Review Detail

9.9 16 10
ladyhawkerescored_front
FanFix November 28, 2021 4649
Overall rating
 
9.3
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
I recommend this cut of Ladyhawke which is now much better, overall, than the original. I was not a fan of the odd original score which intentionally had a very modern sound (for the time) but seemed not to ever really fit with the action happening on the screen. Did the musicians actually watch each scene they wrote music for? I really don't think so. For me much of the original music was laughably bad and way out of place. No amount of nostalgia could ever make me like those music choices.

In 99% of the revamped scenes of this edit, the audio replacement is undetectable. It just sounds like it could have been a studio release. The 1% that sounds a little too thin is because of the extreme noise reduction applied to a very small handful of dialogue parts in order to completely obliterate the original score. So a few times people's voices become tinny and one or twice a little hard to hear. I would have maybe not used quite that amount of noise reduction and just let the original soundtrack bleed over a bit, doing my best to mask it with new music. Either way, it's still a very acceptable trade-off.

I gave scores of 10 across the board here except for Audio/Video Quality and Audio Editing, which I gave an 8 and 9 respectively. In my book a score of 8 out of 10 (or 4 out of 5) means "good."

The reason I didn't give a perfect score for Audio/Video Quality was some slight blocking and color banding in some of the footage. Nothing very noticeable, but there if you're looking out for it. Also, the opening musical piece sounded a tad muddled to my ear, though that muddiness did not continue.

If a surround track is available but an edit is released in stereo, the highest I'll generally give the audio editing is a 9, which is what I did here. As much as I would prefer a surround version of this, the new scoring is just too good not make the edit a permanent fixture in my movie collection.

And the reason this edit works so well is the time effort and love put into arranging the new scoring. Well done!

User Review

Format Watched
Digital
Was this review helpful? 1 0

Comments