Dom Robinson reviews
The Rock
The People's Champ
Distributed by
Silver Vision
- Cert:
- Cat.no: WWF 1004
- Running time: 88 minutes
- Year: 2000
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 6
- Sound: Dolby Surround (Dolby Digital 2.0)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-Enhanced: No
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £17.99
- Extras : Scene index, The People's Slide Show, The Rock Says, Interviews,
Animated Menus
The Rock: The People's Champ
is a profile of the WWF star who doesn't mince his words and wants to kick
the hell out of all his opponents. Those who cross swords with him here
include The Undertaker, Badd Ass Billy Gunn and Triple H, plus
The Big Show, described as "a 7-foot 500-pound steaming, stinking pile
of monkey crap". Lovely...
For the uninitiated, WWF (World Wrestling Foundation) is the sport that
is sometimes featured on Channel 4 on a Sunday afternoon while Channel 5
opt for WCW each Friday evening. To me personally, I don't know a great deal
about the difference as, to me, they both seem like an excuse for actors
to throw each other about a lot and appear to cause a great deal of pain
as a result either with their fists, feet or any household implement they
can get their hands on.
Presented in a 4:3 ratio, the print is free of artifacts and while there are
some clips used that aren't all that they could be, the majority of what's on
view, including the interviews, looks like an excellent NTSC-to-PAL conversion,
much more so than what you'd expect in the ring on TV.
The average bitrate is 5.98Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 8Mb/s.
The sound, presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround), fills the round
with sound, but if you watch the whole thing in one go, it might hurt your
ears :)
Extras :
Chapters :
There are just 6 chapters over the main 88-minute feature which is way too
small a number.
Languages and Subtitles :
Shouted English in vanilla surround sound, but no subtitles.
And there's more... :
The People's Slide Show is three minutes of music and montages of
The Rock; The Rock Says features nine 'Rock rants in the ring' (my
phrasing, not theirs) each lasting a few minutes and the Interviews
section contains eight similar-length chats.
Menu :
Most of the menus feature animation in the form of clips from the show, while
the main menu is just a picture of the man as on the cover. All contain music.
Overall, it's hard to take people like The Rock seriously, but it's a bit of
a laugh to be had while having a few drinks. Serious WWF fans will no doubt
want to snap this one up and it's good to know that it has decent sound and
picture, as well as a few decent extras.
Note also, that WWF: Summerslam 99 is released in August which runs
for three hours.
The following is a list of all the The WWE/WWF DVDs and games review online to date :
2002 WWE Raw
2000
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
