Alleged (2011/Image Blu-ray)/Café (2011/Maya DVD)/Crazy, Stupid, Love… (2011/Warner Blu-ray w/DVD & Ultraviolet Digital Copy)/The River Why (2010/Image Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B-/C/B & C+/B-     Sound: B-/C+/B & C+/B-     Extras: D/C-/C-/C+     Main Programs: C-/C/C-/C+

 

 

The following feature releases should have all worked very well, but all backfire in their own ways.  Some, very badly.

 

 

Tom Hines’ Alleged (2011) is set during the famous Scopes trial where a man was tried for teaching evolution, a story as relevant as ever.  So how does this “family friendly” version endorsed by the increasingly infamous “Dove Org.” work out?  Instead of asking about the topic, it is a love story, a tale of how deceitful journalism is and in the end, a feel-good anti-evolution propaganda film that does not have the guts to announce itself as such.  Colim Meaney, Brian Dennehy and former Republican Presidential hopeful and one-time Senator Fred Dalton Thompson are among the reactionary cast.  Though the production design and costumes work, the rest is a condescending mess and waste of time.  Guess they did not have the guts to back their convictions, even down to the lone extra dubbed a “Discussion Guide” but is actually a surprisingly condescending Bible-studies lesson that manages to insult the viewer and sum up the arrogance of this, one of the year’s worst and most infamous releases.

 

 

Marc Erlbaum’s Café (2011) starts with police raiding the title locale, which is in Philadelphia, which you do not really see since the action is set in the interior of said business.  Jennifer Love Hewitt works there and is not having the best time of it all the time as the rest of this affair is set in flashback.  Daniel Eric Gold is her co-worker serving the public coffee, et al, but not everything is happy with the customers.  One (Jamie Kennedy) is a not-so-nice drug dealer, others are trying to find happiness and the oddest twist is a heavyset guy on his laptop who is told he is an imaginary creation!

 

There is a good film in here somewhere, but Erlbaum takes time to build a multi-pronged plot only to give in to some bad Spielbergian impulse that Spielberg would never have tried and the ending is phony, embarrassing and an insulting waste of time.  Too bad because had Erlbaum any filmmaking convictions, this could have been noteworthy instead of an idiotic train wreck.  A trailer is the only extra.

 

 

Glenn Ficarra and John Requa had more to work with and did even worse with the bad “it took two people to make this” would-be comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love… (2011) wasting Steve Carell, Julianne Moore (as a couple breaking up), Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei and Kevin Bacon in an exercise that never gets one laugh despite potential, has some really bad moments and will remind some people of the infamously bad Tony Bill disaster Crazy People as extraordinarily unfunny.  The Carell serious-as-funny-as-serious approach is totally worn out by now, but even if this were its debut, it would not work.  Moore proves she can find some of the worst scripts in Hollywood to do despite her talent and the very talented actor Gosling picks up a paycheck for playing the very goof he avoided to build his acting reputation.  Wow, is this lame.

 

Two Blu-ray exclusive featurettes, Ultraviolent Digital Copy (more advanced than the regular version) and Deleted Scenes are the extras.

 

 

Matthew Leutwyler’s The River Why (2010) may be formulaic too in its tale of a father (William Hurt) and son (Zack Gilford) who do not get along, but who both love fishing.  He ruins off to do his own thing, but is it really just his?  His father is also a best-selling author on the subject.  It is not awful, but not great, yet well done enough for what it is, just above a TV movie as a family drama that is never condescending.  Kathleen Quinland, Amber Heard, Dallas Roberts and William Devane also star and an interviews featurette is the only extra.

 

 

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Crazy is the best of all the releases on the list with good picture reproduction and only minor detail and image issues, though the anamorphically enhanced DVD is much weaker than expected, it is still not as weak as the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Café which could and should look better than it does.  The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on River is a close second and the 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Alleged ranks third place in playback quality.

 

All three Blu-rays have DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes with Crazy once again the best managing to have a more active soundfield than expected despite being dialogue and joke based, but the same on the others is more limited and more towards the front speakers than you might like.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on Café and the Crazy DVD are weakest and lossier than expected, especially considering how good the Crazy Blu-ray DTS-MA is in the latter case.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo