The Charge

What a girl doesn't want.

The Case

The Music Box Biographical Collection: Christina Aguilera is clearly some kind of cash-in attempt from across the Atlantic. Sourced from what appears to be an hour-long British television show, it's a slapped-together DVD that sells cheap—and for good reason.

The disc purports to trace Miss Aguilera's career from childhood to her current success, but the information is minimal and reveals almost nothing about the singer or her career that you couldn't find on any fan site. We get assorted footage of Aguilera from awards shows, premieres, interviews, and photo shoots, but no original content. Being an "unauthorized" release, there is no music from Aguilera at all. The DVD packaging claims to provide viewers with unauthorized content and exclusive interviews, but this turd makes an episode of E! True Hollywood Story look like Roots.

There is a lot of narration here, mostly over a series of terribly formatted photo collages that are grainy, pixilated, and reproduced from other sources. Even when we do get Aguilera footage, it is squeezed into a graphic—basically a cartoon of a television—that cuts it down to about 1/8 of the screen size. No times or locations for any of the footage or photos is indicated, and they're in no apparent sequential order either.

The 40-minute running time is stretched further by randomly inserting interviews with unidentified talking heads. No joke, this is just three people, each sitting in front of a screen, talking about Christina Aguilera. We get no title cards explaining who these people are, and it is only in the closing credits that we see these assorted "rock historians" listed. I don't know where these historians got their degrees in rock, but most of their comments are on par with things your 12-year-old sister would say at a slumber party.

At least the interviews are unintentionally entertaining. One "expert" admits she's never seen Aguilera perform live, but she imagines that she would be "great." Hilarity ensues as one of the talking heads begins reciting and explaining the lyrics to Aguilera's songs. I kept hoping he'd break out into song, but no such luck.

Producer/Director Peter Driscoll seems to be the man to blame for this mess. I'm not sure what kind of producing or directing went on, but I'd venture that if Driscoll receives any kind of salary at all, it's too high.

There are no features on this disc. By features, I mean things like subtitles or actual menus. Yep, this baby is a self-starter. Just drop it in, and it goes. The video presentation is terrible, from the pixilated photographs to the lousy-quality interview segments. The audio presentation is 2-channel Linear PCM, but it could be a silent film and you'd be no worse off.

I'll give Music Box Biographical Collection: Christina Aguilera a score of five for providing the viewer with a chance to hear a British woman use the word "balls," and another five for the laugh I got at hearing the narrator pronounce Jay Leno's last name as "Leeno."

Now get out of my courtroom.

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