Liar Liar (1997) Blu-ray Movie Review

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In the mid 1990's, Jim Carrey took Hollywood by storm, with the seemingly unstoppable series of hits, including Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Maskand Dumb and Dumber. However the juggernaut came to a halt with the immense failure of the dark comedy The Cable Guy, which audiences were just not ready for. This was exacerbated by the record breaking salary of $20 million that Carrey negotiated. Whilst some had written off the talent, his next film Liar Liar was a welcome return to grace, a genuinely warm and hilariously biting comedy, which was embraced by audiences.

Fletcher Reed (Jim Carrey) is an in demand lawyer hoping to climb the ladder at his firm. The flipside is that he can't retain his promises to his young son Max (Justin Cooper) and his ex-wife Audrey (Maura Tierney), then exaggerates, or outright lies in his reasoning. Fed up with his absence at his ninth birthday, Max wishes that his father would be unable to lie for a day and blows out the candles. When Max's wish is granted, the high stakes court trial is thrown into utter disarray when he can no longer lie, or ask questions he knows will result in a lie. Comedy ensues, but when Audrey announces she is moving to Boston and taking her son with her, Fletcher will need to tell the truth in order to win her back.

The film is riddled with logic gaps, but it doesn't matter, because the central premise is overtly far-fetched. However, the film remains one of the most comedic and pleasing of all Jim Carrey's filmography.

Video

Liar Liar is presented in the film's original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with AVC compression.

Clearly an older transfer, Liar Liar looks reasonably enhanced next to the previous DVD release, but that's faint praise indeed. Unfortunately, the transfer suffers from some ugly edge enhancement and noise reduction techniques which are still full of noise.

The production design isn't the prettiest, but there is no real excuse in this day and age to recycle what looks to be a decade old transfer produced on the cheap. Slapping some edge enhancement and adding some horrible digital noise reduction filters will never improve that.

Stop being so damn cheap, Universal!

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Audio

Liar Liar is presented in DTS HD Master Audio, encoded at 24 bits.

For a comedy, one would almost be willing to give the film just a little lee-way, but the film is very much a front of stage affair, with very little surround presence throughout.

The dialogue is intelligible throughout and nothing really calls attention to itself.

The subwoofer receives very little signal to do anything with, so it remains pretty much dormant throughout. On paper, it's nice that Universal has given the film a lossless audio track, but I don't think anyone would be able to tell the difference between this and a lossy Dolby Digital track.

Overall, a pretty average effort, but more a reflection on the production of the film rather than the audio encode.

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Extras

Unfortunately, Universal has released Liar Liar completely bereft of extra features, which mirrored the previous DVD release. However, sadly the original VHS release featured a making of documentary and additional bloopers.