Review of Michelle McManus: The Lifeplan

Introduction

Imagine the glee when `Michelle McManus: The Lifeplan` arrived on the doormat, fast-tracked from the lovely PR people to Reviewer Towers in an attempt to get a review in as soon after the Boxing Day release as possible. A little extra-pudgy around the midsection thanks to Christmas excesses, this reviewer thought he`d get to burn off the seasonal love-handles in the company of this year`s hottest svelte soap star or at least get to ogle last year`s top reality TV diva in spandex for an hour or so. So, imagine the utter dismay when after a spot of Holmes-esque sleuthing, ie, Googling, it turns out Michelle McManus is the chunky lass who won Pop Idol in 2003 and quickly disappeared into a crater of obscurity when Simon Cowell realised thunder thighs and multiple chins are hardly the most proficient marketing tools to hard sell a couple of second-rate singles to indifferent tweens. Sadly, the only ogling to be done here is in the direction of the time remaining counter on the DVD player`s display after a few minutes of Ms McManus performing sweaty star jumps - at least that was the presumption.

But broad minds often go with broadening bellies, so this new ex-fatty-does-fitness DVD wasn`t written off based on pre-conceptions gleamed from the pages of the Wikipedia. To her credit, McManus certainly seems to have done herself well. Dropping almost half her body weight - at least according to the gubbins on the back of the box - starting out at a mammoth (guzzling?) 23-stone and ending up at much healthier 12-stone, her road to living past her 40th birthday started when she appeared on "Dr" Gillian McKeith`s poo examining bonanza `You Are What You Eat`, as Skeletor`s ugliest sister stuck it to her for gulping fried Mars Bars like a starving hostage at a free buffet. The DVD includes an hour of workout routines, broken down in to several categories - warm-up, muscle strengthening, conditioning etc, as well as a guide to healthy eating and tips from McManus on how to keep motivated. Interestingly, this puppy has been pretty popular and selling out at one or two retailers over the new year, perhaps proving that women (okay, and men, stereotype-haters) are more inclined to put their faith and dosh in what appears to be a genuine weight-loss success rather than air-brushed abs and a pretty face telling you to stretch into positions you haven`t contemplated putting yourself into since you flicked through the Kama Sutra in the library that one time when you were positive no-one was looking.

So, warm up the elastic in your sweatbands folks and let`s get physical, physical, I wanna get physical, let`s get into physical...

Video

`The Lifeplan` was seemingly filmed in a rent-per-hour, typically cosmopolitan open-plan flat with minimal furnishings - you know, the sort of place all young, hip people want to live in apparently. Presented in Anamorphic 1.78:1, oh my has this disc been on the receiving end of some unfortunate single-layer pressing. If you thought it was fun to go into your local Currys and play count-the-pixels on their badly calibrated LCD sets, you`ll be in a strange sort of heaven with `The Lifeplan`, as counting the macro-blocks on display here is like shooting blind, crippled and drunk fish in a teeny-weeny barrel. Add to that plenty of aliasing and a general fuzziness, which, to be honest, varies between segements, you`ve got a pretty lacklustre set of visuals.

Audio

As if more proof was needed that this release was thrown together in as cheap a manner as possible, your options are limited to a single MPEG-1 stereo track. Not that there`s much to shout about in terms of audio, as McManus` butchering of the lovely Scottish accent with her wails like, "Noo, thus nixt secshun iss cawed the pooer sirkit" deserves to be heard in as low-fi as possible. There`s a breezy little mandolin jingle that accompanies the menus and credits, which while quite lovely on first listen, soon begins to grate when it`s clear that it`s a 30-second soundbite constantly looped over the menus and credits.

Every expense spared indeed.

Features

None, mercifully, although apparently there`s a booklet in the retail release.

Conclusion

Loading up the disc, you`re presented with a queasily cheerful 2-minute introduction from McManus and "Dax", her curiously named fitness trainer and presumably part-time symbiotic slug. Then it`s on to the main menu which presents you with several options: `Workout Routines`, `Elimination Diet` and `Michelle`s Lifeplan Tips`, as well as an option to run the DVD credits. The 60-minutes of workouts, ranging from holding a ball and moving it around with your arms and gentle squatting to a spot of light dumbell punching are accompanied by Dax vulgarly thrusting his genitals towards McManus to display `proper posture`, as we get a full view of a particularly disturbing camel toe sported by McManus thanks to her tight black trousery-type-things.

The routines are, and lets be honest here, ridiculous, and there`s nothing here which would elevate you to your target exercise heart rate for optimal flab burning, let alone prove to be more strenuous than touching your toes - kneebending optional. This wouldn`t be so bad if the DVD was aimed at say, the young, the elderly or as a primer to get the severely unhealthy into regular exercise, but this is clearly being plum pushed as a regular fitnesse DVD, nae, the "ultimate weight-loss toolkit" actually, to which the target market are 18-49 year old women (okay, and men, stereotype-haters) looking for a quick fix. With constant claims this is all you need to drop stones off you, it`s insulting.

The diet segment of the disc, running for a whole 9-minutes, will be the biggest bone of contention for anyone with the slightest knowledge of good nutritional health. Ignoring conventional dietary wisdom of, "everything in moderation" or more importantly, "a balanced diet", the pair go on to instruct you to throw entire food groups out of your eating lifestyle, just as the name implies. Out go almost all carbs, wheat and dairy, in come as much protein as you can stomach; eggs, meat, all that pumpkin seed malarkey, presumably. Can`t you just feel your kidneys exploding? As Dax vainly tries to blind with science, with cries of, "you have to" and "it`s the only way", McManus fools no-one in trying to convince us she`s stuck to this long-term-daft eating plan without ever creeping down in the middle of the night for a sausage sarnie or ten. The `Michelle`s Lifestyle Tips` section is another 9-minute scrudbucket which boils down to an interview with the McManus, in which she briefly discusses keeping motivated before launching into a monologue about what it`s like to be famous and how she deals with the attention, as if she wasn`t a D.O.A celebrity carcass.

Seeing as DVD Reviewer has a `family friendly` reputation to live up to, there`s a limit on the amount of expletive adjectives that can be thrown in here, but it has to be said: `Michelle McManus: The Lifeplan` is a clucking bag of spite. It`s possibly the laziest, most incompetent and badly strung-together fitness DVD ever released into the market. With exercises you rarely see outside of a primary one gym class, and some dodgy nutritional advice, only a second-rate nobody with the charisma of a dead pigeon would attach their name to a DVD package that isn`t fit to wipe Mad Lizzie`s arse. Probably the most unpleasant DVD package this reviewer`s had the displeasure of reviewing on behalf of the site, and more than deserving of a big, Michelle McManus-sized nil points. Buying this to get fit and improve your lifestyle in a healthy, productive manner would be the maddest type of madness. Yes kids, this is utter garbage.