Review of Woman on Top

Introduction

Woman On Top is a romantic comedy starring Harold Perrineau Jr., Mark Feuerstein, Penélope Cruz, Murilo Benício, John de Lancie, Anne Ramsay and Ana Gasteyer, which was directed by Fina Torres in 1999.

Cruz plays Isabella, a beautiful Brazilian chef who runs a successful restaurant with Nino, her husband. However, Isabella suffers from terrible motion sickness, and as a result, always has to go on top whilst making love - Nino on the other hand also wants to go on top, so he looks elsewhere for satisfaction - and is caught. Isabella leaves him and travels to San Francisco to start up on her own and moves in with a cross-dressing friend. She makes it big and hosts her own TV show, but Nino isn`t about to give up on the woman he loves and also travels to America to get his wife back.

Video

The video comes in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen - with a clean, stable image and no sign of dirt or film grain.

Being a romantic comedy, there`s not much requirement for special effects, so the visuals aren`t especially exciting, but the film is well made and always looks good - thanks in part to Penelope Cruz.

Audio

The sound is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, and like the video is of good quality, although the soundtrack is replayed through the front channels with the rears only bursting into life occasionally.

The movie features plenty of Latin American music, which sounds very good, and of course the dialogue is always clear and easy to understand.

Features

Extras consist of three TV spots and two trailers - not particularly exciting.

Conclusion

Overall, this movie is best described as "nice but dim" - it`s well made, with an appealing cast, but is rather uninteresting and really doesn`t stand out from the crowd.

The video and sound are both well presented, but the extras consist only of trailers and therefore add little or no value to the disc.

This isn`t something I`d watch again in a hurry, so it`s probably one to rent out rather than buy.