many lines are muddled, poorly prioritized, or indistinct. Likewise, LFE support is occasionally resonant and full, but often absent from the mix or too subdued to make a proper impact. Even the rear speakers only pipe up in the most chaotic scenes as they're mainly tasked with the bare minimum. Interior acoustics and environmental ambience are merely decent, dynamics are limited, and the film's soundtrack sounds better than anything else (which isn't saying much). Still, pans are satisfyingly transparent, front soundstage directionality is fairly precise, and I wasn't distracted by any other glaring technical deficiencies. As it stands, Big Stan's DTS-HD track does a suitable job of capturing the nostalgic kung-fu clangs and bangs Schneider tosses in the film, but doesn't do anything that will win an audiophile's affections or earn their respect.

Big Stan Blu-ray, News and Updates

• Warner Details Big Stan Blu-ray Release - December 19, 2008


• Warner Announces Big Stan for Blu-ray (UPDATED) - December 5, 2008