American Loser (2007/Lionsgate DVD)/The Big
Game (1995/VCI DVD)/Henry’s Crime
(2010/Fox Blu-ray)/The Living Will
(2011/Lionsgate DVD)/Lost Heritage
(2011/Cinema Libre DVD)/Love Wedding
Marriage (2011/IFC/MPI Blu-ray)/Putt
Putt Syndrome (2011/Cinema Epoch DVD)/Son
Of Morning (2011/E1 DVD)
Picture: C+/C/B-/C+/C+/C+/C/C Sound: DVDs: C+/Blu-rays: B- Extras: C/D/D/D/C/C-/C-/C- Films: C/C/C/D/C/C/C-/C-
The
following comedies were rarely funny, but some of them had potential while the rest
tried to follow trends and found themselves not too effective.
Tod
Harrison Williams’ American Loser
(2007) is loosely based on the troubled life of real life comedian Jeff Nichols
who had everything until learning disabilities, emotional issues and alcoholism
nearly destroyed his life. Seann William
Scott plays him and does an interesting job, but the film wants to be more
funny than introspective (I wish this had been bolder like Lenny) and lands up being a sadly disjointed affair from its script
down to its hit and usually miss jokes, trying too hard overall. Gretchen Mol is terrific as his potential
girlfriend who has an older suitor and fiancée, but this gets lost early on and
never recovers. Kevin Conway and Jeff
Garlan also star. Extras include still
sand a behind-the-scenes featurette.
Bob
Keen’s The Big Game (1995) is a
telefilm with an amusing idea that becomes formulaic and boring as old friends
play a Monopoly-like game for increasingly high stakes to the point it is not
fun anymore and all go overboard. Too
bad the teleplay beats them too it as the makers forgot to treat the game as a
character and not make this like a bad poker movie with a board game in place
of the cards. There are no extras.
Malcolm
Venville’s Henry’s Crime (2010) is a
sad mix of Keanu Reeves, Vera Farmiga and James Caan (all of whom I like) in a
heist comedy in which the men come out of prison to steal form a bank that has
a secret tunnel connected below it to a stage theater she works at. The plot is too similar to the far funnier
Woody Allen comedy Small Time Crooks
(2000) which this looks like a very tired carbon copy of. There are no extras.
Matthew
Lauyer’s The Living Will (2011)
would have never been made without the success of The Hangover films (a supposedly funny guy with more facial hair
than the original G.I. Joe is always a bad sign) as one of two best friends
passes away, but comes back form the dead to ruin the living friend’s
life. Grating, boring and unoriginal, I
was not impressed. Co-star Ryan Dunn
passed away in real life according to the case.
Bam Margera and April Scott also star.
Extras include Outtakes, Deleted Scenes, a Dunn tribute, Slate Gags and
Behind The Scenes featurette.
Christian
Lara’s Lost Heritage (2011) wants to
be a film form a far off land and originates from Africa,
but tries so hard to be a Hollywood-like comedy that it implodes on itself as a
man travels to the land and falls for a young lady who is tied to actual
African royalty. Too bad this was only
mildly amusing at best and it also tended to be limited in showing off that
land. A featurette on Lara’s films and
intro by the President of the Pan African Film Festival are the only extras.
Actor
Dermot Mulroney tries directing a romantic comedy with Love Wedding Marriage (2011) pairing the always appealing Mandy
Moore with newcomer Kellan Litz (another star of those Twilight films, but not a malnourished or bored looking) that fails
to produce much chemistry despite the best efforts of all involved. One problem is Litz is constantly shot more
favorably (note the light) than any of the other actors, leaving Mulroney
overboard in making a “woman’s film” and in the Twilight tradition, Litz can’t
seem to keep his shirt on while Miss Moore is overly clothed to the detriment
of us all. James Brolin, Jane Seymour
and Christopher Lloyd also show up, but cannot make this any better. Time to file for a divorce. A trailer is the only extra.
Jason
London and David Chokachi co-star in the life crisis comedy Putt Putt Syndrome (2011) as the one
who is not happily married tells the one who is that his life is a lie and when
he lets himself be brainwashed by this, disaster follows. Writer/Director Allen Cognata makes this a
surface comedy when this could have been much more dealing with unhappiness
more deeply, which would have made this funnier instead of going for the
obvious and tired jokes. Extras include
a Trailer, Premiere Sizzle Reel and Behind The Scenes featurette.
Finally
we have another Heather Graham vehicle that goes nowhere, Yaniv Raz’s Son Of Morning (2011) where her
reporter character somehow thinks advertising executive (and a mad man indeed!)
Joseph Cross is somehow a religious savior as a natural solar disaster
approaches. What? Yup, that is the premise and it just gets
sillier, dumber, worse and worse.
Jamie-Lunn Singer, Lorraine Bracco and Danny Glover even show up, but
nothing can save this silliness and if the idea was to try and create a cult
film in advance, that is a failed miscalculation. An interview with Graham is the only extra.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 AVC @ 21 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on Crime is easily the best picture
performer here despite being a little soft in detail more than I would have
liked, though I expected the 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Wedding to be at least as sharp, but it
is much softer than expected throughout and only very slightly better than many
of the DVDs here by a very slight, narrow margin.
The anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Loser and
Heritage have more troubles than
they should as well, though Heritage
had more color range to save it from being even softer with aliasing issues. The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Will is also dull and soft, again
disappointing for a recent production. The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Putt and anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X
1 on Son are even worse and
shockingly soft throughout to the point of sometimes being hard to watch, as
well as not being much better than the 1.33 X 1 image on the Game TV which is not good. Blu-rays of some of these DVDs might offer
improvements, but not in all cases.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on Crime and Marriage may
be dialogue based and towards the front speakers, but these films are still the
best sounding of all the releases here, though the DVDs all fair better than
their images tend to in their lossy Dolby Digital presentations. All have Dolby 2.0 Stereo, save Will which
only had Dolby Digital 5.1 that is limited and Loser and Son add Dolby
5.1 as an alternate option. However, all
are dialogue based as well, so y9ou can only expect so much.
- Nicholas Sheffo