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Rating: - 4 Star Movie - 1 Star DVD Print
Lots of ensemble acting silliness, good cheer, and fun in a Napoleonic period context. A wonderful cast, including Elsa Lanchester (Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Mystery Street (1950), etc..), and eye-pleasing maiden, Barbara Bates (I believe). The script is not quite up to the high standards of Danny Kaye in The Court Jester, but if you like Kaye's flair for song, wit, while sometimes playing the nitwit proper, you'll appreciate him all the more as the equally more often than not, deer-in-headlights, unassuming imposter to the real Inspector General, who may or may not ever arrive late in the day to establish proper clarity to an otherwise confused town mayor and his equally dim circle of counselmen.

The DVD print, however, left me wanting. There is NO menu. NO Chapter selections. NO trailer(s). NO Commentary. NO Extras. No nothing whatsoever - but the film.

The colors and hues in the opening credits are off and decidedly weak and the movie as a whole lacked sharp definition and crisp contrast. It helped some to increase the contrast and brightness settings on my Sony tv. The DVD plays at a modestly unimpressive 3 MB average video transfer rate - which may serve in part to explain why the picture quality was generally only fair at best.

Thanks to Paul Mular's Amazon.com review of the same movie, he astutely observed "The more expensive ROAN GROUP ... mastered their DVD from a very nice 35mm TECHNICOLOR print, the other DVD's I bought were mastered from 16mm EASTMANCOLOR prints ... you get what you pay for."

While the SYNERGY ENT print herein is generally not too grainy or dark if one increases their brightness and contrast settings, the vivid, perfectly splendid colors and hues of a movie filmed in TECHNICOLOR could be so much more - which is why I, too, wish to follow Mr. Mular's suggestion to acquire a 35mm copy of the The ROAN GROUP print of the same silly, warm-hearted film about a mistaken if in over his head inspector imposter-for-a-day.

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