The Quest

The Quest mirrors the tried and trusted format of the all American college movie - a group of testosterone fueled teenage male college kids, copious amounts of alcohol, a bevy of beautiful women in bikinis and an unhealthy splattering of sexual frustration. But it's when they stumble across and befriend a couple of sex-craved teenage dwarfs that the film suddenly takes on a whole new college movie dimension.

The two dwarfs, Josh and Alex, have come to Cabo San Lucas on a similar mission to Eddie's with Alex's quest to get Josh laid by a "tall girl". However, Josh and Alex's quest nearly turns to tragedy when they decide to try their luck in one of the town's many foam party venues. Whilst the things start off well, with plenty of attention from the gyrating soap covered women, it soon descends into panic when Alex realises that Josh has been engulfed by the raising foam levels and is lost somewhere in the room. Fortunately, the club DJ saves the night by bringing the party to a brief halt so that everyone can look and feel around them.

With both parties receiving more than their fair share of female rejections, or in Eddie's case, total disasters, it's beginning to look like everyone is going to heading home with their quests still unfulfilled. So with their last party in Cabo San Lucas before heading home, can the group finally complete their quest?

The documentary style of the film has been reflected in the overall quality of the transfer. However, whilst it's not on par with the big budget Hollywood blockbusters, it still manages to produce a day time picture which is bright and colourful with a good level of detail. Given that the majority of the partying takes place at night the picture needs to stand up to the test of dark locations and images. Unfortunately, the black levels are rather disappointing which, at times, resulted in a bit of mess with indistinct colours, a rather soft picture and too much grain. Still, the transfer manages to be clean and free from dust specks and other forms of print damage.

The English, German and French 384 Kbs Dolby Digital soundtrack are nothing special, but then again, it doesn't really need to be. Dialogue is crisp and clear in the centre and front channels whilst the surround channels are used very occasionally, and at a level which is far too low, by the musical score. LFE effects are none existent.

The menu is a static and silent affair with scattered pictures of the group and various attractive young ladies in their bikinis. Extras wise, there's very little on offer with a number of deleted scenes plus a short documentary featuring real people with their various dating tips, experiences and various drunken students dancing and falling over.

Running for twenty minutes, the ten Deleted Scenes can either be played in one go or individually selected form the menu. However, with no audio and text explanation as to why they were deleted you are left to your come up with your own ideas as to why they were cut from the film, although considering the scenes are pretty tedious it's not hard to see why they were dropped. Unlike the main film, there are no subtitles whilst the picture quality is reasonable enough.

The Hedonism 101 section is probably the highlight of the extras, if only for see various ladies gyrating around in their bikinis and, er, flashing their assets. Split into eight sections (why it couldn't be a single one is beyond me) and running for around twenty minutes in total, there are various interviews with holidaying college students, bar tenders and the unfortunate hotel cleaners who have to perform the arduous duties of cleaning up after them.

Whilst I'd be more that happy to see all those moaning liberals in our society who faint at the slightest mention of "sex" rounded up and used as target practice, I would actually have to question the morals that The Quest offers. Fair enough, the characters in the film were always keen to promote safe sex (which was perhaps the overall goal of the film), but it's the manner in which the friends went about their "quest" to get their best friend "laid". Call me old fashioned, but it was hardly the best advertisement for sexual equality, although you'd be hard pressed not to find another set of teenagers with similar attitudes to this lot. Never the less, there were quite a few instances where I was totally gob smacked by their apparent opinions of the opposite sex, or perhaps I'm just starting to get too old.

Given that The Quest is such a novelty film it's something that is highly unlikely to get a repeat spin in your DVD player. As a result, it may only warrant a rental by teenagers with too much testosterone flowing through their veins. For everyone else, unless you have a thing for over sexed dwarfs, you can probably give this one a very wide berth. This is a very strange release from Universal and whilst it may appeal to its original American audience I fear that it's British audience is going to be very limited. Prepare to find this title in a bargain bucket near you very soon.