How do you turn a masterpiece into a piece of shit? Apparently you give the video master of a great movie to Universal and let them put it out as a DVD.

    I was almost slobbering with anticipation as I loaded up the Tommy DVD into my Panasonic DVD-R61 and couldn't wait to give my new Paradigm PW-2200 Subwoofer a run for it's (or my) money. I first saw Tommy on the big screen many years ago - around 1976 I think, and was blown away sonically and visually. I figured with my current sound system I would probably get a better sound than at the movies all those years ago.

    After a couple of minutes I went into the audio set up menu to see what I'd done wrong - nothing as far as I could see - the audio mix was just crap! The frequency response couldn't have been better than 150 to 6000 Hz (+/- 3dB) and the whole thing sounded flatter than me singing Pavarotti in the shower.

    I suffered the whole movie just for the visuals, for those of you who haven't seen it , there are many wonderful moments with Eric Clapton, Elton John, Tina Turner, Jack Nicholson, Keith Moon - the list just goes on. Unfortunately it's supposed to be a musical and as such is unwatchable (or unlistenable as the case may be).

    The only saving grace are Ann-Margret's boob's which somehow takes one's mind off the lack of frequency response. (Unless you're a lady of course, although......no lets leave it at that). Unfortunately, said boobs are not in shot all the time, hence making the movie heavy work.

    The real surprise here is that the Musical Director for the movie is Pete Townshend who is known for his meticulous attention to detail in all things musical. I guess he never heard the final result 'cause I don't reckon he'd let it be released.

Sound 1 out of 5

Video 3.5 out of 5

Content 4.5 out of 5