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16 Wishes
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Image Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (3rd January 2011). |
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The Film
 I could rip “16 Wishes” to shreds. I could detail every single one of the infinitesimal plot points that it steals from other, better, films. Dissect the predicable script, gushy story and cardboard characters. Write paragraphs about its sterile, lifeless direction and plain unimaginative cinematography. I could, but it won’t. Why? Because while “16 Wishes” is as unoriginal as it is cutesy – and boy it is ever (what, the pink and purple cover art plastered with stars didn’t give it away; thought this was “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (1991) did you?) – its heart is in the right place, and the message behind the seemingly-vapid madness that lingers on the surface is at least commendable. Abby Jensen (Debby Ryan) is turning sixteen today. For the past eight years she’s been planning for this day; saving her baby-sitting money for a party that people will be talking about for years to come. Abby’s also a bit of a dreamer and has kept a list of wishes – 16 of them to be exact – that she hopes will come true on the day of her “Sweet Sixteen”. Most of these wishes are the sort of superficial nonsense that you’d expect: to meet the pop-star whose face is plastered on the posters that adorn her bedroom walls, to have the hottest most trendy outfit in school, the undivided attention of the most popular boy in her class, a bright red Ford Mustang and the license to drive it. But some of her other wishes aren’t entirely hollow. Abby also wishes to be treated like an adult. Luckily – or, come to find out, unluckily – for Abby, when a bubbly fairy named Celeste (Anna Mae Routledge) sweeps in with a special gift for the high school sophomore, all of her wishes are about to come true. The gift is a box containing 16 wishes-granting candles. The instructions are simple: light a candle, make a wish. One wish per hour; all wishes are final by 12 o’clock midnight. But Abby gets more than she bargained for. When that pesky “I want to be treated like an adult” wish backfires, she soon realizes that most of these frivolous wants won't make her happy and that none of them mean much when they also take away your youthful innocence. Abby suddenly realizes that the small birthday party with her best friend (played by Jean-Luc Bilodeau) and loving family doesn’t seem like it would have been such a terrible idea after all. Only, it's now too late to do anything about it. Or is it? With the exception of some twenty-odd (excruciating) minutes of the first “High School Musical” (2006) – all of which I saw because I was simply in the same room as a bunch of tweenaged relatives – I haven’t seen a Disney Channel movie in… at least a decade, I think (“Phantom of the Megaplex” (2000)?) So, when I read that “16 Wishes” premiered last summer to pretty solid ratings and proved to be one of the highest rated cable events of that week, I didn’t have a whole lot of hope. (What passes for a good Disney Channel programming these days has a reputation for being unusually terrible; or at least much worse than it was 10 years ago). Perhaps it’s because I expected the absolute worst, but the film is surprisingly palatable; probably in large part because of its surprisingly decent all-Canadian cast, who do their best with the material, obviously not taking themselves at all serious. A little bit “Big” (1988) and a lot-a-bit “13 Going on 30” (2004), with a heap of other plot elements seen in various body-swap and kid-is-suddenly-an-adult comedies from the past 25 years, “16 Wishes” isn’t the best film of it’s kind (the lack of Zoltar is, I think, it’s greatest fault. More movies need that creepy-crazy bastard.) It isn’t even one of the better films in it’s particular subgenre. But as a made-for-TV co-production between The Family Channel and The Disney Channel, it isn’t half bad. Well, it certainly isn’t terrible, and it seems like an entertaining enough way to waste 90-minutes for its intended audience (which, admittedly, isn’t me).
Video
This is a pretty typical DTV release from Image: 1080p 24/fps high definition. 1.78:1 widescreen. AVC MPEG-4. Shot on HD video. “16 Wishes” has that distinct made-for-TV look, with strong, poppy colors, ample contrast, a slick grain-free appearance and crisp, consistent levels of detail. Artificial sharpening isn’t an issue and artifacting is never really a problem. A scene with a swarm of CG bees early on looks awful but only because the increased clarity of high definition makes the cheap effects all the more evident. Some of the flashbacks to Abby’s past birthdays are desaturated and processed to give off dreamlike soft glow. My only concerns with the disc aren’t particularly a fault of the encode at all; some mild noise in a few spots, a handful of scenes with poor shadow delineation and some moments featuring weak blacks seem to originate from the HD camera source. They’re all also fleeting nuisances, so forget I mentioned them. This isn’t going to become your new demo disc, but this Blu-ray gets the job done and looks good doing it.
Audio
Likewise, the English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix at 48kHz/24-bit is acceptable, but it won’t really strike listeners as something too special. Dialogue is clear and prioritized, the soundtrack, which is filled with music fit for Radio Disney, has solid fidelity, and surrounds offer balanced panning of all the elements in the mix. No subtitles are included.
Extras
Well this is unexpected. The supplemental package included on “16 Wishes” is going to take most days to sift through; fans will learn absolutely everything that they want to know about the production within the hours, upon hours of bon---okay, no, I’m not serious. In fact, the entire collection of extras can be exhausted in less than ten minutes. Two fluffy featurettes with stars Debby Ryan (1080i, 1 minute 32 seconds) and Jean-Luc Bilodeau (1080i, 1 minute 58 seconds) amount to little more than a slight brain-killing dullness and the music video for Ryan’s “A Wish Comes True Everyday” (1080p, 3 minutes 15 seconds) – the film’s horrible title song that I never want to hear again – is also included. A bonus trailer for Image Entertainment’s DVD & Blu-ray release of “Fallen” (16x9 480p, 1 minute 35 seconds) plays before the menu.
Packaging
Single-layer BD-25. Eco-case. Region Free. Got it? Good.
Overall
This Canadian-American co-production does what it sets out to do – to be an entertaining 90-minute diversion that tween girls can watch in their downtime. That doesn’t make “16 Wishes” particularly worthy, and I doubt that most will warm to the film, but then again, I’m not (nor are most reading this, I imagine) the intended audience in the slightest. Rest assured moms and dads, this is a perfectly fine film for your daughters with a good (if not at all original) message. Image’s Blu-ray release is decent too, with respectable audio and even better video. Probably best left for the rental queue.
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